- Conference
- 2023 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 12 October 2022
- Decision
- Carried
The primary role of UNISON, or any Trade Union, is to use the collective power of its members to deliver lasting and significant improvements to pay, pension rights and working conditions.
We cannot help but be mindful of, and worried for the health and wellbeing of our members in HE, facing as they have been for the last three years truly unprecedented challenges: the pandemic – which left many colleagues forced to work from home, in often less than ideal situations, or conversely required that other colleagues go onto campuses in what was manifestly an unsafe time to be out in public; the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’, including massive hikes in utility bills; year upon year of below inflation pay rises.
Yet, while staff are facing ever more difficult choices about which essentials to cut back on, the sector they work in has never been richer: this is not about the failure to make money, rather it is the choices made about the distribution of the wealth created.
Since the declaration of a pandemic and the rapid societal changes invoked by that, many employees in HE have worked from home, for a greater or lesser part of their working week: it is accepted that this number is slowly diminishing as the transfer back to campuses across the country is happening at a steady pace.
This meant that the cost of working – heating, lighting, broadband, as well as sundry office supplies and larger scale equipment – was moved from the employer to the thousands of individuals at kitchen tables and spare bedrooms across the country. At Leeds University, we know that the employer “saved” at least £22m in one year, on these costs, while at the same time refusing to make contributions to the increased bills faced by individuals: in short, a business cost was in part, transferred from the employer to the employee.
Acknowledging that some institutions have already moved to making payments along these lines, but clearly there has been no consistency in the amounts, the manner (vouchers or salary) or even the acceptance of the need. We look to gain acknowledgement and acceptance that it should not be up to thousands of individual staff members, many already struggling to meet daily living costs, to effectively subsidise the work of an increasingly wealthy sector.
Accepting the logistical impossibility of organising a system whereby individuals can invoice their own employer, we propose that UNISON Higher Education Service Group (HESGE) look to establish a one-off extraordinary negotiation with the employers to seek reparation, in the form of a one-off payment to each employee in the sector.
Conference calls on the Higher Education Service Group Executive to:
Meet with the employers, as early as possible outside of the normal pay negotiation cycle, with a view to negotiating a one-off, non-consolidated payment to all staff, to mitigate the extra financial impact that working from home has had on employees.