- Conference
- 2024 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 11 October 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Higher Education pay has fallen behind. Since 2009 our pay has lost around 28% of its value as a result of successive below inflation cost-of-living rises, year on year. The extreme increase in prices during 2022 and 2023 has brought this to a crisis point, and UNISON members working in Higher Education are facing real hardship as a result.
After bringing forward pay negotiations over the New JNCHES 2023-24 pay uplift the University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) made their final pay offer of between 5 and 8%, depending on spinal column point, with a portion of this added to annual salaries early, backdated to February 2023. The dispute process was undertaken through ACAS conciliation in February and March 2023, and this resulted a slight increase in the portion of this overall pay uplift added to annual salaries backdated to February, to £1000 or 2%, whichever was the greater. The pay uplift was imposed from March 2023 payroll in most institutions despite all five trade unions remaining in dispute with UCEA.
With RPI inflation at 13.8% and even CPI at 10.4% in February 2023 when this pay uplift was imposed, and our pay only increasing by 5-8%, this pay rise was yet another pay cut.
UNISON Higher Education Service Group Executive policy was to continue to use disaggregate balloting to build the number of strike mandates that we had in Higher Education. Strike mandates were won in 23 institutions during 2023, covering around a quarter of members on New JNCHES pay, including nine institutions where we had not succeeded in achieving a mandate previously. As a result, increasing numbers of UNISON members have been taking strike action for a pay rise that keeps up with inflation. In the aftermath of the cost-of-living crisis and with greatly increased bills members simply can’t afford to live on the money that the employers imposed. Negotiations continue with UCEA at the time of writing to seek to agree terms of reference for negotiations over a new pay spine, action to tackle equalities pay gaps, precarious contract types and excessive workload. Whatever the outcome of these talks, 2023 price rises are not expected to be reversed and so we will still need to bargain for a significant pay rise in 2024-25. Conference believes UNISON should seek to restore the buying power of wages in Higher Education.
Conference instructs the Service Group Executive to seek to agree with the other recognised trade unions and submit a joint union pay claim to the University and Colleges Employers Association for 2024-25 which demands the following:
The deletion of spinal column points 3-7.
1)A pay increase for staff on spinal column points 8-32 of a flat rate increase of £5000 added to annual salaries or an increase in their salary to £15 per hour, whichever is the greater.
2)A pay increase for staff on spinal points 33 and over of a flat rate increase of £4000 added to annual salaries.
3)Negotiations to agree specific actions to tackle the gender, disability and ethnicity pay gaps to be implemented at institutional level.
4)Negotiations to agree specific actions to tackle the gender, disability and ethnicity pension gaps to be implemented at institutional level.
5)Negotiations to agree specific actions to move all staff onto a 35-hour week with no loss in pay to be implemented at institutional level.
6)All institutions to become Foundation Living Wage employers.