- Conference
- 2024 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 11 October 2023
- Decision
- Carried
University staff at all grades on the agreed pay scale have seen the value put on their work diminish year after year, not by some form of “natural process”, not by erosion or gravity, but by deliberate choices made year on year by the people running the universities: they pay us less, as the sectors profits increase annually. Many colleagues are reduced to using food banks, taking second jobs, moving to smaller / shared accommodation – this is particularly felt amongst younger members – while in some households parents are skipping meals to ensure that their kids eat properly.
These reductions in our pay, have afflicted us for a decade and a half, they afflict us now, and through reduced pension contributions they will afflict us to our graves: robbed in the past, robbed in the present and robbed in the future.
That a so-called “World Class” sector believes this is acceptable, is little short of scandalous.
But these annual pay settlements are not the only problem with pay that our members are facing, it is also clear that “grade drift” has been a huge – perhaps hidden – problem for years. Employers are to varying degrees, ‘gaming’ the role analysis schemes they use, making it harder and harder for an individual to ‘prove’ to the employer that they are working at a level higher than the one they are being paid for: arguments over which key words apply in any given JD are common; arguments about what words such as – “manage”; “responsible”; “train” – and many others actually mean and how valuable the activity attached to each of these is, have become the bread and butter of casework with members. This sits alongside, the situation we have all seen, where a colleague or two leave, and rather than replacing them immediately, there is a review of the service to determine whether that work is still required or appropriate – and while that review in going on, some poor colleagues are covering the extra workload, on top of the already heavy workload they were doing. Quite often this can involve covering work from a higher grade. Such reviews can and do take years. In many cases, the new vacancy will be advertised at a lower grade, than the role was previously valued at.
Is it any wonder we are burnt-out, underpaid, and angry? In common with many of our fellow public sector workers.
It cannot go on like this, and this is why many branches have been taking strike action in the last 12 months.
We call on the SGE to:
1)Urgently review the various role analysis schemes used in HE – the main ones being HERA and Hays – to determine whether they are still fit for purpose
2)Determine from HE providers the percentage of job vacancies in the sector, the speed with which these are filled, and whether they are advertised at the same or lower grade
3)Determine whether “benchmarking” has any real value to bring to the conversation, or if it is in fact a sector “marking its own homework”: agreeing with each other that certain jobs are of a lesser value than previously