Despite UCEA’s prior protestations it is now abundantly clear the marking boycott is biting.
It is incredibly disappointing that our dispute has reached this stage, as the boycott is the most recent escalation in a multiyear campaign waged by our members to get a better deal.
So it is a bit rich for UCEA chief executive Raj Jethwa to use the pages of Wonkhe to claim this may all be down to a misunderstanding. Our member’s pay has fallen by 25 per cent in real terms over the past decade, universities keep 90,000 staff on insecure contracts, academics work an average of two extra days unpaid per week, and there are gaping equality pay gaps throughout the sector.
If employers acknowledged these issues then perhaps we could resolve our misunderstandings and the dispute.
Why now?
Indeed, had Raj suggested a year ago, when we started our original ballot, that he would open up university accounts and negotiate openly about what the sector can afford, we may have been in a different place than we are today. However, coming now this looks like an attempt to kick our members’ pay demands into the long grass. We need a pay rise now.
The sector’s strong financial performance is there for everyone to see, generating more money than ever in the most recent year of data. A total income of £44.6bn, £3.5bn more than last year, the biggest year on year increase in at least five years. A sector wide surplus of £2.6bn, the highest it has been for at least four years. Cash and current investment holdings at £19.6bn, £1.3bn more than last year. Whereas staff expenditure is just 51 per cent of income, a record low.
It’s clear to us that every single institution involved in the dispute is able to pay staff more than the five per cent our members have rejected. Yet across the sector Russell Group, other pre-92 universities, and post-92 universities all spent less on staff as a proportion of income than the year before. Only 15 universities in the dispute are in deficit, and if affordability were the only issue we would expect to see employers biting our hands off to make commitments on workloads and job security; we await their calls with bated breath.
We accept that a fair pay settlement will have an impact on university balance sheets over the medium to long term and UCU is very happy to work with UCEA to put the sector on a more sustainable footing.
Resource allocation
There is no iron law that forces some universities to hoover up students at the expense of others and we are in favour of a managed system of student distribution based on fairness and equality. Unfortunately, many of those who now bemoan the financial situation at the minority of small universities and use that as an argument to deny fair pay to all university staff are the very same actors who pushed for a winner takes all higher education system. But we are willing to lobby governments and opposition parties for a fairer distribution of students alongside UCEA if it is serious about sustained equitable growth for the sector.
A shared perspective on the sector’s resources requires employers to stop pushing a working model which leaves half of staff showing signs of probable depression, it requires employers to admit they have presided over a sector that is now unable to issue proper degrees, and it requires a pay offer that helps staff deal with the cost of living crisis.
If employers are willing to work with us on this basis then we will be very happy to reset our industrial relations.
Has UCU considered ending national collective bargaining and instead negotiating pay on a university-by-university or mission group basis?
That would seem the only way of accessing a “sector wide surplus of £2.6bn” given that 62% of this (actually £2.4bn – there’s a typo in the article) relates to only 21 “Larger Research Intensive providers – the 20 Russell Group universities in England plus the University of Sussex.
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/financial-sustainability-of-higher-education-providers-in-england-2023-update/
This is becoming likelier by the day, though not as a stated policy. The QUB local offer announced yesterday (an extra 2% on pay) is likely to be the first of several Russell Group institutions going round UCEA for a quiet life. I would expect more in the coming weeks. The QUB deal is a genuine victory for the local UCU branch, but UCU as a whole should be perturbed by the undermining of national pay negotiations (and indeed the emasculation of UCEA). What leverage we have requires a cohesive national pay structure and a robust ‘opposite number’ (negotiating partner)… Read more »
The demand is not that “York City pay Arsenal wages” but that “York City pay wages that keep pace with inflation”. We’ve had below-inflation rises since 2009. Each institution has the freedom to align staff grades with different parts of the national pay scale, e.g. Grade 8 starts on spine point 39 at Glasgow but 37 at Edinburgh.
Sure, my point is that Arsenal can easily afford things York City cannot (like big pay rises during an inflation crisis). Same thing applies to (say) Edinburgh v Napier. On wage erosion, sadly this is typical for most UK industries over the past 20 years and more – https://www.statista.com/statistics/800680/wage-growth-uk-by-industry-sector/ Sick man gonna sick man, and no amount of pressure from academics or students is going to make a UK government (of any party) ‘fund universities properly’ while core public services face collapse. We can’t change the country the sector is part of, alas; unlike other industries, we can’t even adjust… Read more »
It was I think a *spectacular* misjudgment for Jo Grady to come out so hard against the pay offer from UCEA (even if her calculation in this was to try to push them further in ACAS, showing that members wouldn’t accept min.5%), only to then have to endorse it personally about a month and a half later (and thus face an emboldened NEC who made the Union oppose her negotiated deal – admittedly the NEC have opposed any deal on 4F since 2020 and almost rejected the USS deal, unbelievably – clearly even in their slightly less radical new incarnation… Read more »
“The sector” does not and cannot lend money between autonomous HEIs. Even if this were possible, borrowers would need to pay interest to lenders. The fact is that many (not a few) HEIs cannot afford inflation plus rises, largely because fees and grants aren’t increasing, and because non-staff costs also increase every year. Pension contributions and National insurance are also staff costs which have increased in recent years. Financial surplus is one indicator, but cash flow, debt and investment need consideration not just as now but into the future. Sure, most people want a pay rise, but the question is… Read more »
“if affordability were the only issue we would expect to see employers biting our hands off to make commitments on workloads and job security […] UCU is very happy to work with UCEA to put the sector on a more sustainable footing”. Would this the sort of affordable, sustainable solution like – er – the ‘make all casualised staff permanent’ thing, or the ‘cover a 9 month research grant with a 24 month contract which is in effect a permanent job’ thing, or the ‘make all PhD students staff’ thing, or maybe the ‘solve the workload issue by giving staff… Read more »
Know what’s really depressing? Hearing our own union spin yarns about the sector’s deep pockets (while simultaneously supporting hundreds of members mysteriously under threat of redundancy). “Only 15 universities in the dispute are in deficit” – perhaps (citation needed), but how about debt? Much of UK HE is highly leveraged, with stonking interest hikes in the pipeline. 30 seconds on the HESA website shows lots of universities with an eye-watering level of external borrowing as a % of total income: Oxford-Brookes 92.3% Chichester 83.1% Worcester 71.4% Cardiff 67.3% Winchester 63.8% Bath 62.5% Ulster 62.1% Southhampton 60.3% Durham 58.3% But not… Read more »
It is the strangeness of the current position that, if the industrial action is successful, it will surely lead to more redundancies in poorer institutions (or them failing altogether, potentially). More pay is needed for a lot of people, but not all of the current economic woes at each institution can be chalked up their senior management (exceptions are always available, of course), but the wider funding environment is certainly not helpful. Why isn’t the Union trying to exert pressure there too? Surely that would be more helpful?
Jo Grady: “it is now abundantly clear the marking boycott is biting”.
In reality, the MAB’s bark is worse than it’s bite.
Sadly for UCU I think this is true. There are some places where critical mass of membership has had a clear impact (mostly large, elite uni’s), and fair play to those branches, much as I think the action is misguided and won’t result in much – but a lot of others where the MAB hasn’t really had an impact at all. We keep being told ‘just wait for next week’ but it’s only the places it’s had an impact that we’ll hear about. Because it isn’t a strike (UCU explicitly say it’s part of ASOS), there is less reluctance on… Read more »