UCEA “full and final offer” in 2024-25 pay round, September version
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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If you have been following the slow progress of the 2024-25 New JNCHES negotiations between employers and unions, today brings the next step on the journey.
The Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) has published a “full and final” offer covering pay and related issues, following yet another year in which the negotiations progressed via the dispute resolution process.
The previous offer in this cycle was published in early July, and offered a stage uplift of between 2.5 per cent (towards the top of the pay scale) and 5.7 per cent towards the bottom. This would have been expressed as a £900 uplift for all spine points from 1 August 2024, with the remainder settled by 1 March 2025 – applied after all spine points had been adjusted to meet the National Living Wage. Such was the financial pressure on institutions, that there was a possibility that the pay offer could be deferred at provider level with discussion required with local union representatives.
Two months of “dispute process” discussion have not yielded any change to this offer – we are looking at fundamentally the same proposition as we were in July. Back then, UCU’s branch delegate meeting voted not to pursue industrial action (a 55 per cent majority), but were keen to enter dispute resolution. At the time we noted:
The notable thing about this New JNCHES round has been the among of time (3 months) and the number of meetings that has taken place – the sense from UCEA is that every option has been explored and there is really not much more that is going to shift in time for an uplift to begin
This appears to be what has come to pass.
With the letter sent on 27 August and seven working days available to respond the unions will have already shared their feelings on this latest offer, though as yet none of the five involved (Unite, Unison, GMB, EIS/ULA, and UCU) have published a response. Unison and EIS/ULA have recently concluded member consultations on the potential for industrial action related to the July offer.
It feels, given widespread agreement (including at UCU) that large parts of the sector are facing imminent financial peril, that there is very little that will shift this above-inflation offer much higher. UCU, in particular, took lengthy and very public industrial action last year, most notably a marking and assessment boycott – to very little effect, and it does not seem like the will of members (noting for instance the low UCU election turnout) is there for another fight of that intensity on pay.
The negotiations on the pay spine, contract types, equality, and workload often feel like a minor codicil in these offers – indeed, the negotiations agreed in 2023-24 (and marginally tweaked to meet union preferences this time round) never actually happened as the unions remained in dispute. Union members would be within their rights to vote to take industrial action in an attempt to remove the headline pay offer, but a continued dispute would risk losing the chance of potentially fruitful negotiations on working conditions.
Updated 11 September: Via the unlikely medium of an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, UCU general secretary Jo Grady has hinted that the union is likely to recommend that members vote against the offer (as happened last time the union saw what is substantially the same offer) and raises the prospect of industrial action. The union has been unusually coy about saying this formally, but a spokesperson told us:
This offer of just 2.5% falls far below the public sector pay rises the government has just approved. Our members will now consider this offer as a total package through the union’s democratic bodies, but it is clear university employers think their employers are worth less than millions of their peers, and this paltry pay award will cause many to consider leaving the sector.
The appetite for industrial action appeared to be lacking *before* Labour came to power and announced 5+% pay rises for the public sector. The sentiment of many may now be that this is the right time to go for it, especially given that trade union legislation is planned to be reformed. Not to say this will be successful, but universities could have avoided the risk of further disruption by marginally improving their offer (even with 2.5% from August 2024), but their calculation seems to be that any extra pound paid to staff is a bigger loss than any disrupted teaching, which, from a financial perspective, may not be wrong for many institutions in the short run.
Do you know where to access the final offer? Can’t find it
It’s here: https://www.ucea.ac.uk/our-work/collective-pay-negotiations-landing/2024-25-new-jnches-pay-round/ (some browsers struggle to download these attachments, I’ve found – try a different one if you have problems)
Individual universities are making changes to the mapping of grades to scales, eg university of leeds
Oh, interesting. What changes are being made?
At our’s they’re rewriting JD’s and qualification requirements, so that an Estates trades person now needs a higher qualification than most hold to keep their job and grade, or has to down grade to keep a job, similarly their charge-hands now need to have the former managers qualifications, or down grade to a straight trades persons role. This is after years of having to pay ‘market supplements’ just to recruit trades people as the given grades didn’t and don’t pay enough thanks to the Rev’d Strike’s effort to go with HAY (biased to white collar roles) as against HERA’s equality for all roles. The biggest fear is the bean counters will go for external ‘facilities management’ and completely screw up the Uni as other have suffered.
What bothers me is im grade D scale point 11 I think and all grades below me are now in the same rate of 12 pound an hour.And they get time and a half and double time for weekends,I don’t and I have to work bank holidays and I don’t get the extra 4 days leave at Christmas either and I have to do night shifts.Security officer Uclan.
“…this above-inflation offer…”
Only above inflation for those that don’t need to pay rent or mortgage. But if they did, then this is another 1.1% or 0.6% pay cut when you consider inflation metrics that factor in housing. Source: ONS’ July inflation figures: RPI 3.6%, CPIH 3.1%.
Real inflation is of course is even higher, as both CPIH and RPI assume that people spend only ~15% of their monthly outgoings on rent/mortgage, whereas in reality that is around 50% for most real people. So real inflation is probably still running at 4-5% for most non-boomers.
In the context of the current financial situation, not necessarily a horrific offer (although another real terms pay cut on CPIH and RPI). I hope UCU (as my union) don’t call strike action over it (not least because the MAB demonstrated that UCEA won’t budge even if students literally aren’t graduating and academic standards are trashed in the process) and instead focus on growing member density
However, I struggle to see a scenario where academic salaries recover. I would love someone to ask Mr Jethwa & UCEA 3 questions: 1) do UCEA recognise academic salaries have lost their real value quite substantially in recent years? 2) do UCEA wish to reverse that, if economic conditions allow?, and 3) what would those economic conditions be? Unfortunately, they seem to be unaccountable – perhaps Wonkhe might consider putting these questions to them.
My fear is that, following current shrinking of the sector and some potential funding change from the government, and the sector is stabilised, VCs will not use that to restore staff pay, but instead will go on another ego-driven frenzy of building construction, overseas campuses and so on.
I’d loved to be proved wrong, but as it is, I simply cannot see it. The general message from UCEA is that every pay offer is fair and realistic – I’d have a lot more faith if UCEA would say “we genuinely cannot afford any more at this time, but we recognise that real pay has fallen, and we want to work with unions to improve the financial stability of HE, and therefore reverse those real pay-cuts over a number of years”. Alas, I cannot see it, and hence I am once again questioning my future in the sector.
It might need borderline fatal brain drain away from the sector for UCEA to wake up. Didn’t Australia have a big academic brain drain issue before improving pay to fix this?
This whole circus shows that national bargaining is completely broken. It simply doesn’t work in a sector that combines near-insolvent institutions and unis that can afford paying more. I just hope my employer will finally leave national bargaining, so we can negotiate salaries based on what is possible here, rather than being held down by affordability arguments that apply to other institutions.
Agreed! Here at Salford Uni we are throwing up buildings left, right and centre – we are in no financial difficulty.
“It was not possible to come to an agreement and UCEA has therefore advised employers participating in the 2024-25 New JNCHES pay round, including our university, that the pay negotiations have concluded and that they should implement the pay uplifts offered with effect from 1 August 2024.” This was quoted on University of Manchester’s page today!
Can the editor of this article or somebody collate more evidence to verify it?
It will be interesting to see how many institutions have / will defer the uplift this year – they have the option for 11-months without back-pay in case of extenuating circumstances. My home institution normally implements the uplift automatically in the August payslip accompanied by an email, but for the first time I can remember, it wasn’t this year. No comms from LT – tumbleweed – suggests that things might be about to get serious here.
Ditto
At some point this will be resolved and institutions that do back date to August 2024 will have a massive hit to cashflow as they have to pay all of their staff, whereas if this had been agreed before August then institutions could have adjusted their cashflow forecasts for the year.
The longer this goes on, the greater the likelihood the institutions defer the application of the new payscales for citing cashflow reasons, especially those who’s finances are already tight with the reducing numbers of international students coming to study in the UK across the board.
If this is going to be a go-around every year, then I fear this is going to be a thorn in the sole for quite some time to come.
Maybe the unions should be slightly less aggressive and accept what has been proposed; winning the argument, only for Universities to make future redundancies in order to afford the salary bill in their budgets isn’t really a win.