UCU members demonstrating outside Kings Cross station, London, during their campaign in 2022. Photo Workers.
Pay for university workers is still not settled. The five unions representing higher education workers submitted a claim in April, but there’s no agreement.
Lecturers and researchers are members of the University and College Union (UCU). On 27 September its HE committee rejected the employers’ “full and final” pay offer for 2024-25 – a staged approach for “uplifts” ranging from 2.5 per cent to 5.7 per cent.
That offer would mean most members receiving the lower amount: in effect another pay cut. In contrast most public sector workers have won rises of over 5 per cent.
The pay offer is staged, so workers would not even be paid the full amount of the “uplift” from August 2024. Instead, pay would increase by £75 each month until February 2025, with 2.5 per cent paid only from March. The union described this aspect of the offer as “a damaging novelty”, setting a precedent that it could not accept.
The UCU had already rejected a similar offer in July and decided to campaign for industrial action to win a better offer. It says the terms of a review on pay structure are acceptable, but the offer for this year is not. It will hold a consultative ballot of members.
Threats of mass closures and redundancies in the sector remain. Workers in HE need to be working out how to defend the whole sector, how to win more funds to support pay and jobs. The most recent UCU HE conference on 17 May voted to “develop a strategy which includes returning to UK-wide action in academic year 2024-25.”
Unison, representing administrative and other HE workers, is taking a similar line. After an online consultation it expects to hold a ballot for action in November.