UCU Strike Action 25 - 26 May 2016
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) are taking industrial action in response to the 1.1% pay offer made by the employer body, Universities and Colleges Employers' Association (UCEA).
This will include members of UCU taking part in a two day national strike on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26 May 2016. Members of UCU are also being asked to work to contract from 25 May, which means they will refuse to work overtime, set additional work or undertake any voluntary duties like covering timetabled classes for absent colleagues.
LiverpoolSU support UCU in their right to strike and want to see a quick end to the dispute, and so we encourage everyone involved to get back round the negotiation table and come to a quick resolution, so that students’ lives are disrupted as little as possible.
What is the HE pay dispute about?
The 1.1 per cent pay offer made by UCEA falls far below what the universities can afford to offer their staff and fails to acknowledge the following points;
Fair pay:
Since 2009, the cumulative loss to staff pay (compared to rises in RPI) is 14.5 per cent. If inflation increases as predicted then by the end of this year the total real terms decline in staff pay since 2009/10 could be as high as 17.5 per cent.
High levels of remuneration, lack of transparency and oversight have also angered university staff. In 2013/14 the average vice-chancellor salary was £260,290 and, on average, vice-chancellors were paid 6.4 times more than the average salary of staff.
Gender equality:
Inequality in UK higher education showed a gender pay gap of 12.6% (a difference of £6,103 per year) amongst academic staff in 2013/14. The total gender pay gap currently stands at £528 million
Secure contracts:
Across the UK 75,000 university staff are on highly casualised ‘atypical' academic contracts (at least 21,636 are zero- hours contracts). 67% of research staff are still on fixed term contracts more than 10 years since the fixed-term regulations came into force with around a third of these contracts being 12 months or less.
Affordability – and the choices intuitions make:
The sector has over £1 billion in operating surpluses, but at the same time staff costs as a percentage of expenditure have fallen by 1.2%. UCU and NUS believe that university management are spending lots of money on buildings and increasing revenues and that they are doing it at expense of their staff.
What next?
If you have any concerns, questions or comments, please email Jamie Bennett, your Vice President Academic Quality.
If you would like to show support for staff who are taking part in the strike action, please get in touch with the LJMU branch for more information.
Further Information
For any further information on the UCU strike action please visit https://www.ucu.org.uk/when-is-a-pay-rise-not-a-pay-rise
