What is the ballot about?

YOUR PAY IS DECLINING IN VALUE

Your employers are continuing a sustained and historic attack on the value of your pay. They have done this using their national negotiating body, UCEA (University and Colleges Employers Association), and the bargaining machinery through which they negotiate with the higher education unions, UCU, UNISON, Unite, GMB and EIS.

In 2006, UCU won a three year pay deal that delivered successive increases in pay, beginning to make up for the historic decline in the value of your pay over the preceding 20 years. At the end of that deal, the employers began using these negotiations to make annual pay offers that have effectively cut the value of your pay, reversing the progress we had made.

● Since 2009, the cumulative value of the pay cut is around 13%.

● For a member on point 43 (a lecturer in a pre-92 university such as St Andrews) that equates to £4,300 a year.

● For a member on point 30 it equates to £2,400 per annum.

● At the same time, your pension contributions have gone up. This further erodes your take-home pay .

 

We have to be very clear – this is not because the employers cannot afford to pay more. They can.

 

THE EMPLOYERS CAN AFFORD TO PAY YOU BETTER – THEY JUST CHOOSE NOT TO

Higher education has undergone rapid change as a result of the Coalition government’s policies.  There’s no doubt that universities are under pressure to compete with each other. But they are not poor. In fact, they have the money to start improving your pay again.

● The latest reported figures from HESA showed that the sector has over £1 billion in operating surpluses.

● In addition, many institutions have been building up cash reserves over recent years.

● The historic attack on your salaries has reduced the proportion that the sector as a whole spends on staff.

● According to HESA data, in 2011/12, universities committed only 55.5% of their expenditure to staff, compared with 58% in 2001/2.

● The income from students continues to be robust. Admissions improved again this year, up 7% on last year and level with the record year of 2011/12.

The fact is that university managements are building up their surpluses and they are doing it at your expense.

 

ATTACKING STAFF PAY IS BAD FOR UNIVERSITIES, BAD FOR STUDENTS, BAD FOR EDUCATION AND BAD FOR BRITAIN

The charitable explanation for the universities’ actions is that they are building up surpluses to fund exciting new projects for attracting students. UCU has warned that the government’s policies to force more competition into the sector would incentivise universities to engage in a “beauty contest” for students that focused on shiny markers of prestige rather than investing in the underpinnings of quality education. Sadly, this is what some university managements appear to be doing. But in attacking your pay to fund their surpluses, they are undermining the real basis of quality education for students and ultimately gambling with their own reputations.

Staff in higher education suffer record and comparatively high levels of stress. Yet far from seeking to address this, vice chancellors and principals as a whole appear to be prepared to pile on the pressure by eroding the value of pay. For many staff this is resulting in real financial hardship now. If it continues, more will follow.

 

WE’RE NOT ALL IN IT TOGETHER

It’s hard to be charitable about vice chancellors’ and principals’ intentions when they are so obviously – and ostentatiously – not sharing the pain. Instead, they seem to have bought into the myth that growing inequalities of pay and obscene senior pay packets are the mark of a healthy organisation. The number of senior staff paid more than £100,000 per annum is rising every year and now totals more than 2,500.

 

It is impossible to take seriously exhortations to be realistic in our aspirations when the highest paid staff have a median pay packet of £242,000 per annum.

 

NATIONAL BARGAINING – AND UNION EFFECTIVENESS – UNDER THREAT

Once again, we face a threat to national pay bargaining. All the trade unions developed a joint claim that sought a modest pay increase to tackle the decline of the last few years as well as action to tackle casualisation, the gender pay gap, growing workloads and other inequities in the system. The employers refused to engage seriously with any aspect of our joint union claim. A national agreement would have been the most effective way to secure action on many of the growing problems in our sector.

But UCEA refused to negotiate on these other elements, saying they could only talk to us about pay.  And then they refused to improve on an offer of 1.0% or to negotiate meaningfully around this. If the national bargaining machinery is no use, we are faced with local bargaining, which would be a chaotic free for all in which many members would face outright attacks on their pay, terms and conditions and working lives.

It appears that the employers may be throwing down a gauntlet to us, saying ‘We’re going to give you nothing through national agreements because we don’t think you’ll do anything and you know that a local free-for-all could be worse’.

 

We need to prove them wrong. We need to say that we are ready to back our calls with national action that tells them enough is enough.

 

WHY WE NEED TO TAKE ACTION – A SUMMARY

● Your pay is being systematically eroded as part of a bad strategic choice by university managements who can afford to pay you more.

● Their actions are unnecessary and provocative. They are also gambling with the reputation of the sector.

● We have tried everything possible to make them reach a negotiated agreement with us, but they are refusing to negotiate meaningfully on anything in our claim.

● They will keep on doing this, year after year, until we say enough is enough.

 

WE NEED A CREDIBLE ACTION PLAN

If we’re going to take effective action, it needs to be credible. That means that members have to have confidence that it will have an effect on their employers and bring them back to the table, as it did in 2006. The Higher Education Sector Conference held at this year’s Congress in May, agreed to consult members with a recommendation to reject, and to prepare for action if the talks failed to produce anything.

When it became clear that the talks were going nowhere, UCU launched a consultation with members and branches. These consultations showed that members overwhelmingly rejected the employers’ offer and indicated a willingness to take action.

The action plan you are being asked to vote on is one that your negotiators believe has the best chance of bringing the employers back to the table.

 

They are clear that only sustained and credible action will have this effect. Anything else will be gestural.

 

OUR PLAN FOR ACTION

The plan we are putting before you calls for a combination of escalating action short of a strike (ASOS) and strike action over a period of months. At the outset, we will begin a programme of working to contract, alongside a UK-wide strike.

But we have to have the full armoury of tactics available to us. That’s why we’re also balloting you for action short of a strike up to an including a marking ban. When you vote for ASOS, this is what you will be voting for.

 

It is vital to vote for both ASOS and strike action. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

 

We MUST have a mandate that includes strike action. If we don’t, we won’t be able to escalate toward rolling strike action across the country. Most importantly, we won’t be able to counter any attempt to attack members’ pay through deductions for partial performance of duties.

A vote for ASOS without a similar vote for strike action will not give us what we need to take effective action. It will lack credibility.

No one likes voting for industrial action. It’s not why anyone enters the profession or makes the decision to work in higher education. But the sad truth is that the attacks we are facing give us little choice.

 

Unfortunately, there is no soft option in this dispute. If you vote for action, we need the strongest mandate you can give us.

 

WE ARE NOT ALONE

The attack on the value of pay is affecting all higher education staff, including the lowest paid. That’s why UNISON members are also being balloted for action and Unite plan to do the same soon. EIS members in Scotland are also being consulted on whether to ballot. We may be in a position to take action that unites all staff in higher education.

Throughout the negotiations, we have worked closely with our colleagues in the other unions and we’ll continue to do so if the vote calls for industrial action.

Our relationship with our students is vitally important to us. As a union, UCU has always worked closely with NUS. Together, we have campaigned against the rise in tuition fees, the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance and the privatisation of education. Nationally we will continue to work closely with NUS. Every institution has a local Students’ Union (or Guild) and this is autonomous from the NUS and as such, students locally may well come to a different position on our dispute and any action, to the national union. This is why it is vitally important that all members talk to their students and UCU branches engage with their local Students’ Union to discuss the issues, agree common ground – and see how we can work together to defend the education sector.

 

WE CAN WIN AND WE MUST

With so much at stake, a strong vote for strike action and action short of a strike is now the only way to move forward. No one wants to be in this position, but we cannot choose to ignore what the employers are doing. And we know that we can win. We did it in 2006 and we can do it again now. If you are angry about what the employers are doing, it’s time to show it.

 

THAT’S WHY WE ARE ASKING YOU TO VOTE FOR BOTH ACTION SHORT OF A STRIKE AND STRIKE ACTION.

YES/YES