Pay update & a response to Prof. Tim Jones’ “UoB Briefing” email
You may have seen the latest “UoB Briefing” update from Prof. Tim Jones in which he attempts to justify the University’s inadequate pay offer and details why the University is once again imposing a pay deal before negotiations are finished.
In response, we’d like to highlight that:
- The University has once again refused to become an accredited living wage employer (i.e. to pay it for more than a single year) as part of this years pay talks, despite making multi-million pound surpluses year on year and having £140million in cash in hand and over £1.2billion in assets at the end of 2016/17. Even at the most expensive estimate, becoming an accredited living wage employer would cost the University less than £500k a year, less than 0.1% of their yearly income.
- Paying the real living wage for a year is welcome, but it doesn’t give those staff the assurance that they will keep receiving what they need to survive on in future years, and it doesn’t address the ongoing erosion of support staff pay caused by repeated below-inflation pay rises that the University. RPI inflation was running at 3.3% in October and has been consistently above 3% throughout our pay talks – this means the University’s pay offer will feel like a 1% pay cut to the majority of staff.
We did not agree with the University imposing their (real terms) pay cut at the end of this month. Instead we stated that they should pay a fair, above-inflation pay rise to staff across the scale and finally become an accredited living wage employer. It’s not reasonable to make staff wait until April for a fair pay offer and there’s no reason the University cannot pay a fair pay rise now.
You voted overwhelmingly to reject the University’s offer in our consultative ballot – over 87% of members rejected the University’s offer and backed action to improve job security and deal with a number of equality and casualisation issues. YOU rejected the University’s offer because it’s simply not good enough given the financial strength of the institution and how much your work contributes to its success.
PLEASE COME TO THE MEMBERS MEETINGS ON THURSDAY THE 22nd OF NOVEMBER (non-members are welcome to this meeting too!):
- 9.15am – G13 Nuffield Building
- 12.00pm – The Dome Lecture Theatre, Aston Webb (we will be joined by all the other trade unions, as well as Roger Godsiff MP)
We can discuss the negotiations in more detail there and answer any questions about pay talks.
Please feel free to forward this to others in your teams and highlight that UNISON and other unions are still fighting to get them a better pay offer.
