With rumours of job cuts in the air University of Birmingham pay offer is a real terms pay cut for all

Staff at the University of Birmingham are feeling unusually frustrated and anxious about the status of annual pay talks this year. Staff covered by both national negotiations and the local talks are all once again facing a big real terms pay cut due to a miserly 2% offer, on the back of 1.4% last year, the lowest pay offer of all public services. 

The lowest paid staff on grades 2 to 5 have their own direct negotiations with the University. Despite the University being much more financially secure than many other Universities, these staff have been left struggling to meet the costs of basic essentials as food, fuel and housing costs continue to balloon.

This year with the pay rise due to take effect in a little over a week the University has finally made a pay offer, more than 3 months after the unions’ original pay claim.The University has now come back with the same initial pay offer as that arising from national talks – a below inflation offer of just 2%. As rates of inflation are projected to remain above 3% for the rest of this year, this means staff could face a real terms pay cut of more than 1% this year, on top of the significant real terms cut last year.

Delay in pay offer causes issues

In previous pay years the University has agreed how vital it is for a pay rise to be paid to the lowest paid staff in a timely manner. UNISON and the other unions recognised for this staff group submitted their claim (for a rise of 10% on all points, as well as some related matters) on 16 April, leaving plenty of time for the required meetings to take place. 

UNISON also expressed how important it is for an initial offer to be received by the middle of June, to allow term time only staff to be consulted on the offer alongside other members. The University allowed this deadline to pass without an offer being made, and then weeks have gone by since. The timing of the offer will make it impossible for the pay rise to be implemented on time next month, and it severely complicates the processes the unions will need to take to consult their members, with so many taking leave over the next month and a half.

2% rise in context

The University’s strategy of divide and conquer between different staff groups has placed it in a difficult position. Historically, pressure from UNISON has led to larger pay rises for the grade 2 to 5 group versus grade 6 and above staff. If the University hadn’t done this, pay for the lowest paid staff would be struggling to keep up with the minimum wage, nevermind the foundation living wage that the University has also agreed to match for directly employed staff under pressure from UNISON. 

The combination of these factors means that the grade 2 to 5 pay spine is under pressure from both sides – the bottom is struggling to keep pace with the living wage while the top is getting “too close” to grade 6 and above. Members may recall that it was only 3 years ago that the University made massive changes to the pay spine to maintain gaps between grades – changes that are already now looking out of date due to the below inflation rise offered by the University.

With the University once again offering the lowest paid staff a big real terms pay cut, unions and the University may be on a collision course once again as we come into a new academic year. Of particular concern in past years has been the much more generous attitude to senior staff pay, with an eye watering increase of almost 9% in the Vice Chancellor’s total remuneration last year even as the University faced a sanction from the HSE on stress, and asked staff to accept a 1.4% rise. The University is also asking staff to accept much larger increases in car parking charges, with these due to rise from 1% of salary to 1.25% of salary, a rise of 25% or 12.5x the pay offer.

Deeper problems – poverty pay at the Hotel and fears of job cuts across campus

While talks between unions and the University are continuing, several issues where we remain at odds with the University give us cause for concern about the possibility of a negotiated solution.

Firstly no mention of pay at the University and the living wage should pass without mentioning the situation at the Edgbaston Park Hotel. Customers and casual observers may be surprised to discover that, despite the massive logo on the building, the Hotel is not part of the University itself. Instead it is a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the University – a private company that the University owns 100% of the shares of. This enables it to run the Hotel as a private business while transferring any profits back to the University.

The Hotel does not pay the living wage – like many staff in the hospitality industry, most Hotel employees earn only slightly above the statutory minimum wage. This of course would not be what many guests would expect from the University’s own in-house hotel, particularly when so much of the University’s own research talks about the importance of the living wage as a societal and economic good.

Secondly, even though they maintain that the finances of the University are relatively healthy compared to other institutions, the University is increasingly hinting at possible job losses and cuts to services to come. As reported by our colleagues in UCU, the University is planning to reorganise its structure from the current 5 colleges to three “faculties”. This is at the same time as senior managers are being asked to find savings in every area of their budgets. The worry therefore is that there will be a broad attempt to find “efficiencies” from the structural changes out of a mistaken belief that putting existing staff into bigger groups will mean that services can cope with less resources.

At present the changes are gradual and difficult to keep track of – vacancies are being left unfilled and rumours abound of specific departments undertaking voluntary severance schemes.

Concern is growing amongst staff that these cuts will undoubtedly affect services sooner or later because:

• In many key areas (such as the Estates staff who undertake vital electrical, plumbing and building work across campus) pay is already so low that the University cannot recruit, meaning that many types of essential maintenance is delayed or completed to a poor standard by contractors
• While satisfaction with education and support services amongst students currently remains high, this is seemingly being maintained only through high levels of stress and burnout amongst staff, with stress levels remaining high even after the HSE intervened in December 2025 and issued the University with an enforcement notice

Staff and students need to unite to protect education and services

All this goes to show that unions cannot organise around pay in isolation from the structural issues at both our individual institution and affecting our entire sector. Any solution to this will only come from staff and students working together, and demanding a bigger say in how our institution is run.

As we come up to the start of the new academic year we will be sharing more details of how we see this campaign developing including open meetings for staff and students, promotional materials, protests and other ways of getting our voices heard.