Consultation due to open on University offer

Make sure you have your say!

We are seeking the views of all of our grade 2 to 5 members on a revised offer from the University. Please look out for your consultation email and vote as soon as you can! If you can’t vote by email, look out for text message voting from next week onwards.

The consultation will close on Monday 10 November.

Background

Our strike ballot relates to the pay talks from last year (the rises we had in August 2024 and March 2025). The key reasons we decided to strike were about the level of the offer and the University’s slowness in implementing the 35 hour week, as well as other improvements to conditions.

August 2025 pay increase

Our pay rise for this year has been discussed in separate negotiations. This has led to an offer of 1.4% (which is the same as the offer made on a national level, with the national unions balloting for strike action in response). 

Negotiators asked for this to be kept separate from our talks to settle our dispute or, if the University did want to settle both at once, to make an offer noticeably above the national one to act as a worthwhile incentive to settle. The University has not done this.

The University’s offer

You can read the University’s offer in their letter to us.

In brief:

• The University is still offering the same 1.4% pay offer
• They are also offering a one off payment of £450 (proportionally less for part-time staff)
• They are offering a mutually agreed road map to a minimum wage of £15 p/h (i.e. no firm timescale, in response to our claim for them to reach this rate in 2026)
• They are saying they will give “serious consideration” to becoming an accredited living wage employer by November 2026
• They refer back to their previous offer of working groups on a number of different matters relating to our dispute such as workload, sickness policies and the PDR process

They state that this is all conditional on us accepting this offer and settling both 2024 and 2025 pay years (so we would confirm we accept the position on pay until our 2026 talks start in Spring / Summer next year).

Committee recommendation

The committee recommends that we reject this offer, for the following reasons:

• 1.4% is a significant real terms pay cut with inflation well above 4.4% and rising. It would mean that as essentials like food, fuel and utilities go up, your salary is worth more than 3% less in real terms
• No union has accepted the national offer yet, and they are all balloting on it – most other public services have had rises of at least 3%, and Universities and government need to do better by their higher education staff, rather than expecting us to keep delivering excellent education to our students while we are worried about keeping the lights on
• It is already really difficult to recruit to key, safety critical roles at the University, and this will make it even more difficult to do this. Poverty pay at the University is putting all of us, staff, students and visitors, at risk.

Other points in relation to the University’s offer

The University’s offer does, we feel, attempt to present their offer in a misleading light. Notably:

• It is wrong to include a one off payment when calculating what increase a pay offer represents on a previous year – the salary increase is the important part and this is just 1.4%
• We are frustrated, and we know many of you will be too, to see the increase from the 35 hour week mentioned again as being part of the pay rise – this was presented as part of their offer for last year’s pay rise too and they are trying to double count it here!
• We’ve been waiting for the working groups to start since the spring, and the University has faced an inspection from the HSE on their inadequate approach to stress and workload. To suggest they will not progress with working groups on issues like this if we reject a real terms pay cut is very worrying

We feel members should make your decision on the basis of the actual amounts being offered alone, and ignore the misleading figures and pressure detailed at the bottom of the letter. 

Questions and discussions on the offer

If you have any questions at all, please do email us as you normally would at unisonbham@contacts.bham.ac.uk

We will be holding a meeting which may be of use to anyone who is unsure on how to vote and wants to discuss it with other members – this will be in week commencing 27 October so please look out for the invite to this.