Unions and employers clashed afresh on higher education sector pay after the Westminster government announced pay rises of up to 7 per cent for millions of public sector workers.
The University and College Union (UCU) said the fact that prime minister Rishi Sunak had accepted the recommendations of independent pay review bodies meant that vice-chancellors’ insistence that they could not afford to go further on remuneration was “untenable”.
But the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (Ucea) said that the public sector pay awards were in line with the higher education rise for 2023-24 of between 5 per cent and 8 per cent, and that institutions faced mounting financial pressures.
The two sides are due to meet on 14 July in a bid to find a way out of the sector pay dispute, which has been the focus of repeated rounds of strike action and, since 20 April, a marking and assessment boycott that has led to academics having thousands of pounds deducted from their salaries.
