Apoke around on what used to be Twitter will yield any number of University and College Union (UCU) members who are less than thrilled about the progress of the current pay and conditions dispute.
While the action on USS pensions can at least be said to have played a part in bringing all sides to agreement on the need to fix the issues caused by the flawed 2020 valuation and take steps to avoid a repeat, it’s fair to suggest that nothing on pay and conditions has really moved since January.
The 26th day of that month saw the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) propose a pay deal that included a minimum five per cent pay increase (excluding increments and other already planned individual enhancements), rising to eight per cent for the lowest paid staff. The package (as firmed up a little in February) included a pay scale review, and detailed further work on casualisation (to include the end of involuntary zero hour contracts), work/life balance, workloads, and equality pay gaps.
And then nothing. As has been previously indicated, employers brought around half of this pay increase forward to 1 February and the remainder at 1 August. Outside of a few places where the earlier increase was unaffordable (so the whole increase was paid in August) this has now happened.
