Picture: Manfred Werner
Higher Education unions are gearing up to vote on industrial action against the imposition of a below-inflation 2.5% pay rise in August 2024. The ballots take place during a funding crisis for the sector.
UCU’s higher education committee (HEC) has decided to conduct an aggregated strike ballot starting in February, demanding 5.5%, although the exact dates are not yet announced. It is not yet clear whether there will be a recommendation to vote yes to action.
The UCU ballot follows a consultation with a 27% turnout, giving 68% to reject the pay offer and 32% to accept.
Unison’s ballot, which is disaggregated, runs from Tuesday 21 January to Tuesday 4 March with a recommendation from the left-dominated Service Group Executive to vote yes to strikes, following a consultative ballot that showed an overwhelming rejection of the pay offer.
The other unions with a small number of members in the sector — GMB, Unite, EIS — are now considering their next steps.
Ballots
All the unions had been gearing up to begin work with the employers’ negotiator, the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), on important pay-related topics — reform of the pay spine, pay inequalities, contracts, and workload — but UCEA have punitively pulled these discussions in response to the strike ballots.
It will be difficult to get sufficient turnouts in the ballots, but fighting now on pay makes sense. It will put more pressure on UCEA as talks on the 2025-26 pay round begin in spring 2025. We can link the problem of low HE pay to the financial problems of the sector: we cannot get decent pay while our institutions are struggling to survive.
The strike ballots must go alongside a political campaign aimed at the Government: we need a fully funded HE sector for the benefit of its staff and all the students who use it as well as for the wider society.
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