CARDIFF UNIVERSITY LECTURERS' UNION (UCU) CALLS FOR NATIONAL UNION LEADERS TO
RESIGN
At a packed emergency meeting of the lecturers' union (UCU), union members in
Cardiff today voted unanimously to ask the national union leaders to resign with
immediate effect.
The vote followed the decision taken by union leaders yesterday to suspend the
ongoing marking boycott pending a ballot on a pay offer tabled in negotiations
between universities and unions representing academic employees in the UK.
Speaking at the meeting, CUCU President Mark Aston said "The national
leadership has breached the commitment they made to consult with members before
suspending industrial action. Union members approved the industrial action by a
large majority. The leaders' unilateral decision to suspend the action has
left lecturers with little to show after months of pain suffered by students and
lecturers alike. I would expect that local associations up and down the country
are likely to echo our sentiments and call for heads to roll."
Members were also upset that the offer agreed by national leaders did not
include any catch-up element, despite a huge increase in HE funding specifically
aimed at improving pay.
Speaking at the meeting, Todd Bailey said "When you consider that public
sector wages have increased by over 15% in the last three years, you have to ask
by what stretch of the imagination does a pay rise of 13% over the next three
years constitute a pay rise? Lecturers are left demoralized, and this is bad
news for future students as well as UK academia as a whole."
NOTES TO EDITORS
There has been a historical decline in academic salaries relative to comparable
professionals:
Two independent government enquiries in the last 10 years (the Bett and Dearing
Reports) found that lecturers' salaries have fallen behind by 40% relative to
comparable professions over the last 2 decades. The government New Earnings
Survey (
http://www.statistics.gov.uk ) shows HE teaching professionals seeing a
6.6% real gain from 1994-2003, compared to 12% public sector average -- in other
words a -5.4% decline relative to the whole public sector (see
http://www.natfhe.org.uk/index.php?id=942 ). The relative decline is much
larger compared to the more than 20% gains enjoyed by medical practitioners, ICT
professionals, personnel-training-and-industrial-relations managers, and
managers in government. That's just the decline over 10 years, and the trend
has been going on much longer than that. Speaking to Universities UK on 14
January 2004, Tony Blair said "The shortfall of teaching funding has badly hit
the salaries of academic staff, which have shown practically no increase in real
terms over two decades."
The unions asked for an increase of 23% over three years. The figure of 23%
reflects a real terms increase of 10% spread over three years (
http://www.natfhe.org.uk/?entityType=Document&id=802 ).
In contrast, the current pay offer is barely above inflation:
Wage inflation in the UK is currently 4.2% per year (
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=10 ; for a comprehensive
breakdown of wage increases see
http://www.incomesdata.co.uk/statistics/stataver.htm ). Compounded over three
years, this works out to 13.1%. In other words, the current offer is a wage
increase that just tracks wage inflation in the UK over three years. At this
rate lecturers will never catch up with the -5.4% decline from 1994-2003, let
alone earlier declines or the greater declines relative to comparable
professionals.
They aren't interested in anything else but the production of statistics.
