Strike that.

[lnr]

Elsewhere on LJ a friend said:

Puzzled
A week ago UK university academics rejected a 13.1% pay deal over three years. Last night they accepted an 'improved' offer of 13.1% over three years. Way to go!

As someone who has been involved in the dispute I commented, and I figure I may as well reproduce it here.

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The "improved" offer differs in the third year.

In the old version it was fixed at 2.5%. Now it's the higher of RPI or 2.5%, with option of review if an independent study of HE finances and pay says it could be higher. They've also added vague assurances about not pressuring people to catch up on the marking, and on those universities which have done so returning docked pay (given that the work it was docked for not doing will now be being done).

And no, they haven't accepted it yet, they've just agreed to ballot the union members on it, and to suspend the industrial action in the meantime. From what I've seen all of the keen activists will be voting No, it remains to be seen what the rest of the union will think. If they just went with the two year offer leaving the third year to be negotiated later, and made the assurances on docked pay more concrete then I think the union would be more likely to accept.

(It's complicated by the fact the two unions involved have now become one joint union as of last week!)

Offer here: http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/l/k/2006payagreement06-09.pdf

Commentary here: http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/r/4/he2006payoffer_commentary.pdf

Gah, they're reporting it in the radio news as being accepted too, even though they mention the ballot. *shakes head at quality of news reporting*

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I'm curious to talk to my mum about it actually, as her local union is much more active than I've found things here in Cambridge. And of course since the majority of the Action Short of a Strike has been in not setting exam papers or marking work it's had much more of an affect on her work than it has on mine. She's been under a lot of pressure the last few weeks which has been very much missing for me. It'll be interesting to know if she's relieved to be able to go back to work properly (of course she's still been working fulltime, just on other aspects of her job), or if she thinks it's a sell-out. Listening to the activists mailing list today though has been instructive - they're very cross with union leadership getting even this close to accepting the offer. Surely there must have been *some* reason they didn't hold out for better though? I get the impression that they've been told that if they push for anything more than national negotiation will break down entirely. I guess right now it's just a case of wait and see.

Comments

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

There was something on the radio last night about the new offer also including porters and cleaners which the old one didn't?

[lnr]

I don't really know that aspect, because those members of staff are in a different union to the academic and academic-related staff. Given the universities were always insisting that they wouldn't negotiate with us early because any pay offer had to apply to everyone I'm a bit surprised if the first offer wasn't put to everyone.

Lower paid staff members will actually do better than the headline figure because the first few increases are put in terms of x% or £y whichever is greater. It was suggested that this sort of staff member will be getting closer to 15.5% overall.

UCU are a bit concerned to make sure these pay increases also apply to hourly-paid staff, I don't know if that's the difference. It doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned in the offer.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I make that an average of 4% each year (hiding as much 'greater of' detail than the 13.1% figure, but I think annualized figures are easier to reason about). Any idea why it's staged in this complicated way rather?

[lnr]

Because it comes out cheaper? I don't know any more than that to be honest.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Err, it comes out cheaper in the sense that it's (presmuably, I've not checked) cheaper than the same annualized raise each year (that ends up at the same point) but you could certainly have annual staging with the same endpoint and same total expenditure. The annual raises wouldn't be the same as the average. At the other extreme you could go for a smooth, continuous increase in pay, again with a curve chosen on endpoint and total cost, though explaining to the less mathematically skilled workers might be tricky enough to kill it.

[lnr]

Yes, if you used percentage increases of 3.5%, 5.6% and 3% you'd spend the same amount each year and have the same headline figure. So 3.5% at 1 year, 9.3% at 2 year, 13.1% at 3 year.

Doing it this way makes it *look* as though you've got 4% at 1 year and 10.4% at 2 year and 13.1% at 3 year, but is cheaper than that would be.

It does overall seem to give the same final figure as 4.2% each year would give, so that's now at least roughly equivalent to UK average pay inflation, but that means it doesn't do anything to catch up the fact we've been below that for quite a large number of year.

UK average pay inflation

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Which average, OOI?

Re: UK average pay inflation

[lnr]

Good question.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Seems fair to me, I'll be voting for it. NATFHE seems to be more dominated by Trots at the activist level than the AUT, but I suspect this will be accepted in a ballot of ordinary members (in the same way that the Israel boycott was rejected when ordinary AUT members got a say in it, and the NATFHE boycott vote arose from conference and not from a membership vote).

I think the main point is the agreement to an independent financial review in year 3 - that was the sticking point at the weekend, UCEA were happy to agree to an independent review if a) they could reject the findings if they didn't like them, and b) the union agreed to a ban on industrial action regardless of whether UCEA rejected the review. Our VC has been crowing for the last couple of years about how his expert financial management has put the university into a sound financial position, and since the pay dispute he's been claiming that the institution is in dire financial straits. UCEA has been publishing some very dodgy stats to claim that the pay claim is unaffordable (average academic and a-r pay in the middle of the senior lecturer scale?), and locally we've seen similar tactics, so an independent review of what money is actually available will be a very good thing.

The gradual nature of the increase is because income from full fees is not going to come immediately, as far as I know.

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

I read news articles a few days ago suggesting that some universities were already unhappy with the (original) 13.1% offer because (they claimed) they couldn't afford it.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

They can't afford it because some of the govt money from recently that was supposed to include something for staff pay was spent on other stuff because they knew they'd then be able to get away with saying there was no money.

[k425.livejournal.com]

It's pretty unionised here (especially in my group) and the first thing everyone's done this morning is go and find all the papers they need to mark, to get on with it.

In their view, this isn't a sell-out but a goodwill gesture until the ballot takes place.

One of the union reps talked to me last week and said that the negotiations are currently UCU, but will have knock-on effects for the other unions because they want some degree of solidarity and if the UCU agreed to a lower rate there's no way Unison, for instance, would have stood a chance asking for a higher one.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remarked on that last night. I can see why it's an improvement, but it doesn't seem like that much of one. On the other hand, one of the union's complaints about the previous offer was that they were being handcuffed to a 2.5% increase in the third year, whereas that's now open to review.

*shakes head at quality of news reporting*

I noticed a couple of oddities in Radio 4's coverage the other week, too. One of them was mentioning that the unions rejected a 12% offer, saying they want 20%, without making clear that it was over three years (it sounded like they were asking for 20% right now). I can't exactly remember the other, but I think it was in the other direction — something like "The unions want 20% over the next three years but the employers have offered 3.5%" (where they were actually talking about 3% and another 1% midway through the year).