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UCL-UCU: Strike report - Day 1 (Monday 21 March) + looking ahead
22 March 2022
An update on the first day of strike action this week that marked our ninth day of action in 2021/22.
Some 60-70 pickets covered entrances to campus and buildings across Bloomsbury from Gower Street and the Institute of Education, to Judd Street and Bidborough House. Again, campus buildings were quiet, with teaching either cancelled or moved online.
We ran a digital picket (Strike TV) which saw poetry on the picket line, and several Teach Outs.
At 12:30 our strike meeting discussed the day's activities, and how members that are on strike can assist Get The Vote Out for the reballots on Four Fights and USS.
We are on strike over pay and equality, casualisation and workload. Today we’ll highlight two of these: pay and pay inequality. See below.
Looking ahead, members that cannot attend the physical picket lines can join our digital picket from 10:00 each day and you can check Twitter or our local website for programme updates.
On Wednesday 23rd, UCU members in London are being encouraged to join the Budget Day March at 6pm called by the National Education Union (NEU), the schoolteachers’ union.
Workers Deserve a Pay Rise
Assemble 5.30-6pm, Westminster Cathedral, Victoria Street SW1P 1LT
March to rally 7pm, Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street SW1P 3DW
On Friday 25th, we are encouraging members who may have been striking from home to join our pickets to see out the strike ‘in style’ with a march to UCEA/UUK HQ. Assemble 12pm at the Main Gate.
Our strike action continues until Friday 25 March.
Pay and the Cost of Living crisis
Before the beginning of the year pay had fallen by at least 17% since 2009. The employers imposed an increase of 1.5% in August 2021. By January 2022, RPI had reached 7.8%, CPI (the employers’ preferred measure) 5.5%. This was the highest rate in two decades. Before the war on Ukraine began, the Bank of England was projecting the impact of fuel price increases as causing CPI to exceed 7% and RPI could reach 10%.
We are all being demoted! Low overall pay increases have brought salaries down a full pay grade in some cases. (Each salary point is 3%, so 6 grade points is ~16%.) Salaries as a proportion of university budgets have been falling, despite an increase in pension costs. This inevitably means higher workload and lower pay.
In response to falling wages, UCL pushed up lecturing staff on Grade 7 to 8, boosted promotion prospects for Teaching Fellows (now ‘Lecturers (Teaching)’) and brought PGTAs from G5 to 6.
But many are left behind. Where does this piecemeal approach leave Research or Professional Services staff? And what about higher grades? In ISD for example, we have seen the engagement of contractors on high day rates (as much as £500 or £1,000 a day).
Promoting staff selectively is cheap but it undermines UCL’s commitment to Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value set out in the Pay Framework Agreement.
The result inevitably fuels pay inequality and undermines UCL’s stated efforts to reduce UCL’s gender and ethnicity pay gaps.
UCL’s published statistics for the average salary across all grades for men and women is lower than most employers in the sector, at 13.8%. The ethnicity pay gap is 13.5%. But hidden from these statistics are UCL’s outsourced staff and contractors - among the lowest and highest paid!
Please take a moment to sign our open letter to the Provost, which adds local context to our demands around pay, and the gender and race pay gaps.
UCL UCU Executive Committee
@ucl_ucu