AUT revives pay body demand

The Association of University Teachers has renewed its call for a pay review body for higher education. Philip Burgess, the new union president, made the announcement in his inaugural address to members last week.

David Blunkett, the Labour education and employment spokesman, told a meeting at the Trades Union Congress conference in Blackpool on Tuesday that pay review bodies in areas including education offered a way of dealing with the contentious issue of pay awards.

Mr Blunkett also said that binding arbitration could be one way of better handling industrial disputes. Mr Burgess said the issue was too big to give a simple answer, but agreed it could be a way forward.

The issue of profit-related pay was also on the agenda at the TUC conference this week. A National Association for Teachers in Higher and Further Education motion condemning such schemes was debated on Wednesday.

Mary Davis, executive member of Natfhe, told delegates universities were among the first public sector institutions planning to experiment with profit-related pay schemes.

"Universities would do better to focus on the demand for more resources rather than play around with schemes that actually drain the income tax revenue available for funding education," she said.

Meanwhile, the likelihood of joint union strike action in support of wage rises continues to increase.

An emergency meeting of the AUT national executive last week decided to continue campaigning to raise the 1.5 per cent pay offer to lecturers and administrators and technicians and the 2.5 per cent to ancillary staff.

A special council to be held on Wednesday next week will consider how the union should pursue the pay campaign.

The main higher education motion, proposed by AUT and debated yesterday, also focussed on the issue of wages for higher education workers and called for a restoration of the cuts made to university funding in this year's budget.