UK higher education unions seek ‘ambitious’ 7 per cent pay rise

UK university staff deserve a pay rise in the region of 7 per cent even as thousands of jobs are axed across the sector, according to unions.

The pay claim for 2025-26 submitted by higher education unions calls for an increase on all pay points of “at least” the retail price index of inflation – which currently stands at 3.6 per cent – plus 3.5 per cent. Alternatively, if it is greater, a rise of at least £2,500 should be applied to each pay spine, the claim says.

Last year’s negotiations resulted in an offer of between 2.5 per cent and 5.7 per cent from the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (Ucea), which was imposed despite objections from unions.

The University and College Union – the largest sector union – said that the joint claim represented a “route out of the disruption” as staff at multiple institutions vote to strike over job cuts and ahead of a potential nationwide ballot for industrial action in the autumn.

“After more than a decade of real-term cuts, pay must be restored, and all university workers must be paid at least the living wage,” a UCU spokesperson said. 

The unions’ claim includes calls for all staff to move on to a 35-hour working week, with no loss of pay, a new minimum pay rate of £15 an hour, and restoration of previously agreed joint work to tackle issues around workload, casualisation, and pay inequalities tied to ethnicity, gender and disability.

The claim also calls for Ucea to work “to avoid redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines across the sector, and to lobby politically for a sustainable long-term funding settlement for the sector”.

Last month UCU’s higher education committee stepped back from plans to ballot for industrial action over the 2024-25 pay claim, amid fears that pushing for a bigger increase seemed out of touch amid an accelerating wave of job-cutting.

Instead the union agreed to demand “emergency job protection measures” from Ucea as part of the pay claim, warning that an unsatisfactory response could “constitute potential grounds for dispute”, according to committee members.

Gregor Gall, an industrial relations expert who is a visiting professor at the universities of Glasgow and Leeds, said that while pay “remains an important issue for UCU members, especially the lower-paid ones on insecure contracts, it is the internal politics of the different groupings inside the union’s activist base which explains why such an ambitious goal on the pay front has been set”.

Gall claimed that the UCU Left faction was “unwilling to ‘give up the ghost’ of its previous aims” within “a now drastically changed situation of widespread retrenchment in staffing levels”. 

Analysis published by UCU earlier this week indicated UK universities are already planning to axe more than 5,000 jobs this year, and there are fears that the total by the summer could be twice that, as the sector financial crisis grows.

Gall argued that further industrial action on pay was “some way off” and “may not be achievable”, with only 27 per cent of UCU members voting in a December consultative ballot tied to the 2024-25 claim.

Ucea chief executive Raj Jethwa previously said that universities were “becoming increasingly perplexed” by UCU’s strategy.

“Any discussion of a pay uplift or any other aspect of the joint unions’ claim for 2025-26 needs to recognise the limited financial capacity of HE institutions. It should also recognise that employers are striving to minimise the impact on staff of these financial challenges,” Jethwa said in response to the union proposals.

Further doubts about UCU’s strategy may be raised by ongoing industrial strife within the union itself, with employees who are members of the Unite union voting in favour of escalating strike action in a dispute over pay and amid long-running allegations of workplace racism and toxicity.

The Unite branch is planning action spread over six weeks, with a two-day walkout in the first, rising to three days in the second, four days in the third, and five days across weeks four, five and six.

Staff previously told Times Higher Education that there was “a culture of fear” inside UCU and have continued to report allegations of bullying.

Lucy Burke, a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and member of UCU’s national executive committee, said that the dispute “needs to be resolved in everybody’s interests”.

“Everybody understands how bad things are across the sector, but I think that this [dispute] doesn’t help,” Burke said.

“In the interests of doing the work of the union effectively, this dispute needs to be resolved, and it’s only going to be resolved when people are prepared to try to work constructively with staff and listen to staff voices.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com