Locally the University of Manchester (UoM) can realign pay grades to the pay scale and address, to some extent, the real terms pay cut of 30% since 2011 and to soften the current impacts of the cost-of-living crisis. They are choosing not to do this.
On behalf or our members, we have been engaging with the employer through a Joint Reward Forum to influence all aspects of pay and reward. The current focus has been the implementation of the Real Living Wage increase to £13.45 on May 1st.
We have been working closely with Unison and Unite and we welcome and support the steps being taken to provide better pay for our lowest paid colleagues. Whilst the university only intended to address the implementation of the Real Living Wage at this stage, we called upon the university to make broader adjustments to the pay spine and pay grade alignment to facilitate a pay uplift for all staff, and for a more equitable distribution of automatic pay spine points across all grades. To achieve this, there would need to be a reduction of Recognition of Exceptional Performance (REP) spine points releasing these for natural progression through the spine points at each grade. This is the perfect time for such a change, and several approaches of varying impact have been modelled by the joint campus trade unions and put to the University Executive via the Joint Reward Forum. However, despite a small improvement on their initial position, they are refusing to make any changes beyond grade 5 stating financial sustainability as the main reason.
In reality, they have set a self-imposed maximum level of investment of £8m over 4 years. We can look to UCL as a comparator institution who were prepared to invest over £110m in their staff over a similar period of time by a similar mechanism to our own proposal. UoM can afford this, or better than this, but have chosen not to recognise and reward us in the same way.
The University will no doubt be issuing comms that do not fully reflect our simultaneous support for the increase of pay at the lower grades to above the new Real Living Wage and our aggrievement that they will not take the opportunity to improve pay for staff at all grades. Any comms from the university should be interpreted with the above in mind.