by Fred Byrne, Innes Paton and Emily Reid.
Trade unions (UCU, Unison, Unite) and Students’ Union officers met at Union Brew last Tuesday evening to discuss campus unions’ ballot for industrial action against a proposed 1.4% real terms pay increase.
Over summer, more than 90% of members of a Unison consultation voted to reject a 1.4% pay offer for 2025/26 for the Universities and College Employers Association. According to Unison, university staff have increased workloads while their pay has not kept up.
Union members say this is not just a problem at University of Aberdeen (UoA), but rather across the country. According to Unison, support staff at more than 100 universities across the UK began voting on potential strike action in the last week of October.
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea shared online: “University staff are the backbone of campus life, keeping institutions running.”
The UK-wide ballot is to run until Friday 28th November, its results due to be announced before Christmas.
A staff union representative said: “We don’t like balloting. This is an absolute last resort.”
Another union official added: “We keep saying now is not the time since we understand the university’s financial difficulties, but the rise in cost of living means we have to do something.”
Unite the Union and Unison represents technical, secretarial, and support staff, while University and College Union (UCU) is for academic staff.
The three unions are demanding a real term pay increase, but UCU particularly is pushing for:
- A pay uplift that is at least RPI +3.5% or £2,500, whichever is the higher – on all pay points.
- The protection of national agreements relating to terms and conditions of employment, including the 2004 framework agreement, the Post-92 contract and HE2000.
- A national agreement to avoid redundancies, course closures, and cuts to academic disciplines across the sector.
Representatives of the staff unions felt that the government increase to the national living wage was unfairly affecting the bottom grades of the pay scale, and that the pay increases offered weren’t keeping up with that.
If a majority of union members vote ‘yes’ to strike action, staff will go on a strike for a yet undetermined amount of time in January or February of the new year.
At the open meeting, staff expressed concern on the University’s lack of communication on the money-saving strategy Adapting for Continued Success (ACS) programme. “There is no transparency. They have totally left us out of ACS,” a representative of Unison stated.
A staff union representative shared a dire image: “Publicly, the university hasn’t said much about ACS – they say that everything is going to be fantastic. However, I have seen papers that show ACS will mean more job losses and higher workload for the staff left behind. I’ve seen it in black and white.”
Students participated in the discussion, some suggesting that academics should abandon planned teaching in favour of “sharing information senior management don’t want staff to share.” Another student suggested a stall is set up to engage with students.
Some staff run stalls in the MacRobert Building to inform students and staff of the dispute, and plan to have more where they can.
A University of Aberdeen spokesperson said: “We are a part of the national collective bargaining framework overseen by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association. This process confirmed a 1.4% uplift as the affordable option for all members.”
The last industrial action at UoA was in May 2023 when academics held a marking and assessment boycott.
