The Vice-Chancellor recently announced that our university management would not be implementing the 2024-25 nationally negotiated pay award. Reading UCU committee in consultation with the branch do not find this deferral to be well justified. We want to explain what the pay award is and what you stand to lose over the year.
Your branch committee has created an indicative spreadsheet to show roughly how much money individual members of staff across different pay grades can expect to lose. The figures are gross figures for full-time staff before tax and NI contributions are deducted (part-time staff will need to pro-rata it). Note that in addition to loss of pay, you will also lose the extra pension contributions that would go towards your pension.
The spreadsheet shows the following
-gross annual salary and how much you lose per month by spinal point
*Stage 1 of pay award – August 2024 till February 2025 (orange columns)
*Stage 2 of pay award – March 2025 till June 2025 (blue columns)
-total pay loss for full deferral (red columns)
UCEA’s pay offer for 2024-25 is a staged approach which results in final uplifts ranging from 2.5% to 5.7%. The staged approach means there would initially be a lower pay increase in August 2024 and the full increase would not be implemented until March 2025 as follows:
– From 1 August 2024, an uplift equivalent to £900 a year will be applied to all pay points.
– From 1 March 2025, the balance will be added to spine points to complete the uplift for 2024-25. Pay point 5 receives a total 5.7% uplift and the uplift gradually tapers to 2.5% at pay point 38 and above.
The UCEA guideline states that such a deferral does not require to be back paid.
We encourage members to share this information and to reply with any further comments.
We will also be sending around a survey to collect members’ views.
Best wishes
Reading UCU