Pay and conditions in universities are negotiated and agreed upon nationally and the University of Greenwich is represented by a national organisation - the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) - who negotiate on behalf of 147 universities. The University of Greenwich does not therefore negotiate directly on nationally negotiated pay.
What's happened so far
National negotiations on the 2019/20 pay award began in March 2019. As an agreement was not reached during these discussions, UCEA advised universities to make a pay award to ensure staff were not disadvantaged by the ongoing dispute.
Following this advice, the University of Greenwich made a pay award in August 2019, with increases ranging from 1.8% to 3.65%, with the larger percentage being paid to staff on lower salary spines.
UCU have balloted their members nationally, including those at Greenwich which is approximately 20% of our total staff. UCU members voted to take strike action and action short of a strike.
In this context, we believe that the pay award and improved offer put forward by UCEA is fair and appropriate given the rising operating costs that are being incurred by the university in response to increased regulation, higher pension costs, no increase to tuition fees in line with inflation, as well as the risks to our income from Brexit and other external factors.
What next?
As part of ongoing negotiations, UCEA has also made an improved offer to address the other issues UCU raised in its dispute. This improved offer includes:
- a sector-level commitment to set up a new trade union and employer working group to review and analyse trends on zero hours and hourly-paid employment
- a plan to develop national Stress and Mental Wellbeing resources to address staff mental health issues.
You can read more about this on UCEA's website.
To date, the University of Greenwich is not aware that UCU has consulted with their members in relation to this improved offer.
What's been happening at the University of Greenwich
We fully support the work UCEA is doing nationally and their commitment to reach a resolution on the current dispute. In addition, we continue to work to improve the things that we know matter to our students and our staff including:
- Addressing casualisation, low pay and employment rights: The University of Greenwich does not use zero-hours contracts. We have recently reviewed the arrangements for our hourly paid lecturers and have made a commitment to increase the usage of Teaching Fellow contracts where appropriate.
- Health and Wellbeing: Our new Health and Wellbeing Strategy was launched last year. It sets out the approach that the university, in partnership with the Greenwich Students' Union, takes towards supporting and improving the health and wellbeing of our staff and students. The university is committed to understanding potential inconsistencies in how workload is planned and managed across our faculties and Schools/Departments and we have committed to deliver training (during this academic year) for relevant colleagues to ensure that we have consistency and equity in workload planning.
- Gender Pay Gap: Our latest Gender Pay Gap report shows there is more work to be done for equality in the workplace. We are working to reduce this gap, and a number of recent appointments in new roles show that we are moving in the right direction.
What this means for our staff and students
We are absolutely committed to supporting the wellbeing of our staff and meeting their needs, whilst also ensuring the sustainability of the university for the future. Our students are and continue to be at the heart of everything we do.
Our priority now is to minimise any potential disruption resulting from the strike on our students and staff as far as we possibly can. We will provide more information as soon as we are able to, in the meantime:
- We hope that lectures, tutorials and planned assessments will be going ahead.
- Where we are able to, we will notify students directly if they are affected and we're working to ensure there are processes in place to minimise the overall impact of the strike action.
- Libraries, learning spaces, computer laboratories and social facilities are available as usual.
You can read our FAQs for students and staff which we'll continue to update. If you have a question which isn't addressed here, you can email strike.information@greenwich.ac.uk.
If you are a student and have any concerns in relation to the strike action, or would like to access support, the university's support services are available for you. You can find details of the Student Wellbeing Service and the Students' Union Advice Service on our respective websites.
Prof Jane Harrington
Vice-Chancellor
