The University of Southampton comprises over 6,000 staff. Over 2,000 are academic-related professional staff (ARPS). We work across 17 distinct professional services: responsible for student and education services, libraries and the arts, widening participation and social mobility, global recruitment and admissions, residences, iSolutions, and the list goes on. ARPS are fundamental to the running of the university. Whilst our collective voice in UCU may be smaller in relation to our academic colleagues, we are affected by many of the same issues, we are of equal importance when it comes to challenging issues of our pensions, pay, workloads, casualisation and equality, and it is imperative that ARPS make it clear that we will not stand for the erosion of our pay and conditions.
Many ARPS will be affected by the ongoing USS pensions dispute, and indeed, many of us have taken strike action on this issue previously at Southampton in 2018, 2019 and 2020. On 31st March 2022, UCU issued a call for VCs across the UK to demand UUK revoke the cuts to the pensions after the health of USS finances were revealed. The changes due from 1st April see staff who pay into USS lose up to 35% of their pensions when they get to retirement. If you haven’t already, you can use the UCU modeller to see how you could be affected by these cuts.
Along with our pensions, pay has been eroded consistently since 2009, with a recent report by UCU showing that pay is down by 25.5% in real terms. ARPS are already in a position where there is no consistency with academic colleagues in regards to a framework for pay and promotion. Relatedly, the national picture on pay inequality is bleak. The pay gap between Black and white staff is 17%. The disability pay gap is 9%. The mean gender pay gap is 15.1%. An earlier blog in this series pointed to the pervasive gender pay gap at the University of Southampton. The erosion of pay is closely linked to increased casualisation. There are approximately 15k ARPS employed on temporary contracts. The issue of casualisation HE is not exclusive to our academic colleagues. Across the University of Southampton, professional services have undergone or are undergoing restructures, and there are departments still reeling from loss of staff after the latest rounds of voluntary severance in 2020. This has seen temporary posts and uncertain secondments proliferate, putting strain on teams, and adding to workloads where staff turnover is high and gaps in teams aren’t being properly resourced. For an institution that has just unveiled a new strategy that states a commitment to put its people at the ‘heart’, presiding over sustained cuts to our material conditions at a time when the cost of living is the highest it has been in decades is contemptuous.
Voting to take strike action is hard. It can be particularly difficult when you are one of only a small handful of colleagues in a team – or sometimes the only one – who are members of UCU. However, visibility of ARPS on the picket line is key to growing our numbers at the branch and making that collective voice stronger. Without ARPS, universities would cease to run. Academics would suffer, students would suffer, and the wider community would suffer. We need to stand unified with our academic colleagues, recognising that the issues outlined in the ballot affect us all.