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Why academic related professional staff should vote YES in the HE ballots

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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.

 

Reasons to vote YES in the HE ballots – Gender Pay Gap

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University comms recently announced it was one of only 20 Universities to receive an Athena SWAN Silver award for their commitment to gender equality. This news will have stirred up mixed-feelings for many of our members. Of course, as an exec, we want to recognise the work (and good-will) that was integral to getting this award. We know that many of our brilliant members play key roles in equality work across the institution. Yet many of our members will see this announcement and feel frustrated, questioning how this supposed commitment to gender equality has failed to have an impact on their daily working lives – if we’re one of the few Silver awards, then what must other institutions be like? Others will be sceptical; the previous Athena SWAN award contained a significant number of actions that were never actioned. Our institution over-promised and under-delivered. Meanwhile, our significant gender pay gap remains pretty much the same, last reported in 2019 as 20.4%.

 

Many people we have spoken to are shocked by the gender pay gap figure for the University of Southampton, and the fact the institution is above the national average for HE. Some people have even presumed that it must be that University management simply doesn’t realise that the figures are so bad (and now that they do know, they will surely tackle it). Yet this trust in senior management to put things right is misguided. After some initial progress, our pay gap has plateaued. Your UCU officers take part in the annual equal pay review, where we’ve seen year upon year of monitoring without any meaningful action taking place. One previous internal equal pay report from the University even had the audacity to suggest that we weren’t making any progress closing the gender pay gap because we have “exhausted female talent pools for promotion” (Equal Pay Review 2017 p.13). Or to put it another way, the pay gap exists because there’s not enough ‘female talent’ at our institution to promote.

 

 

 

 

Year after year the gender pay gap remains at around 20%. Yet this is unsurprising given that management still fails to fully value the contributions that female staff disproportionately make to our institution (care work, collegiality, holding things together—often at the expense of our own career trajectories). The gender pay gap is about structural failures, but often it is treated as if it is solely cultural, an issue that it can be fixed by EDI training and learning about unconscious bias. Other fixes for the gender pay gap position women as the problem: they need to learn how to interview better, be more assertive, apply for promotions or increments. Yet the gender pay gap is not about women not knowing how to ‘sell themselves’ at interview, or about them not understanding what is needed to move quickly through the pay spine. The gender pay gap is more than this. It is a result of structural and policy failures.

 

One such failure is our institution’s policies around maternity and parental leave. Women with children are the most likely to see their carer progression stalled, because institutional support in this area is insufficient. Your local branch has been in discussions about maternity / parental leave for a significant number of years. We’ve heard many promises yet seen little action. Progress is so slow that it feels like work on this has ground to a standstill. Yet, week after week, your local branch handles case work dealing with the fallout from these policy failures: women who are at breaking point, anxious, undervalued, struggling with no automatic cover for their work while they are on maternity. UCU want our University management team to guarantee a central automatic fund to cover maternity – a simple scheme that many other institutions already have in place.

 

There’s also the significant issue of a lack of support for those returning to work after maternity. In part, the lack of clear cover for maternity means many people return and have to play catch-up with the work they have missed. Spiralling workloads, hiring freezes, and the pandemic all compound to make returning after maternity increasingly difficult, with many returners struggling to stay afloat. Other institutions offer periods of study leave on return from maternity, so staff can reboot their research, or specific training for line managers on how to support returners. We offer nothing. University management have failed to provide central financial support to help make some of the material changes that would actively support women’s careers.

 

The pandemic has highlighted how pressing these issues are, as women have become even more disproportionately burdened by care work and school closures. Parents of young children are at breaking point. The impact the pandemic will have on women’s career progression at our institution will be stark. Years of inaction on this from University management needs to end. We need to see action rather than words. Your local branch wants management not just to monitor pay gaps every year, but to set a clear target as to when these gaps will be eradicated, and a meaningful action plan to get us there. We need a plan that involves actual financial commitment and policy changes, not just performative words proudly pronouncing institutional commitment to gender equality.

 

The gender pay gap is a key part of the four fights dispute on which you are currently being balloted. If you want your local branch to have a strong hand to negotiate on this issue, then vote yes for strike action, and yes for action short of strike. A mandate for strike action is vital, on both a national and local level, for negotiating on these issues.

 

USS – SUCU clarifies VC’s claim relating to UCU’s alternative proposals

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SUCU believes that this claim made by Mark E. Smith in his response to us is misleading.

The letter states: ‘In addition, the University notes its disappointment that UCU has not been able to advance a formal, costed solution during the extensive valuation process to date, that it comes at the eleventh hour and is still not yet a formally tabled proposal at the JNC.’

The facts are that USS-costed proposals have been formally tabled for the JNC meeting this Friday the 11th of February (tomorrow), which was the date on the USS grid for the tabling of such proposals.

These proposals were not tabled earlier because UUK had declared that they would not negotiate with UCU over proposals until after the close of the USS consultation on the 17th of January. Moreover, UCU sought confirmation of strength of member consultation support for its approach, involving the paying of higher contributions to preserve current benefits. UCU received reports on the consultation responses on the 21st and 24th of January. These responses revealed strong support for our proposals. Having received this confirmation, UCU swiftly publicised the proposals on the 26th of January.

Since then, employers have simply stalled in unprincipled fashion. Although they were aware of the indicative USS costings on which our proposals were based, they demanded formalisation (which is a very complicated procedure) of these costings from USS as a condition of sending UCU’s proposals out for consultation. This in spite of the fact that they sent their own revised proposals out for employer consultation before they received formal confirmation from USS of the 0.2% costing.

They could and should have sent UCU’s proposals out for consultation when they received them on the 26th of January, just as they sent their own proposals out for employer consultation before they had received formal confirmation of costings.

UUK has today acknowledged that UCU’s proposals meet the higher standard they set for them than for their own proposals, and that they will be launching a consultation on them from early next week. It is not clear why consultation cannot start today.

The response from VCs on this matter, including the letter from Mark E Smith is deeply disingenuous, and appears to categorise proposals from the employer side in a very different way. We therefore ask that USS members inform themselves fully of the facts rather than relying on communications from the employer.

Follow: Mike Ostsuka @MikeOtsuka, Sam Marsh @Sam_Marsh101 and Jackie Grant via @sussexucu

(With grateful thanks to Mike Otsuka for his input)

 

 

Further communications with management about in-person exams…….continued

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We continue to push management on their unsatisfactory responses to our concerns about in-person examinations.  Our recent email resulted in the below letter from Wendy Appleby (VP Operations) – yet another disappointing response to our valid concerns.

 

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Further communications with senior management about in-person examinations

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Following our recent email to management raising our continued concerns about returning to campus and in particular in-person examinations, we received an unsatisfactory reply prompting a further email from the branch:

Sent: 13 January 2022 11:23
To: Vice-Chancellor <vice-chancellor@soton.ac.uk>; Vice President (Operations) <Vice-PresidentOperations@soton.ac.uk>; Alex Neill <A.D.Neill@soton.ac.uk>
Cc: Cathy Day <Cathy.Day@soton.ac.uk>; ucu <ucu@soton.ac.uk>
Subject: UCU response to VP operations email re in-person exams

Dear Mark, Alex and Wendy,

We are writing again in response to developments regarding in-person exams which have occurred over the past few days and to urge the University once more to think again.

We thank Wendy Appleby for her response to our letter sent on 5th January formally requesting the University not to go ahead with large in-person exams because of the risks posed by the highly contagious Omicron variant. We are not satisfied with the reply, most of which repeats content from emails already sent to students and H&S officers and does not address our key concerns.

On Tuesday 11th, Alex Neill sent an email to students explaining the University’s rationale for continuing with in-person exams despite strong opposition from staff and students. UCU takes issue with a number of statements in that email:

1. ‘Rigorous risk assessments have been carried out, and we are only using venues that have sufficient space to allow for our COVID safety measures to be put in place’.

  • We believe it is not space that is the most important issue, but ventilation. H&S officers from all 3 campus unions have been asking for ventilation to be checked fully in all teaching spaces and we are still waiting. H&S officers are not confident that ventilation checks have been carried out with appropriate care and rigour.

2. Students have been told ‘If your ability to attend an in-person exam is affected by COVID – for example, because a positive test requires you to self-isolate – please use our special considerations process to notify your School’.

  • There are significant consequences for students with this approach, particularly those who have internships, summer jobs or postgraduate courses lined up. If they need to do referrals in the summer, these plans could be jeopardised and will certainly have to be put on hold adding unnecessarily to stress and anxiety.
  • There are also significant consequences for staff. Last summer, examination boards lasted many hours across many days and put undue pressure on administrative and academic staff which was detrimental to their health and wellbeing. It is unconscionable that the University would want to put staff through all that again, particularly as it has the chance now to prevent it from happening.

3. ‘The Government and public health bodies are clear that in-person on-campus activities can and should continue’.

  • UCU believes this is a misreading of the guidance and is unrelated to the question of in-person exams.

4. ‘We want to reassure you that the University has taken every precaution to reduce potential risks for both staff and students’

  • UCU cannot agree with this statement since the University is neither mandating the use of proper face masks instead of face coverings nor providing an adequate supply of COVID-free air.

5.  It has come to our attention that the usual reliance on Uniworkforce temporary staff as invigilators has led to a shortage of invigilators due at least in part to a fear of catching COVID whilst invigilating. Absent sight of a risk assessment related to invigilating exams, we are not in a position to comment on the safety of undertaking invigilating work should colleagues be offered the opportunity.

Furthermore, for some subjects, students are being required to attend on-campus in-person examinations which are computer-based online assessments and have been designed to work both online and in-person. Forcing students and supervisory staff to undertake this risk given that there are alternative, viable plans in place seems gratuitous.

Finally, no consideration seems to have been given to the potential harm caused to the wider Southampton community (noting evidence from the USA that young children are at particular risk, and that they are unvaccinated in the UK) by increasing the spread of COVID omicron at this critical time. It seems entirely inappropriate for in-person exams to be taking place in the current climate when it is possible to move to an alternative plan.

Once more, UCU requests your urgent response.

Southampton UCU

 

Response from management to our email of 5 January

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Higher Education ballots – Four Fights – say no to spiralling workloads! 

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Spiralling workloads have been an endemic problem in higher education for several years, made only worse by the pandemic. The average working week in higher education is now above 50 hours, with 29% of academics averaging more than 55 hours. In December 2020, 78% of UCU respondents reported an increased workload due to the pandemic.  

At the University of Southampton the situation is particularly alarming. While some other universities were hiring more staff (although often on insecure contracts), the rule last year at UoS was to not replace staff who had left through the voluntary severance scheme. Members reported dealing with exceptionally high workloads, having to pick up the work left by those who left often in the middle of the year, without notice. Staff also bore the brunt of the overnight pivot to online working and the increased pressures and demands of virtual learning.  

The workload survey conducted by your branch in June 2021 shows that only 3.3% found their workload fine, 24% manageable while 72.3% found it very high or unmanageable with many respondents noting that they had to work evenings and weekends, and some reporting up to 70-80 working hours a week. The feeling of being overwhelmed and anxious about workload was widely shared. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This unsustainable workload has consequences on the health and wellbeing of staff: many reported anxiety, depression, or panic attacks from working overtime. Some had to be signed off for several weeks for depression and anxiety. In our survey, 75% of respondents said overwork had impacted on their mental health, while around half developed neck and back pain and sight problems and a third repetitive strain injuries and weight gain.  


 

 

 

 

 

 

Loss of sleep, migraines, overall fatigue were frequently cited as symptoms of this overwork. One respondent said they cried every day for at least a week. 

Workloads affect our private lives and the quality of the work we deliver. Respondents noted that the work pressure made it difficult to ‘switch off’ and was detrimental to relations with friends, partner or children (68%). 84% of our respondents said they could not have weekends or evening completely off while 61% said they were not able to take all their annual leave. One colleague noted that they refrained from taking sick leave because they knew there was no process to cover their work and that the burden would fall on already overworked colleagues. The situation is even worse for staff on insecure contracts who don’t get paid annual leave or sick time. 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Overwork also makes us less efficient and creative in our work. Over four fifths of our respondents said that overwork did not give them ‘thinking time’ to reflect on their practice, be creative, read or get proper training. Many note that they can’t keep up with the changes of procedures within the institution. For colleagues on balanced contracts, research is often the first thing that is sacrificed when workloads are too high, while for others it is professional development and long-term career planning that get dropped. They note that things are often rushed, that they feel disorganised and that it lowers their mood. Basically, staff feel that they are mostly fire-fighting and have no time to ‘reflect, discuss and share their experiences’. ‘Collegiality’, understood as mentoring colleagues or taking on additional activities to be a ‘good citizen’, is also not factored in workload models. It is still important for many colleagues as shown in our survey, but done as a voluntary activity on top of their other tasks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your branch will take the survey results to senior management at the next Joint Negotiation Committee in November. We want them to confront the reality of high workloads at Southampton and to commit to an open discussion of the different ideas brought up by survey respondents to tackle the issue: hire more people, in particular professional services staff who play a vital role in our academic community; have a more realistic assessment of our workloads and in particular of our administrative duties; create a staff-led forum to decrease the bureaucracy; a more transparent and fair distribution of teaching load which reflects the realities of staff-student ratio; have proper working contracts for PGRs; create the conditions for staff to take leave by provisioning for parental/sick leave replacements and having enough slack in the system to allow for annual leave. 

What are we fighting for? 

We are at a breaking point and we can’t go on like this any longer. Abstaining or voting no in the Four Fights Dispute is accepting the situation. So vote yes for strike action and action short of a strike in the Four Fights dispute. By using your vote, you also give your branch the power to fight for better conditions here at Southampton. 

We want: 

  • A plan agreed with senior managers for a reduction of workloads across the board 
  • 35 hours to be the standard weekly employment contract of all HEIs 
  • Clear and transparent workload models 
  • End to austerity in terms of hiring policy 

 

Higher Education ballots – Four Fights – staff deserve a pay RISE not another pay CUT

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Last year our employers used the opportunity of the pandemic to impose a 0% pay award, despite a 4% increase in student numbers. This year, the final offer made is for a 1.5% pay increase. A 1.5% pay increase over two years is a steep real term pay cut.  

This year, we know that inflation has been rising rapidly. The Office for National Statistics reported CPIH in June at 2.4%, CPI at 2.5% and RPI at 3.9%.  Whatever tool is used, this year’s offer is in real terms a pay cut. New members starting careers in 2021 will earn around 20% less than they would have done if our pay had been maintained in line with inflation over the last decade.  

Not only will take-home pay be spread much thinner, but it will be minimally increased when considering the increase of National Insurance next year by 1.25 percentage points (to 12% of pay).  

As a sector, HE total income has risen by 15% over the last years after adjusting for inflation. At our university, tuition fee income from international students has increased by 36.6% over the last five years. Last year the University of Southampton had a surplus of 6.6% of income.  

Over the same period, staff salaries have fallen in real terms. In 2018/19, the University of Southampton even “outperformed” its target of capping staff costs. 

In spite of the impression given by our employer, who has been preaching austerity for several years while recruiting more senior managers on high salaries, the money is there to award a real term pay increase.   

What we are fighting for on pay:  

  • A pay uplift of £2,500 on all pay points 
  • A minimum of £10 per hour wage for all contract types 
  • For all universities to become Living Wage Foundation accredited employers, ensuring outsourced workers receive, at least, the live wage foundation rate of pay.  
  • A maximum sector wide pay ratio of 10:1 
  • Additional uplift at the lower end of the pay spine to address pay compression. 

Look out for your ballot papers, vote early and vote YES on the Four Fights! 

 

Higher Education ballots – Four fights – Experiences of a casualised teacher 

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In this second of our four-part blog series, we hear from our branch President about the challenges faced by them as a casualised staff member working in Higher Education

 

When I was a PhD student, I supported myself by teaching at various FE and HE institutions. I spent countless late nights cobbling together lectures and seminars to deliver the next day, often outside my immediate area of expertise. With no official workspace I had to cart my laptop, books and notes around everywhere, often meeting students in cafes and other people’s offices. Working in a variety of locations I frequently had to navigate unfamiliar public transport, or search for semi-legal parking spaces, and I would spend fraught moments hopelessly lost in corridors, locked out of classrooms, or denied access to IT systems because of a malfunctioning ID card. It was important to me that my students trusted me, that they thought I was an established member of the teaching team, that they thought I belonged there. So, on the surface I tried to look professional, but I was permanently frantic, under-prepared and anxious. The teaching I delivered on core modules was the culmination of hours of work and I was only paid for a fraction of the time I had put in. But I was good at it. My students liked me, and I got consistently positive feedback. I did it for the love of the subject and in the vain hope that my experience would count for something. But it got me nowhere.  

After 5 years, while on maternity leave on a fixed term contract, I was made redundant. The job market in HE had become more and more competitive, and by then you needed extensive teaching experience, a monograph and a successful grant application even to get an interview. The lack of diversity that this ruthless job market encourages cannot be overstated. Once I had children, my ‘dream’ of becoming an academic was over; I was too far behind. I am now a permanent member of staff on an Education Pathway and I like my job, but I have never forgotten the feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and resentment which built up over those years on temporary contracts. My personal experience is common amongst PhD students but casualisation is now endemic. According to a UCU report carried out just before the 2019 strike over the ‘Four Fights’, 70% of the 49,000 researchers in UKHE remain on fixed-term contracts. Many more are employed on precarious contracts with short term funding, so the threat of redundancy is ever-present. 37,000 teaching staff are on fixed-term contracts, most of them hourly paid. 71,000 teachers are employed as ‘atypical academics’ but not counted in the main staff record. These are overwhelmingly hourly paid teachers, employed on the lowest contract levels, and many of them are employed as ‘casual workers’, with fewer employment rights. 50% of these ‘atypical academics’ are employed by the richest ‘Russell Group’ universities. UCU estimates that this ‘reserve army’ of academic labour is doing between 25 and 30% of the teaching in many universities (UCU report, June 2019). More recently, we have seen articles in the news highlighting the extent of casualisation at our ‘top universities’ such as Cambridge.  

During the 2019 strike, I ran a teach-out on the epidemic of casualisation in UKHE; a key issue in the ‘Four Fights’ dispute. Before this , I asked colleagues on hourly paid and fixed term contracts to share their experiences of working under these conditions. They highlighted the detrimental impact casual work has on their family lives, their ability to plan financially and their mental and physical wellbeing. They reported high levels of anxiety due to lack of certainty and said that they were unsure about their maternity, holiday and sick pay entitlements. Many colleagues had been working on short term contracts for more than 5 years and felt they had to accept unreasonable or unsuitable workloads because they were scared of being ‘passed over’ for work next time. Since becoming branch president in 2020, I have seen first-hand the levels of exploitation and have been astounded by the lack of awareness of the issues surrounding casualisation exhibited by managers and HR at the university.  

Students who attended the teach out were horrified to discover the levels of precarity at the university. Participants were asked to consider the impact of casualised work on key areas including family life, financial planning, mental and physical health and career development. They were given post-it notes for their ideas, and together we created posters highlighting the multiple effects insecure employment has on university staff. At the end of the session, we began an important discussion about concrete action the university could take to address SUCU’s concerns about casualisation. During the strike in 2019, members of SUCU executive met with Mark Smith and received assurances that steps will be taken to improve contracts and terms and working conditions for casualised staff. There seemed to be some hope that the message was getting through that casualisation in universities is bad for staff, students and the universities themselves. However, the experiences of casualised colleagues during the pandemic have shown that nothing has changed and in many ways things have got worse. The pressure, anxiety and insecurity we have all experienced over the last 18 months are exacerbated enormously when you have no guaranteed work, no sick pay and are struggling to work from home with inadequate equipment. Now that we are being pushed back on to campus, casualised colleagues are finding they are missing key information from managers, have limited access to office spaces and are facing increased pressure to accept in-person teaching when they do not feel safe because they have no choice. The final insult for our valued colleagues came when a covid bonus for staff was not extended to staff on hourly paid contracts. Despite repeated attempts from UCU to reverse that decision, management refused and, in their responses, showed once again how little they understand the extent and negative impact of casualisation at the University.  

This week, we are being called on once again to stand up for our precariously employed colleagues without whom permanent teaching staff would simply not be able to manage. We need to push back hard against exploitation in our universities. We must ensure that all workers enjoy fair and equal pay, decent working conditions and equal rights. Look out for your ballot papers, vote early, and vote YES on the ‘Four Fights’.  

If you would like to get involved in the fight against casualisation contact Amanda at ucu@soton.ac.uk 

 

A bonus for some ….. further update

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Following the recent response from Anne-Marie Sitton to our earlier email, we have written again to the Vice-Chancellor and UEB.

 

Dear Vice Chancellor and members of UEB,

Thank you for your response to our email complaining about the decision not to award the covid bonus to workers employed on casual contracts. We were extremely disappointed by your reply and take issue with a number of points, as outlined below:

  • UEB replied: ‘[We] made a conscious decision in drawing a firm distinction between employees and casual workers’

UCU believes that this underscores what we stated in our letter to UEB (21/07/21); that the University has a two-tier workforce operating and is not serious about addressing the problem of casualisation, which harms staff and students and damages the reputation of the institution. The work carried out by hourly paid lecturers and PGRs who teach is indistinguishable from much of the work done by permanent staff. They should not be treated any differently.

  • UEB replied: ‘On the basis that there is no contractual entitlement or commitment between the University and casual workers, no way of clarifying thresholds for payments or fairly applying any form of proportionate payment it was determined that the exclusion lines had to be drawn between such workers and employees.’

UCU questions why a simple calculation of how much a staff member had earned during the period stipulated by the bonus scheme could not be applied. Had we been engaged in a consultation on this proposal we are confident a fairer arrangement could have been found and regret that, once again, the campus trade unions were not properly consulted over a matter impacting our members’ pay and conditions. We note that Cardiff University was able to agree to a much fairer mechanism of recognition which included PGRs in their COVID bonus scheme. This was done because University management discussed their plans with unions in advance and a better, fairer system of distributing the award was found.

  • UEB replied: ‘We also took the view that our casual workers are paid by the hour for the work done, and so are far more likely to have already been recompensed for any additional hours they may have worked, than our core workforce.’

UCU formally raised at February’s Joint Negotiating Committee that teaching staff employed through Uniworkforce were not being appropriately compensated for the additional time worked as a result of COVID-19 measures. UCU representatives requested that the rate of hourly pay be increased to recompense staff who were now teaching a full hour while still being paid for 45 minutes. We additionally requested a review of claimable preparation time considering the additional workload associated with online learning, including increased preparation time and queries from students. Our request was refused. We therefore believe it to be factually incorrect that hourly paid workers had already been recompensated and UEB should already have been aware of this.

  • UEB replied: ‘For example, early in the COVID pandemic we agreed to honour all UniWorkforce commitments (and overtime commitments of staff at Levels 1-3) up to 19th April 2020 which was then extended further to 31st May 2020. Your note did not make any reference to this point.’

UCU believes that this is missing the point. Of course the University should honour its UniWorkforce commitments. The work these staff were assigned had already been budgeted for. The covid bonus is an entirely different category of payment, which is a payment in addition to existing commitments. The University’s reply implies that UniWorkforce staff should just be grateful that they were not left without any income at the beginning of the pandemic without notice, which is an extraordinary position to take. In addition, the response of UEB implies that hourly paid workers were not carrying out work for the University during this period when many were integral to the delivery of online teaching and marking at the end of the 2019/20 academic year. In a lot of cases, they carried out this work remotely, with inadequate equipment, and often at very short notice.

  • UEB replied: ‘In terms of our PGRs, when UKRI provided a funding package for doctoral students in their final year of funding, who were in need of a COVID-related extension to submit their thesis, the University responded by committing significant sums to match the UKRI extension scheme.’

UCU believes that this is irrelevant. The covid bonus was awarded to staff who have carried out valuable work for the University during a pandemic, the fact that these members of staff may also be students in receipt of grant money or funding from other sources is beside the point.

  • UEB replied: ‘It is also worth noting that the University recognised the essential contribution of key frontline workers of staff at the lower end of the pay scales, who were required to attend campus to maintain essential institutional services and support for students during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, by awarding them a fixed maximum value payment of £500.’

UCU would like to know whether UniWorkforce staff were included in this payment as your response does not make that clear.

To summarise, UCU is not at all satisfied with the University’s response to our request that all workers, regardless of their contract status, are appropriately rewarded for their contribution during the pandemic. We once again urge the University to reconsider its position and agree to award a bonus to all staff on casual contracts. In addition, we ask that the University commits to engaging with UCU and tackling the damaging culture of casualisation within the institution and ending its reliance on UniWorkforce staff to deliver core activities.

 

Southampton UCU

 

 

 

 

A bonus ….. for some – update

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Further to our recent blog post of 23 July detailing our request to UEB to reconsider their decision not to award the one-off COVID bonus to workers employed on casual contracts, we have  received a disappointing response.  See the full text, and our original request, below.

 

Wed 28/07/2021

Dear Southampton UCU Executive Committee

Thank you for your email to the Vice-Chancellor of the 21st July 2021 regarding the staff bonus payment. I have been asked to respond on behalf of the executive.

The University Executive Board wanted to recognize the incredible amount of hard work, discretionary effort and professionalism demonstrated by our staff, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, over the last year. By doing this we had to decide who should qualify for such a payment and the cutoff points. This is always the most challenging part of developing an award of this nature, but on this occasion we made a conscious decision in drawing a firm distinction between employees and casual workers. This decisions in no way underplays the significant contribution other staff groups have made, but was made in recognition of the very significant financial support we had already provided to casual workers, PGRs and key frontline workers.

UniWorkforce/casual workers are widely used within the University for a whole range of activities including one off lectures, exams support, temporary administration, front line cleaning support, and many more, and on average PGRs make up about 6.5% of those workers. On the basis that there is no contractual entitlement or commitment between the University and casual workers, no way of clarifying thresholds for payments or fairly applying any form of proportionate payment it was determined that the exclusion lines had to be drawn between such workers and employees. We also took the view that our casual workers are paid by the hour for the work done, and so are far more likely to have already been recompensed for any additional hours they may have worked, than our core workforce.

 It is simply not true that we do not understand or value our casual workforce. We absolutely do, as we have demonstrated throughout the year. For example, early in the COVID pandemic we agreed to honour all UniWorkforce commitments (and overtime commitments of staff at Levels 1-3) up to 19th April 2020 which was then extended further to 31st May 2020. Your note did not make any reference to this point.

In terms of our PGRs, when UKRI provided a funding package for doctoral students in their final year of funding, who were in need of a COVID-related extension to submit their thesis, the University responded by committing significant sums to match the UKRI extension scheme. This was considered important since 73% of our doctoral research students are not funded by UKRI. Both schemes have been in operation since the summer of 2020 and Phase 3 will run until 2023 which is also a very significant financial commitment from the University.

It is also worth noting that the University recognised the essential contribution of key frontline workers of staff at the lower end of the pay scales, who were required to attend campus to maintain essential institutional services and support for students during the initial COVID-19 lockdown, by awarding them a fixed maximum value payment of £500.

In terms of the qualifying date, we applied the principle that if the employee was employed on the day of the announcement, they get the bonus and if they are not employed by the University on that day they don’t get it. Unfortunately, some people will always fall on the wrong side of a dividing line, wherever it’s drawn, but picking anything other than 14th July would be completely arbitrary.

With best wishes

Anne-Marie Sitton

Executive Director of Human Resources

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Sent: 21 July 2021 13:55

To: Vice Chancellor and UEB members
Subject: Staff bonus payment

Dear Vice-Chancellor

We were pleased to see the dedication and commitment of colleagues recognised in your end of year email. However, we were dismayed by the qualifying criteria for the announced bonus. We seek urgent justification for why valued colleagues paid by UniWorkforce, including PGRs and hourly paid teaching staff, have not been included. Additionally, why those whose contracts finished on 13 July also do not qualify. 

We firmly believe that these colleagues have provided essential contributions to the university this year and should have been included in the bonus payments, on a pro rata basis where appropriate, and urge UEB to reconsider their position on this matter.  

This decision to exclude members on casual conditions of employment is indicative of UEB’s lack of understanding of the key role our casualised colleagues and PGRs perform at the university, including providing core teaching and essential student support. Our experience is that UEB also underestimates the length of time colleagues can be on these conditions of employment, which can be several years. Most permanent members of staff could not do their jobs without these colleagues, and they deserve to be recognized.  

The decision not to include casualised colleagues is also indicative of University of Southampton’s approach toward maintaining a two-tiered workforce. By the nature of their employment, casual workers have the least financial security and are already some of the lowest paid members of our university community. We note that hourly-paid teaching staff, including but not exclusively PGRs, still do not have contractual rights to sick pay as was requested by UCU this year. They saw teaching slots increase this year from 45 minutes to 60 minutes with no increase in pay, something we also requested to be rectified but was not. Many of these invaluable staff have experienced increased stress regarding the status of employment given the recruitment freeze and the financial caution implemented by the university at the start of the pandemic.  

We at Southampton UCU recognise and value the contribution of all University of Southampton workers this year, and indeed every year. Without such dedication from all staff, the University would not be in the position it is. We urge UEB to review the eligibility criteria for the bonus payments and to work with UCU to improve the uniformity of employment conditions for all staff at the University of Southampton.  

We look forward to hearing back from you.  

Southampton UCU Executive Committee