Created on: 19 Aug 2024
Dear EIS ULA Colleague
I write to encourage you to vote in our consultative ballot on the Employers Pay Offer for 2024-25.
There are two aspects that I would like to focus on in this update:
The ONS has reported that for the period from April to June 2024 that the “Annual growth in employees' average regular earnings (excluding bonuses) was 5.4%.”
The ONS figure below shows how average pay has risen particularly steeply over the last four years or so, after limited growth between 2008 and 2020.
These figures are available on the ONS website.
2. EIS Analysis of HE Pay Settlements since 2019
The pay increases for HE since 2019 have been lower than the average UK worker pay increases. The table below shows New JNCHES (HE) pay increases for a typical, long serving lecturer on Pay Point 44 – with the last two columns being the current pay offer being balloted on.
|
|
2019-20 (Base) |
2020-21 |
2021-22 |
2022-23 |
2023-24 |
2024-25 Pay Offer - Part 1: £900 Uplift in August 2024 |
2024-25 Pay Offer - Part 2: Tapered % Uplift in March 2025
|
|
Point 44 Salary
|
£51,034
|
£51,034 |
£51,799 |
£53,353 |
£56,021 |
£56,921 |
£57,422 |
|
RPI (Inflation) % Annual Change
|
N/A |
0.5% |
4.8% |
12.3% |
9.1% |
2.9%
(June 2024) |
|
RPI figures may be found on the ONS website.
If you plot these numbers in the graph then you can compare how a lecturer’s (on Point 44) pay has increased compared to what her/his salary would have increased had it followed RPI inflation – i.e. if it was index linked.
Fig 2 An EIS produced graph of real pay vs index linked pay since 2019 is shown below:
The difference between the actual lecturer’s salary and index linked salary is the value that your pay has dropped in. In other words, if your 2019 salary has increased by RPI inflation then it would have been £65,887 in 2023-24, in reality lecturers had £56,021.
The difference of £9,866 means that your 2023-24 salary has £9,866 less purchasing power in 2023-24 than in 2019-20. This may explain why your salary does not seem to go as far as it did in previous years.
The EIS believes that there is only one way to challenge this long-term decline in pay – and that is to reject the 2.5% pay offer for lecturers and take industrial action to fight for a better pay offer.