University staff will get 15.5% over three years

Non-academic staff in higher education are to get pay rises of up to 15.5% under a three-year deal negotiated by public services union UNISON.

The increase applies to staff earning less than £17,000 a year, while their higher-paid colleagues will see their pay increase by 13.12% over 36 months. The agreement will raise the minimum hourly pay rate to £6.60 by February 2008.

Fifty thousand workers – including administrators, technicians, librarians, caterers, cleaners and porters – are covered by the deal, which also commits universities to implementing the national framework agreement for higher education (see Workplace Report, October 2004) in line with equal pay guidelines.

“Some institutions believe they can do deals that merely maintain the status quo and pay lip service to the need for fair and equitable pay structures,” said Christina McAnea, UNISON’s national secretary for education. But she warned that the union would challenge “any deals that undermine equal pay or are based on elitist assumptions about the value of the roles done in universities”.