As you may have seen, we’ve been made an opening offer of between 4% and 7% for August 2023, with a proportion of this payable in February 2023. The higher 7% is targeted at the lowest grade with 4% at those currently earning the most. This contrasts with UNISON’s pay claim, which is for £4,000 or a rise in line with RPI, whichever this greater.
As far as we’re concerned, this offer is hopelessly inadequate, given the price increases our members are facing. Inflation is still in double figures and we’re still campaigning over this year’s pay rise, which represents a significant real-terms cut to our incomes.
If we don’t get some movement to give us a decent increase in pay, either for 2022 or 2023, we’ll be announcing more days of strike action, and UCU are planning the same.
For 2023-24, further negotiating meetings are taking place next week and the week after, so by the end of January, we should be consulting members over whether you want to accept the final offer, or reject it. Unless it’s a significant improvement, we’ll be recommending rejection, and our fight for decent pay that our members can live on will continue.