Imperial College London staff strike over ongoing pay dispute

Imperial College London staff have begun a four-day strike over an ongoing pay dispute.

The University and College Union (UCU) confirmed yesterday (24th November) that strikes begin on Tuesday 25th November and will last until at least Friday. 

The UCU has said that if university management does not make an offer accepted by the union before the end of the week, strikes will continue until Friday 12th December. 

The announcement follows earlier industrial action at the end of October, during which 1,200 staff members walked out in protest of Imperial’s below-inflation two per cent pay award. 

Pickets will take place at Imperial’s South Kensington and White City campuses from 8.30am to 10:30am on each day of the strikes. 

According to the UCU, Imperial management admitted that the pay offer was based on miscalculated figures, but claimed that after recalculations with the correct pay figures, pay was still above salary benchmarks.

The UCU claims that an earlier review of these benchmarks concluded that they needed to be uplifted, which Imperial management allegedly misrepresented by claiming that the review concluded “the benchmarks used for all job families… were appropriate”.

During negotiations, Imperial management offered to increase the period of eligibility for enhanced paternity pay to make up for the insufficient salary increase. After unions pointed out that it would mean that new fathers would receive more full-pay leave than new mothers, management withdrew this increase rather than increasing maternity leave accordingly. 

An Imperial spokesperson said the university is “committed to ensuring that staff are appropriately recognised and rewarded”, and that their pay benchmarks position them at “the median to upper quartile of the market”.

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The spokesperson added that the pay increase offered to staff is higher than the sector average, and that an investigation conducted after the benchmarking issue resulted in a correction, showing the university’s “commitment” to “median to upper-quartile salaries”.

Imperial College London via Pexels

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “Imperial staff will once again down tools this week because they refuse to accept a real-terms pay cut while university management freely spends billions of pounds elsewhere.  

“The mistakes Imperial management is making, to avoid giving staff what they deserve, will have serious consequences. The Provost must stop misrepresenting a salary review, which clearly concluded that pay needs to rise, as a reason to suppress wages and return to the negotiating table with a meaningful offer.”

President of Imperial UCU, Vijay Tymms, added: “Members are furious that after first failing to check their calculations, we now find senior management has behaved in such an underhand way.

“When this review was first announced, we were told that our input would ‘help shape the principles to inform our decisions’. Nobody thought those decisions would include rewriting the recommendations of the review.”

An Imperial College spokesperson told The London Tab: “We remain committed to ensuring that staff are appropriately recognised and rewarded for the vital role they play. In uncertain times it is important that we plan for the long-term future of our institution for the benefit of our students and staff. Our pay benchmarks – agreed in April 2021 by university leadership – remain to position ourselves at the median to upper quartile of the market.

“Delivering competitive pay to our staff is a priority. We have agreed a two per cent across-the-board pay increase this year, higher than the 1.4 per cent sector average.

“The benchmarking issue relates to a coding error which was identified as affecting some of the academic pay benchmarking data provided by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).

“Following an investigation, the academic benchmarks were corrected and are published on our website. These show Imperial continues to meet its commitment to pay median to upper-quartile salaries across all job families, as set out in our pay principles.”

Featured image via Canva and Instagram / @imperialucu