STUDENTS PUSH FOR NOTTS UNI STAFF TO BE PAID FAIRLY

This week a student-led campaign group spoke out in an attempt to stick up for UoN staff.

The imaginatively titled ‘Nottingham University Living Wage Campaign’ found that over 500 members of staff at UoN are paid a pittance, something that leader of campaign Michael Pugh calls “totally unacceptable” given the well-advertised  mission statement of the Uni, which rather ambitiously claims to drastically improve the lives of communities worldwide.

The SU have already committed, when is Uni gonna join them?

Pugh demands to know how the University can make this claim when it doesn’t even pay every member of its own staff a real wage.

He said: “Paying staff a living wage will vastly improve the communities around the campus, keeping employees who live in the local area out of working poverty.”

The living wage is the amount of money a person needs to earn so they can pay for daily necessities such as housing, clothing and food which are denied them when they earn just the minimum wage.

Calculated by boffins at Loughborough Uni, it currently stands at £7.65 an hour, which is a significant £1.34 above today’s minimum wage of £6.31.

The campaign was spurred into action after Notts council and the SU at Nottingham University committed to the living wage, and with the Uni making a whopping £24m profit last year, Pugh claims that ‘The University of Nottingham cannot afford NOT to pay the living wage to its staff.’

Vice Chancellor David Greenway, who last year earned over £270k

With a harsh winter approaching and the tragic prospect of UoN staff – intrinsic to the running of our uni – not being able to stay warm this Christmas, the Campaign this week resorted to pen and paper to provoke action from Vice-Chancellor Prof. David Greenway, scribing their pleas for negotiation on the issue.

When contacted for comment, a uni spokeswoman said that “The University of Nottingham will respond to the letter in due course”