COMMENT: Uni Bosses To Blame For Strikes?

Tomorrow staff will be striking. Students will have their learning disrupted. Staff will lose a day’s pay. And once bonuses are taken into account Professor Nutbeam will earn something like £1000: welcome to the modern university.

Fair pay: a notice from the 31st October strike

University staff at Southampton are taking part in another nationwide strike tomorrow, after University bosses refused to negotiate on increasing their last pay offer.

Staff at Southampton rejected a 1% pay increase last month, which given inflation, would have been the fifth year in a row their wages were cut in real terms. There was also anger over employer’s refusal to discuss equal pay for women, disability leave and poverty wages for low income workers until the pay increase was accepted – essentially holding these groups ransom.

Since then, staff have been angered further by the University’s refusal to donate the wages docked from striking workers to the student hardship fund – as has been customary at other universities.

Students will be left frustrated by the impasse – but before directing their anger at staff, they should think about those at the top of their University. Our own Vice-Chancellor Don Nutbeam has many questions to answer about the situation. It was he who approved keeping the striking staff’s wages rather than donating it to poor students. And as he sits on the employers negotiation board, he could do something about poverty pay, gender equality and wage cuts. But so far, he hasn’t.  Why not?

The simplest answer seems to be that the VC simply doesn’t see much wrong with the current situation. His stated view is that a 1% pay rise would be not only “fair” but “generous”. Given that Prof. Nutbeam himself earns around £8 on a 5 minute toilet break, it seems like he’d know a “generous” pay rise when he saw one.

If this seems a bit below the belt, then consider this. Whilst Prof Nutbeam thinks it’s ‘fair and generous’ to have cleaners’ and lecturers’ pay fall in real terms for the 5th year in a row, his own salary has increased from £211,000 to £277,000 in the same time.

And what has he done to merit this that teachers, shop workers and caterers haven’t? It seems that Prof. Nutbeam’s talent lies in letting students down badly. Not only has he lobbied to increase tuition fees, firstly to £9000 – and now to £16,000 – but Southampton has fallen in the Global University rankings every year that he has been in charge.

This then is the crux of the situation. Students are paying more than ever for University, and yet staff are seeing their wages cut. Rather than blame each other they ought to demand that their Vice-Chancellors actually start representing them. Rather than jetting around the world and cosying up to the Government, VC’s need to stand up for higher education, and say no to further fee rises for students, no to further pay cuts for staff, and no to further massive wage rises for themselves.

This article was sent to the Soton Tab by a Southampton student involved with the strikes and its publication in no way implies that it is the view held by the Soton Tab or its editors. This article is the opinion and comments of an anonymous student only.