Warwick Gets More eMOTIONal With Staff Strikes

University assembly passes overwhelming motion to better reward staff, and put pressure on the employers’ negotiating body to improve the pay offer to staff after numerous student led lectures.


At a meeting this morning, the University has voted for a breakthrough effort in ending the fractious pay dispute which has led to students trying to take their own lectures as their lecturers strike.

The full motion that was passed by 104 votes to 4, with 20 abstentions:

(a)  Notes that the University of Warwick is generally a successful university and moreover in, financial terms, consistently produces healthy surpluses.

(b)    Is concerned that wages are becoming a smaller share of the University budget while staff are seeing real pay decreases, despite over £70m in surpluses in the past three financial years.

(c)    Is concerned that those earning over £100k are not subject to the same downward pressures as all other staff.

(d)    Believes the University can pay more to all its staff and should use its influence to ensure UCEA settle the pay dispute with an improved offer as soon as possible.

Lecturers took to the streets to protest against the lack of increase to their wages.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at the university, and across the UK, have walked out six times since the dispute began in October. There have been three full days of strike action and three two-hour stoppages.

Frustrated students at the University of Warwick have even tried to put on their own lectures as seen by the efforts of many third year students in the History as organised by Alexander Bunzl.

Some staff at the University of Warwick earn below the living wage rate of £7.65 an hour. While staff fight for the living wage and against another real-terms pay cut, the vice-chancellor, Nigel Thrift, pocketed a pay increase of 4.4% last year, on top of a 15.6% increase the previous year, taking his salary up to £287,000.

Warwick UCU branch secretary Jimmy Donaghey, who moved the motion, said: “Nobody wants to see more strike action or risk a marking boycott. It is in the employers’ power to stop that happening and we hope they will now come back to us with a fair pay offer.

The higher education sector has been seriously undermined by vice-chancellors pleading poverty while accepting handsome pay rises themselves. This vote exposes the employers’ lie that ordinary staff are content with the 1% imposed rise this year.”

Thrifty: Jimmy Donaghey says that the University is ‘undermined’ by vast pay increases such as that of Nigel Thrift.

An anonymous Economics student is happy that such a motion can be carried through saying: “I’m happy at seeing progress being made with staff pay. It means I can get the education I have paid for and it is a move in the right direction and hopefully the University can see that this a problem that needs to be sorted sooner rather than later. The overwhelming majority of this motion shows the strong support for staff pay increase and I completely agree.”

The University and College Union (UCU) today urged students to put more pressure on university leaders to reopen negotiations in a bitter university pay row that has seen industrial action hit UK campuses.

So we could see the end of numerous lie-ins and days off seminars, but what do you think? Leave your comments below.