Out of bed early and onto the picket to fight for better pay and working conditions, then through to Glasgow to attend the UCU rally and stand with other staff and students from across Scotland.

Pay and working conditions dispute

The 4-Fights is a national dispute on pay and working conditions. We are asking for:

• an increase of inflation plus 2% or 12%, whichever is the higher.
• the elimination of precarious contracts
• action on gender, ethnic, and disability pay gaps
• a standard 35 hour week for full time employees with no loss of pay

In May 2022 a pay settlement of 3% was forced on us by our employers. Figures show that we now earn around 25% less than we did in 2009 adjusted for inflation. Our pay demands incorporate an uplift to cover the current cost of living plus recovery of some of this pay erosion. In the latest round of talks UCEA, representing the employers, have made a tiered offer which would see a meagre uplift of only 4-5% for most.

Across the sector around one half of teaching staff are on fixed-term contracts, and two thirds of research-only staff. Despite widespread condemnation many institutions still use zero hour contracts. We are asking for national approach to end these insecure employment practices.

More work needs to be done to tackle equality. There are significant pay gaps between Black and white staff, across genders, and which affect disabled staff. These same groups are disproportionally likely to be on precarious contracts and/or affected unmanageable workloads.

Workloads have soared due to huge class sizes, pressure to secure funding, inefficient IT systems, poor work environments, and the reduction of support through constant cycles of ineffective restructuring. The average working week in higher education is now over 50 hours.

Workload, pay inequality, and insecure contracts are linked. We are forced to do more for less. It undermines our professionalism and affects our health. At the time of writing no commitments have been secured on casualisation, equality, and workloads.

The Principal will say that that every 1% of pay rise increases running costs by £1M and that the university cannot afford it, but 2021 the 5 key management personnel at Heriot-Watt took home more than £1.1M between them. This is the Principal, the Deputy Vice-Principal, the University Secretary, the Global chief Operating Officer and the Global chief Financial Officer. Executive pay costs at Heriot-Watt rose by more than 40% between 2020 and 2021 while staff were offered 0% at the JNCHES national pay negotiations. We seem to be able to afford this.

We can also afford an overspend of around £5M and rising on a catastrophic Oracle ERP project which has so far failed to deliver on anything but the most basic of reporting. And we can also afford to nudge closer and closer to a debt cliff as we borrow to finance vanity projects instead of investing in staff and improving teaching, laboratory, and working spaces – the bricks and mortar of the university in which revenues are earned.

Every year staff are expected to deliver more for less, while the our senior leadership team deliver less for more. We only have to look at staff satisfaction surveys and student feedback to see where the problems lie. We demand better for staff. Fair pay, reasonable workloads, and a safe stress-free workplace that is environmentally sustainable. Join us on the next picket on Valentine’s Day 14 February and help make our employers show staff some love.

If you can’t attend in person please observe the strike. Don’t work. Don’t check your email. Don’t participate in virtual meetings about work. On non-strike days we continue to work action short of a strike (ASOS). This includes: working to contract; not covering for absent colleagues; removing uploaded materials related to, and/or not sharing materials related to, lectures or classes that will be or have been cancelled as a result of strike action; not rescheduling lectures or classes cancelled due to strike action; and not undertaking any voluntary activities.