A UCEA spokesperson said:
“UCEA has commissioned an independent economist* to examine the real-terms change in the value of the New JNCHES pay spine points as we felt there was a need to have impartial and accurate information in the public domain given the importance of this issue. The calculations show that all HE salary points have kept pace with inflation since 2013-14. The report also shows that the lowest-paid staff have actually seen an increase of 6% ahead of inflation over the same time period. This year’s pay award of between 1.8% and 3.65% maintains this trajectory, exceeding the now published inflation rate of 1.7% in the year to August, the date of effect for the uplifts.
“The report fails to find any evidence, irrespective of the measure of inflation used**, that the pay spine has fallen ‘by over 20%’ since 2009, a claim being made by the trade unions***. We trust that this independent analysis provides helpful information to HE employees on the value of their pay.
“While sector employers have been able to keep pay point values in line with inflation over the past six years, we all recognise that the period between 2009-10 and 2013-14 was characterised by high inflation and a weak economy coupled with public sector austerity, which all led to a squeeze on real pay across the whole UK economy. Our sector was not immune to these factors, and these calculations show that there was a real-terms fall in pay spine point values of up to 7.8% during this period. We feel it is important that such information is communicated accurately and fairly to trade union members and beyond. We have shared the report with our trade union colleagues as background for their communications.
“Employers will be well aware that these independent calculations do not include the value of pay progression, which for the 2019-20 pay outcome will result in more than half of the academic and professional services staff covered seeing real pay increases averaging 4.8%.”
Notes:
*UCEA invited proposals from labour market economists in the academic and not-for-profit sector to undertake this work independently. Following this process, we appointed Andrew Eyles, a research economist with the Centre of Economic Performance at the London School of Economics to undertake the calculations. The full report ‘Real Wage Changes on the New JNCHES Pay Spine’ is available to all on UCEA’s website.
**The trade unions’ favoured measure of inflation is the Retail Prices Index (RPI) which is no longer a National Statistic and its use is ‘strongly discouraged’ by the National Statistician. A recent enquiry by the House of Lords Economic Committee found that the RPI has suffered from ‘methodological neglect’ and that it over-estimates inflation by 0.5 to 0.8%.
*** see the Joint HE Trade Union Pay Claim 2019-20 which can be found on the 2019-20 New JNCHES pay round page of the UCEA website, and UCU’s campaign material.
ENDS
For further information please contact: Andy Fryer, Communications Manager (a.fryer@ucea.ac.uk) or Marc Whittaker, Communications and Events Manager (m.whittaker@ucea.ac.uk) on 020 7383 2444.
