Collective experience

By Raj Jethwa, Chief Executive, UCEA

14 July 2025

What would machine learning make of collective pay bargaining in higher education? As I understand it, and thanks to Copilot, machine learning is essentially about “teaching computers to learn from experience”. So let’s examine the sector’s challenging experiences of collective negotiations over recent years.

Seven years ago, trade unions began tabling demands for extensive changes to working conditions in higher education. Most of these demands were beyond the mandate of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, but we have tried to be pragmatic, stretching the role of the UCEA after consulting our member HE institutions. We have listened, discussed and considered, developing offers that pushed our parameters while trying to achieve what we believed the unions sought.

This was particularly the case with the use of contracts of employment, approaches to managing workload and action to further reduce gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps. There is a genuine willingness among employers to understand and promote good practice and demonstrate positive leadership in all of these key areas.

It is important to remember that these are all matters that HE institutions have addressed by working with their local trade union branches. In each year, our proposals in these areas were the result of detailed employer/union negotiations. Prioritising and progressing our proposals should have been a success story for the trade unions and their members, and indeed for all employees and employers—as well as for the students, sparing them disruption.

Missed opportunity?
Instead, every year, this opportunity has been missed because of the unions’ insistence that HE institutions should increase pay by more than they could afford. Every year, we have ended up in dispute rather than agreement. Employers have been unable to improve the pay offer, despite union demands. Trade unions have either taken industrial action, or attempted to, leaving employers no choice but to implement the pay uplift in their final offer.

The result is that we have not progressed any joint work on the important issues of contracts, workload and pay gaps. That does not mean we have failed to progress work on these important non-pay issues; it just means we have not been progressing it with the unions. Until now…

I have been genuinely impressed by the union negotiators in recent meetings. Representing their members in the current financial climate is a difficult task. Employers genuinely understand and appreciate the unions’ position. At the same time, employers are committed to providing a sustainable and rewarding working environment for their staff. In this year’s talks we quickly agreed on the state of sector finances, allowing us to move on and discuss how we might work together on the other important issues.

Employee experience
A strategic priority for UCEA is to support employer aspirations to enhance the employee experience (EX). The EX Five Pillar programme focuses on sharing and improving employment practices and supporting HE institutions as employers of choice, despite the tough times they face. This includes working with UCEA members to promote good employment practice, support their reward strategies and promote what they offer employees in terms of salary, benefits and working culture, as well as helping them to reduce gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps. We would be delighted to undertake such mutually beneficial work in partnership with the unions, with the support of their members.

Pay position
And what about the pay offer? Were employers asking UCEA to offer less than they could actually afford?

In a previous article for Research Professional News back in 2023 (time flies in the world of HE negotiations), the UCEA board chair, George Boyne, and I noted: “Many of our members are anxious about their medium- to long-term financial position.” Looking back, it is clear that this was an understatement. Earlier this year, the Office for Students published analysis showing that 43 per cent of institutions are now forecasting a deficit for 2024-25. This will be the third consecutive year of declining surplus and liquidity levels.

Across the sector, higher education institutions are looking to reduce headcount while trying their best to mitigate the impact of job losses, including through voluntary means where possible and through addressing other forms of non-pay spending.

Let’s remember, too, that employers are carrying forward an additional cost on the pay-bill from last year’s staged pay award, as well as from increases in employers’ national insurance contributions and—for many institutions—substantial increases in the costs of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. The only certainty for the sector is continuing financial pressure.

Yet despite these challenges, and despite the fact that so many institutions face financial deficits and difficult restructuring decisions, employers have worked hard to provide some measure of uplift.

Again, this year we have appreciated the recognition of this predicament by our trade union colleagues, who are equally concerned by the sector’s financial challenges. That is why I hoped that this year, the unions would acknowledge that the proposed 1.4 per cent pay uplift is what is affordable and would therefore accept our offer to begin work jointly on all of the other important areas on which we have previously agreed. The decision by the University and College Union’s higher education committee to recommend that its members reject this is disappointing.

There is no doubt that financial pressures will continue to test our system of multi-union and multi-employer industrial relations. If the pay rise remains the focus of the dispute there is little chance, if any, of a resolution in the current financial climate. But if there is any importance at all in taking meaningful joint action on workload, contract types and further reducing gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, then please let us at least try.

Surely we don’t need a fancy AI robot to help us learn from experience, avoid the mistakes of the past and start to make meaningful progress.

This blog was first published on the Research Professional website on 13 July.