We are on strike to defend our pay.
With general inflation at around 10% for the last 2 years, and augmented hikes on everyday overheads such as food, energy bills, and housing, people and companies are feeling severe financial pressure.
If organisations do not proportionally increase their workers’ wages in line with the increased cost of living, then they become effectively poorer and less able to live their lives with dignity.
Imperial College conducts pay bargaining with its local Joint Trade Union (JTU) branches. Last year management’s imposition of a 3.3% pay offer without JTU agreement was simply too much for staff to bear: a 3% pay award with inflation at over 10% is essentially a 7% pay cut. The offer felt particularly callous as we moved out of the pandemic, where the labours of staff had been absolutely extraordinary, and the subject of near-universal internal and external praise. Members of all three trade unions voted to enter a formal dispute with the College in September 2022. Sadly, this dispute has not been resolved, and the problem has only become more pronounced.
Imperial is one of the wealthiest universities in the UK and can easily afford to protect its staff pay against the steep rises in the cost of living. In this year’s pay award cycle, the JTU put in a pay claim of 10.5% – an amount which we clearly show is affordable by the College, and is only attempting to protect the value of staff pay against the current inflation rate.
Alas, Imperial is now imposing a pay award of 5.2% for this year, which, for the second year in a row, is going to make College staff significantly poorer in real terms.
Nobody wants industrial action. But the staff at Imperial College recognise that management are simply not listening to arguments based on logic and compassion. They are role playing in one of the worst aspects of end-stage capitalism and modern business development, viz. the marketisation of higher education, where staff are treated as a cost to be managed. We are in a position where we feel the only way management will listen is by the credible, and legal, threat of withdrawing our labour via forms of strike action.
Members of all three trade unions have voted for strike action over a shared dispute, for the first time in Imperial College’s rich and varied history.
The UCU have commenced their marking and assessment boycott (MAB) and there are 5 days of strike action declared during this term.
If we do not do this, the College will continue to erode the value of pay and conditions at Imperial. And we are not just doing this for to protect our pay this year, but for the more global and fundamental purpose of protecting our university from becoming yet another business, and ensuring the profession is one that aspiring academics will still want to join. This affects us all.
You can help by emailing the President and Provost of Imperial College and asking them to pay their staff fairly.
UCU and Unite members on the picket line, May 2023