What Does the UCL 200 Bonus Mean For Us? And Vote Now in the Consultative Ballot!

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As you know, the Provost and Senior Management Team decided to award staff a one-off “UCL 200” bonus of £500 each (with a pro-rata reduction for part-time staff and recent joiners). 

This is welcome, but low pay remains a problem for very many colleagues. Headline inflation (CPI, RPI) is around 2.5-3%, but outgoings differ and averages conceal variation. For example, staff on fixed term contracts, new staff and migrant staff have little choice but to rent in the private sector. In some London boroughs, private rents rose by 31% in three years. 

The top half of national pay scales (above point 25) have reduced in value by 16% against RPI (10% against CPI) since 2021. 

That is why UCU and our sister unions are consulting members over the national pay offer of 2%. Please check your emails and make sure you vote! 

The deadline is 5pm on Tuesday 11th August.

How does £500 compare with pay erosion?

UK-wide pay erosion has been widely reported. But UCL has made some local improvements. What has been their effect?

  • If we compare UCL’s pay scales, the top of Grade 7 (point 38) is £54,019 including London Weighting. In 2021 the same salary point was £46,895. If it had risen with RPI it would be worth £64,067 (£59,852 using CPI) today. Even after we include the planned 2% increase, the salary point has fallen by £8,968 in today’s money (16%) against RPI, and £4,753 (8%) against CPI.
  • It might be objected that UCL also moved its pay grade boundaries upwards. How does this affect the picture? Answer: it depends where you are on the grade.
    • Someone at the bottom of Grade 7 would not benefit from this change over this period – they would increment normally up the scale. 
    • But someone at the top of Grade 7 in 2021 (point 36, £44,388 with London Weighting) would have two additional increments to point 38 today (£54,019). Repeating the calculation we find these two additional increments reduce losses due to inflation to £5,543 (10%) against RPI and £1,553 (2.8%) against CPI, even after the 2% national offer is applied.
  • Similar calculations can be applied to other salary points and grades. UCL split the grades so that lower London Weighting was applied to Grade 8 and above, and the losses on higher grades are larger.

UCL’s figures look better than the headline figure of a 16% pay cut thanks to these locally-negotiated improvements, but only where staff are able to progress further up the spine.

But across the UK, staff are being devalued. After adjusting for USS reporting, HESA staff cost data confirms that the UK mean academic staff salary fell sharply in real terms by some 15% between 2021 and the present.

Many low paid staff will find the UCL one-off payment helpful. But they will be rightly disappointed that it is not a consolidated rise in pay. Nor does it contribute to pensions. And as the figures above illustrate, it pales in comparison with employers’ gains made by suppressing our salaries.

This bonus was not negotiated with the trade unions but we were notified in advance. We asked UCL to widen its remit as far as possible: to UniTemps staff, for example, who were originally omitted from the proposal, or to staff who are made redundant before October when the payment is expected to be processed.

If you wish to donate some (or all) of your bonus

Some staff have asked us about donating their bonus to a worthy cause. 

If colleagues can afford to do this, we would make the following suggestion:

The following branches are currently taking or have just finished a substantial round of industrial action and have live disputes. You may contribute directly to these branches’ hardship funds (for more information and to make a donation):

  • Goldsmiths UCU members taking part in action are on zero pay. They were ‘locked out’ when they took a MAB, and are now in an indefinite strike. 
  • Nottingham UCU members have taken 2 months’ strike and a MAB. They stand to lose at least 2 months’ pay.
  • London Met UCU members have taken 16 days of strike action and a MAB.
  • London South Bank UCU members have struck for 5 days and are beginning a MAB.

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