Dear colleagues,
This is to provide an update on the outcome of the national pay negotiations for 2024/25.
In the communication from the Reward Consultation and Negotiation Group in August, we advised that, following a final offer from UCEA, some of the trade unions had rejected this and that a series of dispute resolution meetings had taken place.
Following the conclusion of these, UCEA made a final offer to the unions, but this was again rejected by some. UCEA has now advised employers to proceed with the implementation of the pay award.
A copy of the full and final offer, on pay and non-pay items in the unions’ claim is available here 2024-25 New JNCHES pay round (ucea.ac.uk). In summary the pay award reflects a rise of between 2.5% and 5.7% to the pay scale (dependent on spine point), with the first tranche of that award applying in August 2024 and the remainder in March 2025. UCEA has outlined that the offer has a cost of 2.5% on the sector pay bill in 2024/25, an ongoing cost of 3% from 2025/26 onwards and that this level of offer is at the limits of affordability given the widely reported financial pressures within the sector.
UCEA has structured the offer to deliver larger percentage rises to the lower half of the scale. The percentage rise gradually tapers down from 5.7% to 2.5% at spine point 38 onwards.
The full and final offer, while recognising the collective limit to the sector’s finances, is also the product of extensive negotiations over an extended period to address as many of the points as possible included in the trade unions’ claim, including joint work on the pay spine, gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps, and contract types (which locally are topics we have been taking forward through the work of our Reward Consultation and Negotiation Group), and workload (which now sits under the Financial Recovery Group).
We have monitored our financial projections closely and considered very carefully whether the pay award for 2024/25 is affordable and are pleased to confirm that it is, on the basis that we maintain our control of spending and our drive towards higher revenue.
The University will therefore implement the first tranche of the pay offer in the October payroll, backdated to 1 August 2024.
If you have any queries, please email reward@abdn.ac.uk.
Best wishes,
Karl
Karl Leydecker
Senior Vice-Principal