Imperial College London employees have begun further strike action in a dispute regarding pay.
The strikes started on Tuesday 25 November and will end on 28 November. Pickets will take place each day at the South Kensington and White City campuses from 8.30am until 10.30am.
The staff, who are members of the University and College Union (UCU), have already taken six days of strike action this term after rejecting, along with Unison and Unite members, a previous 2% pay award that they said was below inflation.
They claimed that during negotiations, management offered to increase the period of time in which staff would receive enhanced paternity pay. When the union stated that this would mean fathers receive more fully paid leave than mothers, and that maternity pay should therefore also be increased, it said Imperial College reduced shared parental leave for fathers to level down.
The employees also argued that they had been misled over benchmarking management used to justify pay levels. Imperial College replied, explaining it justified its original pay offer on the basis of miscalculated figures relating to a coding error affecting some academic pay benchmarking data from Universities and Colleges Employers Association. It added that even with the right numbers, the pay offer was still above its salary benchmarks.
Following an investigation, the academic benchmarks were corrected and are published on our website.
Further strike action will take place on 1-5 and 8-12 December if employees feel their employer has not made them a fair offer.
An Imperial College London spokesperson said: “We remain committed to ensuring that staff are appropriately recognised and rewarded for the vital role they play. In uncertain times, it is important that we plan for the long-term future of our institution for the benefit of our students and staff.”
Jo Grady, general secretary at UCU, added: “The mistakes Imperial management is making, to avoid giving staff what they deserve, will have serious consequences. The Provost must stop misrepresenting a salary review, which clearly concluded that pay needs to rise, as a reason to suppress wages and return to the negotiating table with a meaningful offer.”
Vijay Tymms, president of Imperial UCU, said: “Members are furious that after first failing to check their calculations, we now find senior management has behaved in such an underhand way. When this review was first announced, we were told that our input would help shape the principles to inform decisions. Nobody thought those decisions would include rewriting the recommendations of the review.”
