Pay differentials in Birkbeck
Pay information for individuals in Birkbeck is publicly available in only two instances – for the Master (because pay disclosure of the highest paid employee is a legal requirement) and for Sessional Lecturers (who are paid on hourly rates decided by College management).
Pay for the majority of Birkbeck staff is now linked to spine points of the National Framework Agreement (NFA) between the UCEA and the unions. These are revised following each annual round of pay negotiations. The pay of individuals rises incrementally between bands and promotion between bands (lecturer A to B and Lecturer to Senior Lecturer) is decided by promotion panels on which UCU has observer status.
Salaries of senior academics and administrators are not tied to the national pay spine but are settled instead by small remuneration panels chaired by the Chair of Governors. ‘Panel B’ deals with professorial/ AR and postholders and is advised by the Master, who withdraws when (as ‘Panel A’) the same governors come to award his own pay. Neither of these panels has an observer; UCU believes that they should do, because the same principles of transparency and accountability should apply to senior salaries as with lower paid staff.
The most recent (2009-10) Financial Statement states that the ‘emoluments of the Master’ rose from £259,000 (yr ending 31 July 2009) to £299,000 (yr ending 31 July 2010) - an increase of 15.5%. Since 2004 top pay in Birkbeck has more than doubled – a rise of 155.8% compared to national settlements for spine point employees totalling 25.4% over the same period.
The only other salary information in the most recent financial statement is to do with numbers of higher paid staff in bands over £100k where there has been no change (7 staff). Previous statements returned numbers of staff in bands over £70k where there have been significant increases in recent years.
In 2010 the remuneration panels did not meet. However the 'one-off' bonuses awarded by the previous Remuneration Committee to at least some senior staff were continued, on top of an overall increment of the same 0.5% pay increment that applied under the NFA to the spine points of junior staff.
Remuneration panels met again in 2011. In inviting applications, the Master stated that only staff who could demonstrate sustained exceptional performance over the past two years will be considered for pay enhancements. In the event, eleven staff were awarded increments, totalling £61,000. In addition the bonuses (including the Master's bonus of £20,000) were continued.
In parallel all staff (except Sessional Lecturers) received the 2010-11 pay award of 0.4%. (UCU have not accepted this as final settlement and the derisory level of the award - in effect, with inflation at around 5% a real-terms cut in pay of 4.5% - was a focus of UCU's industrial action in March); current salary scales (effective from 1 August 2011) can be found on the HR webpages at www.bbk.ac.uk/fin/services/payroll/salaryscales .
The pay for hourly-paid (including Sessional Lecturer) staff has been frozen since December 2007. Management have recently (July 2011) offered a rise of 2% for those on the lowest rates but this is still under negotiation with UCU.
Birkbeck has no direct control over the pay of staff employed by contractors, but in 2008, following a sustained campaign by College unions, management agreed with the two main contractors — Ocean and Sodexho — that this would track the London Living Wage (rather than as previously the statutory minimum wage). However although Sodexho & Ocean now pay their staff the LLW rate (presently £7.85/ hr) they have yet to implement the LLW conditions of service in respect of provisions for sickness, holiday pay, etc.
The graph below shows the accelerating gap between Birkbeck’s highest paid, spine point and lowest paid employees back to 2003-4. Whilst the salary of the highest paid staff member was worth five lecturers (Spine 26 or equivalent) in 2004, today it is equivalent to 10 such lecturer posts. The ‘jump’ in cleaners’ pay from 2008-9 to 2009-10 is due to the introduction of the London Living Wage. Annual pay for hourly paid staff is based on a multiplier of 1,820 hours per year. Most cleaners probably work fewer hours for this at Birkbeck - many will have second jobs elsewhere to try to make ends meet.
Other figures contained in the 2009-10 Financial Report include: Fte academic staff numbers reduced from 570 to 568 and fte technical staff numbers similarly reduced from 37 to 34 whilst fte ‘other’ (clerical, manual, administrative) staff numbers increased from 416 to 433, contributing to an overall increase in staff from 1,023 to 1,035 fte. The wages and salaries bill increased from £44.421m to £45,321m plus £1.033m restructuring costs (mainly VSER).
The above is a slightly updated version of an analyis produced by UCU in February 2011.