Universities are actively choosing not to pay their staff fairly, despite having budgets large enough, reveals a new study by the Young Greens of England and Wales.
The report, published [1] by the Young Greens, the youth branch of the Green Party, finds that £228m is spent on executive pay each year while there are still 4,872 workers on the minimum wage and 6,769 on less than the living wage [2].
It is Green Party policy that all work must pay at least a living wage - ensuring a good quality of life - with a citizen's pension providing dignified retirement.
Will Duckworth, Deputy Leader of the Green Party, who will speak at the launch event [3], said:
“Paying our country’s lowest earners too little to live on in order to fund wages that the highest paid could not possibly hope to spend is not simply immoral, it’s also detrimental to our entire society.
“Research shows that large pay gaps decrease economic productivity within businesses, split societies by teaching people their work is rated as worth far less than that of other people and removing hope, and is even more likely than unemployment to cause mental illness.”
Rustam Majainah, the lead author of the report, said:
“Universities have no excuse to pay less than the living wage. Living costs are rising for everyone, students are having to pay £9,000 a year to go through higher education, and university vice-chancellors are paid disproportionately large salaries. It is unacceptable for these vice-chancellors to claim that they are unable to find the money to pay their workers enough to have a decent quality of life.”
The report also focuses on the high pay ratios between the highest and lowest paid staff at each university. The figure has risen to 18.6:1 since a previous report looked into pay ratios in the Higher Education sector and found them to be the highest in the public sector [4].
As part of their Fair Pay Campus campaign [5], the Young Greens are asking that each university sets their maximum pay ratio at 10:1 by raising the lowest paid staff to the living wage and reducing the top pay bracket to £140,000.
The idea that pay is related to performance is brought into question by the report. It finds that seven universities pay their top earner more than the highest paid staff member at the University of Cambridge [6].
1. The report will be accessible online from 12.00 Thursday 17th at http://younggreens.org.uk/campaigns/fairpayleague/
2. Currently set at £7.45 nationally, and £8.55 in London.
3. The report is being launched to press and the public at the University of Birmingham on Thursday 17th October at 6pm https://www.facebook.com/events/509475989136335
4. This stood at 15.35:1 in 2011, see http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/414542.article
6. Imperial College (£389,050), London Business School (£510,000), University of Nottingham (£360,000), University of Birmingham (£371,924), University of Bath (£367,000), University of Surrey (£366,832) and University of Oxford (£370,778) all pay more than the University of Cambridge (£348,827).