HACkers blog

Having just celebrated my penultimate payday, I thought it apposite to dwell a while on recent reports in the UK that Higher Education staff have the best pay deal in the public sector.

The basis for this assertion - recent pay increases of around 30%, as well as working conditions which include flexible work hours - look at first glance not too dissimilar from those here, if one makes the same mistake the reports do and blurs "academic" and "non-academic" staff as it suits, to present a picture of the best of both categories with none of the drawbacks of either.

What does hold true in both cases (there and here) is that the rapid pay rise was off a low base - even 100% of next to nothing is still next to nothing - and that in absolute terms, salaries are in many cases still not attractive enough to draw teh brightest and the best who succumb to the lure of private sector offerings instead. Which may be as well - someone who is merely doing the job for the money is perhaps lacking in some of the crucial requirements of the job: the academic enterprise still relies largely on notions of collegiality, the quid pro quo involved in externalling here or referreeing there not for the honorarium (if there is one) or even necessarily for the networking, but out of some sense of a greater good that is served through such acts of service to one's discipline.

Working hours for those who have fixed ones are between 35 and 37, compared with our notional 37.5 - though, like ours, the hours required (ie, remunerated) are not necessarily the hours worked, as mentioned in the Grauniad's report.

The most striking difference, however, is in the leave entitlement. There, academics receive a median 35 days per annum, compared to 25 in the general populace. Here January is academic leave month - 22 working days in 2008 - while non-academics get 26 days leave per year.

With salary negotiations looming, one wonders how - if at all - things are likely to change...