Student group calls for top university earners’ pay to be cut

Martin Shipton

A campaigning student group has called for the salaries of top earners at Cardiff University to be cut in the wake of a punishing programme of redundancies and School closures.

The group also wants the current ruling body of the university to be replaced by one that is democratically elected.

Members of the university’s branch of the National Union of Students are currently voting on which of a series of motions should be put to the university itself.

A motion drafted on behalf of the group Cardiff Students Against Cuts states: “Within academic year 2025-26, the sabbatical officers publicly ask and lobby the university, and campaign to raise student and stakeholder support (eg, through writing open letters, starting petitions, distributing educational materials etc.) for employees of the university who are in the full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket of over £100,000 per year to take pay and benefits cuts as detailed:

* Cutting the pay of each employee in the full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket between £100,000 and £150,000 by at least 15%, between financial years 2023-24 and 2025-26, not including any employees that leave or are removed from their roles.

* Cutting the pay of each employee in the full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket between £150,000 and £200,000 by at least 20%, between financial years 2023-24 and 2025-26, not including any employees that leave or are removed from their roles.

* Cutting the pay of each employee in the full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket over £200,000 by at least 25%, between financial years 2023-24 and 2025-26, not including any employees that leave or are removed from their roles.

* Reducing the total compensation to key management personnel by at least 20% between financial years 2023-24 and 2025-26, and freezing the absolute total value of compensation for key management personnel until the end of financial year 2026-27.

* Removing all bonuses and benefits in kind for employees in the full-time

equivalent salary bracket over £100,000 until the end of financial year 2026-27.

* Freezing nominal pay for those in the full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket over £100,000 after the changes above are made in 2025-26 until the end of financial year 2026-27.

* So that a pay scale is operated at the university where no one is renumerated at a rate of more than four times the median renumeration of all staff, where the median renumeration is calculated on a full-time equivalent basis for the salaries and wages paid by the institution.

* So that a pay scale is operated at the university where no one is renumerated at a rate of more than 10 times the full-time equivalent wage or salary of the staff on the lowest pay rate working at the institution.

* In their campaigning and lobbying activities, the sabbatical officers should also be clear that:

* These cuts should be reflected in the pay of new employees for the £100,000+ full-time equivalent salary or wage bracket.

* The money saved should be used to reduce redundancies to staff, prevent jobs being downgraded and/or reduce cuts to schools of the university.

Consultation

The motion continues: “The sabbatical officers lobby the university, and campaign for student and stakeholder support (eg through writing open letters, starting petitions, distributing educational materials etc.) for all members of the university executive board to be elected democratically by students and staff.

“The Students’ Union initiates a consultation with students, staff and trade union

branches at Cardiff University and other relevant parties to draft a framework and guidelines for the electoral process required for democratically electing a university executive board.”

A spokesperson for Cardiff Students Against Cuts said: “Cardiff University is the only Russell Group University in Wales. The participation rates of 18-year-olds in Wales going to university education were one fifth below the UK average in 2024 and have been lagging behind increasingly since 2006.

“Furthermore, the participation rate of 18-year-olds in Wales going to university education from quintile 1 of the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (ie the most disadvantaged) were over 55% lower than their equivalent cohorts in England.

“The University Executive Board and all employees at the university in the income bracket over £100,000 added together represented fewer than 200 staff in 2023-24, or around 3% of the full-time equivalent employees of the university in the financial year 2023-24.

“In 2024 the median gross earnings for full time employees in Cardiff was £36,300 The Vice Chancellor was paid around £121,000 more than the Prime Minister was entitled to in 2023-24.”

Information

Another motion proposed by Cardiff Students Against Cuts would mandate the sabbatical officers to publicly request information from the university that it believes or the University and College Union believes was lacking when it announced its original Academic Futures’ proposals back in January, as well as a full consultation, campaign against the university being run like a business, and treat the cuts as an ideological issue and not just of bad management decisions.

A third motion would ask the university to clarify who funds its Kazakhstan campus, as well as campaigning against it teaching petroleum extraction (in the Exploration Geology degree, one of the first four currently being taught) in a country where fossil fuel extraction is on the rise. It also campaigns for the university to divest from companies causing genocide in Gaza and to produce an anti-racism strategy as this would make the university more friendly to the international students they say they need to ensure the university has enough income.

The fourth motion is a renewal of a previous motion passed by AGM in 2022-23 to ensure the Students’ Union stands with the trade unions (ie the UCU, Unison and Unite.

Non-binding

A Cardiff University spokesperson said: “At this stage, it’s not clear whether these motions will be accepted and debated at this year’s forthcoming Students’ Union (SU) Annual General Meeting (AGM). Decisions on which motions are accepted are for the SU to decide. The university has no input. Motions passed are also non-binding on the university.

“However, we take the views of our elected SU sabbatical officers, and our student community more widely, extremely seriously. As we have done with previous agreed AGM motions, we will work with our sabbatical officers to decide how best to take them forward.”