For the last two and a half years Defend Education Birmingham has been consistently attacking David Eastwood and the rest of the University of Birmingham management, over their exorbitant pay. The university have just published their accounts, and they contain within them the fact that David Eastwood has taken a cut in the amount entering his pension scheme, meaning that his headline pay rate has decreased from £419,000 to £409,000. This is a victory for campaigners who have been pointing out the hypocrisy of Eastwood’s salary. However at the same time this is a token decrease and exorbitant management pay, and pay inequality, remain huge problems at Birmingham.
In the last year the number of managers paid over £100,000 has increased from 97 to 111. These top staff are costing the university an estimated £15.77 Million a year[1]. This means that just 111 out of 6146 staff are receiving 7.6% of the universities wage bill. If these staff were to accept the still extremely high top rate of academic pay (£69,412) it would save the university around £8 million.
This would be enough to pay for all the staff that are currently being made redundant by the university, and maintain the quality of the IAA, Physiotherapy, Nursing, Sociology, with millions of pounds left over.
At the same time as management pay is sky high and always increasing, the university has been cutting the pay of those who most need it. Last year support staff, many on as little as £13,000 a year were told that they would no longer be paid overtime for working weekends and bank holidays and that working those days would now be compulsory.
Students and staff at the University should not accept management that line their own pockets while cutting our pay course and jobs.
[1] The university give figures for the number of staff earning over £100,000 in £10,000 brackets, for example there are 24 staff earning between £100,000 and £110,000. These staff are all assumed to earn £105,000 in the calculation of the estimated wage bill.