By Rose Troup-Buchanan — February 2, 2012

For the past few weeks, lurid headlines have shouted about bankers’ bonuses and excessive salaries. As a nation we appear focused on bashing those at the top. Little attention is paid to the individuals at the bottom of the pile, scraping minimum wage.

The “Living Wage” is a term only now achieving national interest, thanks in part to Boris Johnson’s and the Labour party’s campaigning efforts. The reality of what it means to earn less than is required to live on is far removed from our comfortable bubble of university life, and unlikely to trouble a student mind preoccupied with seminars and parties.

The university was recently revealed by Nouse to have a funding gap totalling millions of pounds. But he state of the economy and the University’s beleaguered budget are easy excuses upon which to blame decisions, such as the one to pay 154 people below what is deemed a “living wage”.

According to a survey conducted in October 2011, 24 per cent of Yorkshire’s population is earning less than the living wage. Our University might contribute just a fraction of that total, but why should we settle for it contributing anything?

Tied into the issue of living and minimum wage is the complex issues of the widening gap between our Vice-Chancellor’s salary, and those on the lowest level of employment by the University. Why is it that those workers have seen their pay increase by 15 per cent, and our Vice-Chancellor by 26 per cent?

Obviously, the Vice-Chancellor of our University, representing us as he does on the national and international stage, is expected to earn significantly more than the average worker on campus.

Brian Cantor’s nominal salary is not the question here. What is questionable is why his pay has been disproportionately increased.
The University’s defence that he returns some of his wage to the University and that he is paid below the average, does not explain why his pay has continued to rise, and in a circle of prosperity, serves merely as a vehicle for him to regularly make a point of donating even more to the University out of his rising funds.

University senior officials are an amorphous and often absent presence at our University, and dodging the question of the widening gap between the two levels of pay does nothing to improve understanding between them and the student population.

We should not dismiss the increasing disparity in the amount paid to university employers as a hyperbolic inflation of the figures, or as an invalid comparison to be ignored as over-zealous journalism.

Our Vice-Chancellor’s wage is unacceptable because of the disproportionate salary increases, not because of his nominal salary.