Plaid Cymru AMs Leanne Wood and Chris Franks are calling on Welsh universities to ensure lower paid staff do not pay the price in any future spending cuts.
They made the appeal after a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that 272 university staff in Wales – 217 at Cardiff University alone – are being paid more than £100,000 a year – or around £2,000 a week.
The figures also revealed that the Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University, Dr David Grant, earned £275,000 a year, including pension contributions, in 2009. Cardiff University did not supply figures for the financial year 2009/10 ended July 31, 2010. The Vice-Chancellor figures for Swansea also include pension contributions.
In contrast, Prime Minister David Cameron is entitled to around £197,000 a year, but takes £142,500. The First Minister’s total pay is £134,723, which includes the salary of an Assembly Member.
Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales Central, said: “I was very surprised to learn that such a large number of university staff are earning more than £100,000, and particularly the huge sums paid to Vice-Chancellors.
“Courses and jobs will be inevitably under threat in the current austerity drive, unless public bodies, including universities, are prepared to look at the savings they can make at the top.
“Universities must ensure that their lower paid staff who earn from £13,000 a year, and the students who invariably go into debt to fund their studies, do not bear the brunt of coming cuts in my view. That would be totally unacceptable.”
Fellow South Wales Central AM Chris Franks said: “It can’t be right that some public servants are being vastly more than the Prime Minister and the First Minister. I can’t understand who agrees these salaries. There appears to be very cosy arrangements.”
“Top pay in the universities is now out of touch with the world we live in and academics must avoid protecting top earners at the expense of the lower paid.
“There needs to be a review of top pay in the public sector as a matter of urgency because we can’t expect people to see their living standards suffer while others sit on fat salaries.”
UCU (University and College Union) general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: “The pay rises senior staff, in particular Vice-Chancellors, have enjoyed in recent years have been a constant source of ridicule for higher education. There is no transparency or justification for the arbitrary, and usually enormous, rises they receive.
“Those at the top hide behind the clandestine world of remuneration committees as an excuse for their massive salaries, whilst the majority of staff have to drag the employers kicking and screaming to agree any sort of pay increase.”
