Trade union wins low pay appeal against NUI Galway

The Labour Court has told NUI Galway that it was wrong to impose a lower rate of pay on a female lecturer it employed in 2011.

Trade union SIPTU won its appeal against NUIG in relation to the appropriate pay scale of one of its members.

SIPTU argued at a hearing that a worker that was employed as a lecturer wrongly had her pay reduced by 10% when she started.

Management at the university applied the lower rate on the basis that it was an entry grade and her role as a lecturer was not “analogous to” her previous experience in the public service. She was previously employed as a university fellow at NUIG.

The union “strongly refuted” NUIG’s argument and said the worker was previously employed as a ‘university fellow’, which is comparable to a lecturer.

IBEC, representing university management, disagreed. It argued that the roles of a lecturer and university fellow are not comparable.

“The role of lecturer is an entry grade and management contends that as an entry grade the 10% reduction in pay applies in line with Government policy,” IBEC argued.

In 2010, the Department of Finance said a salary reduction of 10% should apply to new entrants into the public service. But it said that it should not apply to anyone who is recruited from the public sector and who was on a comparable grade.

In its ruling, the Labour Court said, having examined what it is the lecturer does now, and what she did at NUIG when she was a university fellow, “it is clear that the essential characteristics of both roles are broadly the same. Consequently the court is satisfied that the both roles are analogous.”

It said, therefore, that she “should have been placed on the pre-January 2011 (pay) scale with effect from the date of her appointment.”

Its ruling added: “It follows that any necessary consequential adjustment to the claimant’s incremental placing should be made so as to reflect the position that she would have been in had she been placed on the pre-January 2011 scale on her appointment to her current position.”