The Academics Union (AU) negotiates salary with Management over pay and conditions for academic and research staff from June onwards. Members’ inputs are required for both salary and non-salary negotiations.
In 2011 the AU agreed to the implementation of a pay policy.
This pay policy will be restructured in 2015 and again in 2023.
The pay policy set levels of remuneration at amounts which enable the University of Cape Town (the University) to attract, retain and motivate staff. It has been decided that the best way of achieving this aim is to benchmark salaries at the University relative to those at a selection of comparator universities, namely, those universities which share a similar research-led culture to that at the University.
The benchmark is to be fixed as follows: the Standard Academic Salary Package (SASP) at each rank is to be aligned with the 75th percentile of salaries at that rank at the comparator universities. The rationale for choosing this benchmark is that the University recognizes that, as confirmed by a number of objective measures, it has a pre-eminent status amongst the comparator universities (indeed amongst universities nationally) and primarily owes that status to the quality of its academic and research work. It is thus reasonable to assume that members of UCT’s academic staff who are meeting the criteria for SASP are performing at least at the level of three quarters of staff in comparator universities and thus, independent of their other earnings in terms of scarcity, merit or excellence awards, should be paid accordingly.
The current Academic Pay Policy is to be found at this link