A survey presented by the local Saco-S association at Lund University in autumn 2024 showed that members are dissatisfied with salary-setting dialogues. A number of respondents describe salary-setting dialogues as playing to the gallery and done for show.
“Members would not want to have salary-setting dialogues if given a choice, whether the process works or not, because the method is not suitable for a higher education institution,” said Adam Brenthel, chair of the Saco-S association in Lund, when Universitetsläraren wrote about the survey at the time.
Adam Brenthel
Chair of the Saco-S association, Lund University
Now, a follow-up survey sent out by the union to 365 members in management positions reveals similar sentiments. Of the 101 respondents, 31 per cent said they would like to continue the salary-setting dialogue system. Eleven of the respondents reported that they did not have salary-setting responsibility in their managerial role in 2023.
Respondents to the survey were divided into two groups of equal size: collegially elected managers and administrative managers. Among the collegially elected managers, 26 per cent said that they would like to retain salary-setting dialogues. Of administrative managers, 35 per cent reported that they want to keep the model.
“So the message from salary-setting managers, especially the academic or collegially elected ones, is that they want something else,” says Brenthel. “When we then read what they mean by something else, because this was a question with a free-text option, they would like to have collective bargaining or fixed salary scales instead. They want something much simpler.”
Given the results of the previous survey, which went out to all Saco-S association members, he interprets the new survey results to mean that managers are even more dissatisfied with salary-setting dialogues than their staff are.
“That was a bit surprising.”
Sinikka Neuhaus, head of the Department of Educational Sciences at Lund University, is open to trying something new. The salary-setting dialogue process is time-consuming, while the survey results indicate that there is dissatisfaction with the model among managers, she says.
“But I don’t think it’s a yes or no question. It does need to be raised, however. Surely we in academia ought to be able to discuss the issue, identify the pros and cons and see the potential risks?”
Sinikka Neuhaus
Head of the Department of Educational Sciences, Lund University
While around two-thirds of respondents would like to see a different solution, 53 per cent of collegially elected managers report that they are satisfied with salary-setting dialogues as a process.
“There is a slight majority in favour, if you look at it that way,” says Neuhaus. “But I still think it would be stimulating to have a discussion.”
She believes that the employer and unions should meet to discuss alternatives, given the survey results. In traditional collective salary negotiations, she sees a danger that the individual feels that their voice is not heard. On the other hand, the danger with salary-setting dialogues is that employees might have unreasonable expectations in relation to the scope their manager actually has to increase their salary.
“If individuals don’t feel listened to, that’s a huge problem,” she says. “But it’s just as big a problem if the person who shouts the loudest gets the most. That’s why it would have been exciting to see a concerted approach from both parties.”
Dan Hyllberg, an HR specialist and negotiations officer at Lund University, is not particularly surprised by the survey’s results. It has not produced anything new, he says.
“These opinions have kept coming up to some extent for as long as I have been working with salaries, which is 20 years. They’re more about the actual principle of individualised pay setting rather than about the precise method used to determine salaries.”
Dan Hyllberg
HR specialist and negotiations officer, Lund University
He believes it is common for managers to feel that it is difficult to set individual salaries for employees and that the scope they have in their budget and their own mandate are too small. He also points out that the results are not necessarily representative of all salary-setting managers at Lund University.
“If I had to guess, I would say we normally have close to 600 managers in total, so it’s a bit difficult to generalise the results,” he says.
Adam Brenthel of Saco-S says the union would have liked all salary-setting managers to have received the survey.
“The employer did not want to participate in such a comprehensive survey, which is why it was only sent to the managers who are our members,” the union writes in the report.
But according to Hyllberg, it is not true that they said no. He would have preferred the employer to have been behind the questionnaire.
“It would’ve been better if we’d produced it together. But nobody got round to it, so we were given a survey for information purposes.”
He declined to comment on whether or not Lund University might abandon the salary-setting dialogue model, saying that discussions with the unions had just begun.
“We need to analyse the issues further so that we actually solve the problems that exist with the right measures,” he says.
At the SULF Congress last autumn, a motion was passed calling for the union to push for giving local union associations and employers the option to opt out of salary-setting dialogues. In accordance with the motion, the union will also assess alternative models for setting pay.
The former has just begun, says Robert Andersson, head of negotiations for the state sector at SULF.
“Now we have this survey from Lund, which shows that people do not feel that the model works well there. This should give employers cause to reflect. The fact that they are pushing responsibility downwards to the managers, while the managers are not happy with the system, should perhaps be taken more seriously.”
Andersson believes that members still want to keep individual salary setting. A lot of work will therefore need to go into implementing the second part of the motion, the union’s assignment to come up with an alternative model for wage setting, he says.
“That will involve inventing something new that doesn’t exist today.”
Lund’s managers on salary-setting dialogues
26 per cent of collegially elected managers say they want to continue with salary-setting dialogues.
33 per cent of collegially elected managers find salary-setting dialogues useful.
35 per cent of administrative managers reported that they would like to keep the salary-setting dialogue model.
The survey was sent to 365 Saco-S members in management positions at Lund University, of which 101 responded. Half were collegially elected managers. Eleven of the respondents reported that they did not have salary-setting responsibility as part of their management role in 2023.
Source: The Saco-S local association at Lund University
