Pay 2023: Pay survey results

Pay 2023 Campaign Archive

We made the decision to launch the Pay 2023 campaign earlier than usual in order to negotiate early implementation of an interim pay rise. At this point, the NatWest’s pay settlement for Pay 2022 had been found to be severely out of touch with the cost of living crisis. Within a matter of months of their business as usual low-value pay settlement being applied to workers, Unite wrote to NatWest in June 2022 demanding that pay negotiations reopen so that we could negotiate an urgent cost of living pay rise. Unbelievably, the bank initially refused! It was only after Unite launched a campaign and we informed members that Lloyds bank had agreed to a cost of living payment that NatWest caved to pressure. Their solution, however, was divisive. Rather than pay all workers a pay rise as Unite had demanded, NatWest chose an arbitrary figure of £32,000 and paid the rise only to those earning below that figure, leaving many workers struggling with no additional support from their employer.

By September 2022, inflation was climbing steadily and the bank had continued to refuse to negotiate a pay rise for those workers that had been left out stating a position that inflation was not the responsibility of an employer. It was also becoming very apparent that for the lowest paid the April pay rise and further cost of living pay rise that had been negotiated would still not be enough to protect workers from the cost of living crisis.

This newsletter outlines the key findings from our pay survey and shows that workers were almost unanimous in their view that NatWest should give a basic cost of living payment to all workers. The original newsletter is shown below and the full text follows.

Pay 2023: Unite pay survey results

Thousands of you have engaged with us over pay, here is a snapshot of what you have told us:

  • 95% agree that a basic cost of living payment should be made to all workers in NatWest.
  • 65% will not accept a below inflation pay offer.
  • 67% have had to make cutbacks in the past 12 months.
  • 77% do not believe they are paid fairly for the work they do.

NatWest are guided by their ‘purpose’. To quote:

‘NatWest Group champions potential, helping people, families and businesses to thrive. Because when they thrive, so do we. Our purpose guides and underpins everything we do. It enables us to build long-term value, to invest for growth, to make a positive contribution to society and to drive sustainable returns for shareholders.’

Well, your workers have spoken and as well as building ‘long-term value, to invest for growth, to make a positive contribution to society and to drive sustainable returns for shareholders’, now it is time to rebuild trust in NatWest’s ‘purpose’ and give ALL NatWest workers a pay rise that meets the cost of living.

Did you know?

If you earned £30k a year it would take you 8.3 hours to count it all at one number a second! If you earned £5m a year counting at the same rate would take you just over 8 weeks! In the first 6 months of 2022, NatWest made a profit of £2.8bn. That would take you 88 years to count!

You know they can afford to pay you, we know it and so do they!!

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Further reading

  • Our next Pay 2023 newsletter was our pay claim.