conference – UCU Left

2 July 20222 July 2022

HEC report 1 July 2022

HEC unites around a programme to rebuild the disputes

The Higher Education Committee met on Friday to discuss the state of the industrial action campaigns over Four Fights and USS. It was the first opportunity for HEC to meet since the HE Sector Conference and a Branch Delegate Meeting.

After some debate, HEC voted overwhelmingly (with only 6 votes against) to support a strategy involving updating the grounds of dispute, triggering dispute procedures, and building a serious campaign for action in the Autumn term, with a conjoined ballot if the employers do not move.

HEC had been asked to address a complex picture. At Sector Conference on June 2 delegates had voted for motions calling for two long aggregated ballots over both disputes, one over the summer from early June (i.e. immediately) intended to provide a mandate for action in the Autumn term (HE6), and one from October to January for a mandate into June (HE7). These motions were agreed by Conference to be entirely compatible and if both were successful would put the union in a position to call action over these disputes at strategically key times over the academic year.

However Motion HE6 was not implemented and instead a Branch Delegate Meeting was called on Monday prior to HEC. Delegates were asked a series of questions that were only circulated the previous Wednesday. HE officers had no input into these questions, some of which directly contradicted the position of Sector Conference.

It had also been intimated to members that voting for a summer ballot would face legal challenges, and unsurprisingly that meant that the proposal for an already-delayed summer ballot was supported only by a minority, even though it had been supported by three sector conference votes. (This legal advice was never given to BDM delegates, HEC or HE officers.)

HEC was presented with the results of this consultation. The process was obviously democratically flawed, but HEC took the view that given the need to win an aggregated ballot it was essential to be mindful of the view of members.

Meanwhile, other trade unions have been gearing up to take action over pay and the Cost of Living crisis. With 3% likely to be imposed in August, and inflation at 11%, UNISON has said that they will ballot HE members over the 2022-23 pay claim over the summer from the end of July. The school teaching unions NEU and NASUWT intend to ballot in the early autumn.

Planning the disputes

HEC voted to establish updated grounds of dispute over Four Fights and USS and thereby avoid any risk of legal challenge.

HEC voted for a first ballot in early autumn which would permit UCU members to take action alongside UNISON and schoolteachers. There must be a campaign of action, led by the General Secretary, to build this ballot.

HEC also agreed to run a second ballot to end in early 2023 to ensure a marking and assessment boycott mandate into the exam period. Branches have been learning from the boycott campaign this year and a much bigger marking boycott may turn into a reality.

Making sure boycotting branches win

HEC also voted to call on UCU to actively and publicly support those branches currently engaged in a marking boycott right now.

HEC was told that Queen Mary UCU members are facing the threat of losing 42 days’ pay over two months. It is essential that the whole union rallies around.

Branches still in boycott include Queen Mary, RCA, Bournemouth and Goldsmiths.

HEC noted “the effectiveness of locally-organised marking and assessment boycotts, backed up by twinning campaigns to obtain USS statements and local demands under the Four Fights umbrella and defy pay docking — despite UCEA calling for 100% deductions since 2006.”

HEC made it clear that it is strategically imperative to ensure these disputes win and are seen to win.

HEC demanded that these disputes are prioritised internally within UCU and publicly, with publicity emphasising that UCU nationally stands behind branches and members facing pay-docking. As part of this the General Secretary was asked to make a declaration of unequivocal support for boycotting branches and to call on the whole union and wider trade union movement to offer solidarity.

Beyond this, boycotting branches must be consulted about next steps, including financial support for local hardship funds and potential legal action.

10 December 2019

Democracy Congress – Two steps forward, one step back?

Saturday’s Democracy Congress saw a mobilisation by the right-wing ‘Independent Broad Left’ (IBL) to block rule changes proposed by the UCU’s Democracy Commission intended to improve accountability of the union’s leadership.

The Democracy Commission – and this Congress – were called to address the causes of the crisis in the union that was triggered in the 2018 USS strike, when first, the will of branch delegates was ignored by the union’s Higher Education Committee (then-IBL-dominated) and by the then-General Secretary Sally Hunt. Infamously, criticism of the General Secretary at Congress was averted by a walkout of officials.

Two key questions arising from this crisis remain unresolved:

can a sitting General Secretary be removed promptly by members when they act contrary to their interests (i.e. how are they accountable to members)? and
by what democratic mechanism may multi-institution strikes be run, on a day-to-day basis, by striking members themselves?

Democracy and accountability will become obvious and dominant questions as members in HE in particular take further strike action in the new year. First, our members need to have confidence that their General Secretary will negotiate hard from a position of knowing she is accountable to active striking members. Second, members themselves must be able to make important decisions to coordinate and focus strike action effectively.

Indeed the day before the Democracy Congress, a special Higher Education Sector Conference, led by striking branches themselves, took bold steps to plan escalating action for the Spring and Summer Terms.

A majority, but rarely two-thirds

Although nearly all of the proposals were supported by a majority of delegates, very few achieved the two-thirds majority they required for rule changes to bring them into effect.

A procedure regulating how Congress can be curtailed and a three-term limit for General Secretaries were agreed, but important measures to enhance members’ control over the leadership by creating elected Deputy General Secretary posts, and allowing branches or regions to trigger an investigation of the actions of the General Secretary, did not get the necessary majority. Also shelved was a proposal to put strikers in control of their disputes through the creation of multi-institution Dispute Committees made up of striking branches and those in dispute.

This was a setback for anyone who invested in the Democracy Commission when it was established in response to the shut-down of the 2018 Congress. It was clear from the outset that the IBL had mobilised heavily for this Congress, and used their votes consistently against every change designed to give members more control over the decision-making structures of the union and those who make them. This faction of the UCU is opposed to a member-led union and is committed to blocking changes to the existing structures and procedures which would give members more control.

Although they have been routed in the big HE pre-92 branches – which is why Manchester, Oxford, and Cambridge have grown, democratised and got over 50% in the last HE ballots – the IBL still have influence elsewhere. The title of their handout ‘UCU Agenda’ (UCU Bureaucratic Control) could not be more apposite.

With left activists in many branches busy mobilising for a Labour vote in the General Election, many did not send delegates. Compared to a Labour victory, this Congress might not have seemed important. But in 2018 we learned the hard way that structures and accountability matter immensely.

Other delegates who voted with the IBL against some of the proposals may have believed that since we now have a new rank-and-file General Secretary, the changes proposed by the Democracy Commission were unnecessary. It is true that Jo Grady has shown exemplary support for members when they want to fight. She put her shoulder behind the HE balloting effort and spent the eight days of strikes touring the country visiting picket lines and speaking at rallies.

It is also the case that compared to two years ago we now have a left-led HEC (with a large number of UCU Left members and supporters elected) which is more committed to action by members and has consistently put forward a strategy that can win.

Democracy and accountability for the future

#NoCapitulation However, the potential for a split between a full-time leadership and ordinary union members remains. This is not about individual personalities. Anyone who is in an elected position and has led strikes knows the pressure they are under to resolve a dispute. This pressure is even more powerful in the case of a national dispute. There is also pressure from unelected full-time officials whose focus on finding ‘exit’ strategies can often lead to outcomes short of what continued action can achieve.

These pressures can only get stronger as the current HE disputes escalate. There is only one force capable of stopping a repeat of 2018 and a compromise deal far short of what is possible – the active, mobilised membership. This is why it was a serious mistake to for some who quite rightly were angered about the outcome of the USS dispute two years ago to oppose the proposal for setting up multi-institution strike or dispute committees. We need structures which ensure that it is always the members who are taking action, picketing and losing money – not standing committees or Carlow Street – who can take the crucial decisions on the direction of their dispute. This happens in practice at a local level – but strikes at a national level are currently handed over to HEC, FEC and the officials.

Nevertheless, healthy democracy is not conjured up by perfect rules and structures. A democratic deficit will not be corrected by technical fixes. As last year’s events around the USS dispute showed, the desire for greater democratic control over the union arises out of members’ activity. So while rule changes that enhance members’ control over the union are important, it is ultimately the level of membership involvement in the union’s struggles that really counts.

There was hardly any mention of the current USS and Four Fights disputes at Saturday’s Congress, although this dispute had been discussed at length the previous day. But the question of democracy cannot be separated from the battles in which we are currently engaged. During the eight days of strike action in HE, many branches had regular open strike committee meetings (sometimes called “strike assemblies”) to discuss and plan their action. It is through such mechanisms that the ideas and creativity of members to solve problems, plan initiatives and make their action more effective come to the fore.

But it is also those meetings that allow members and reps to evaluate the potential for further action. Thus it was strike meetings at UCL, Liverpool and Dundee that debated motions about strike days which were then formally voted on by branch committees and proposed to Friday’s HE sector conference as amendments. Already we are seeing a nascent member-led democracy in the disputes, pushing existing structures into action.

Existing structures and moving forward

UCL Strike Committee What are the existing mechanisms for members to assert democratic control in disputes? They depend on the calling of a special Sector Conference like the USS HE Sector Conference (HESC) on Friday. Calling such conferences is slow, and conferences are expensive. A multi-institution strike committee could be much more flexible, quickly called and streamlined to key questions not lengthy motions.

An obvious question concerns who gets to vote. According to convention, striking post-92 branch reps were not supposed to vote on Friday, because the HESC was called over the USS disputes. However, on many issues, like the calling of further action, it is obviously reasonable for post-92 reps to have a vote. This is because the union is committed to joint action, and therefore post-92 reps with ballot mandates would reasonably expect to take the action voted on! Meanwhile, at that same meeting, branch reps in USS branches that were neither reballoting nor striking were allowed to have a vote! There is a mismatch between striking branches and the democratic delegate structures.

This is not an HE-only problem. The same issue would apply to the Further Education strikes of 2018, when some branches were striking but others not. Our democratic structures are imperfect, but we need to use them.

But we cannot afford to wait for formal structures to be set up. We will need to create our own rank-and-file delegate body to link up local strike committees if we are to win the HE disputes. If we cannot do this through official means, we must create our own unofficial, mechanisms. The moral authority of strikers is not to be ignored, as the #NoCapitulation moment identified. Woe betide any HEC member or General Secretary who refuses to accept the will of mobilised strikers! So if we cannot make our reps accountable in rule, let us make them accountable in practice!

So the outcome of the Democracy Conference is: we need more democracy! In Higher Education, striking members and those reballoting need to get organised.

First, colleagues will need to work hard to win the next round of reballots in HE branches. Solidarity, twinning and branch-to-branch support across regions are crucial to getting the vote out.

Second, in early February we will know the outcome of the reballots and we need a national strike coordinating meeting. We can plan creatively towards fostering joint collective organising, from branch-to-branch Skype linkups to joint physical meetings in cities during the next round of strikes.

Margot Hill (Croydon College)
London Region Secretary
– standing for UCU Vice President

1 June 20194 June 2019

The Fight Of Our Lives – Round 2

The Augar report

The disastrous HE tuition fee market experiment of 2011 is unravelling.

The much-trailed Tory-commissioned review into HE funding, the Augar Report, is proposing cuts in tuition fees to £7,500 but a much harder ‘hit’ on students: faster repayment schedules with a lower repayment threshold, a lower interest rate but students will carry a debt for 40 years instead of 30.

In UCU Left, we have always argued for cutting tuition fees to zero, bringing back grants, and demanding that “all who may benefit can come” to university (the so-called Robbins Principle). For us, Higher Education is the gift each generation bestows on the next – access to knowledge at the highest level. Make the super-rich pay their taxes, and this is entirely feasible.

But that is not what this cut is about.

Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckon that the wealthiest students would benefit the most from the changes.

But this change – the unilateral imposing of new rates for degrees – is also a colossal market intervention on a supposed independent market!

The shockwaves will be massive.

So far the government has said it will not bail out colleges. Yet many universities have taken on large long-term debts for building projects. The Times reported in January that universities had taken on £10bn in loans.

Second, the market changes are intended to reduce student intake in certain subjects – Arts and Humanities disciplines in particular – that have seen the greatest expansion. Colleges which are dependent on these courses are likely to suffer the greatest.

If the changes are implemented, this new round of state intervention will likely drive some universities into the wall and propel students out on the street, indebted and degree-less. This happened in the USA with the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges, and if Augar is implemented, it is bound to happen here. The HE Bill (now ‘Higher Education & Research Act’) changed the constitution of university funding to explicitly allow universities to go bankrupt without being required to teach students to completion.

The Tory ex-HE minister, Jo Johnson, criticised the report, saying, correctly, that it will destabilise university finances. You’re not kidding.

Even before Augar, press leaks were of universities teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Sir Michael Barber, Chair of the ‘Office for Students’, was reported in response saying that “no university is too big to fail”.

Now that boom-time is coming to an end, the employers are trying to make us pay the price. Just as they siphoned up the profits of HE expansion, faced with boom turning to bust, the university employers are trying to make us take the pain. They have held down pay increases below inflation yet again, driving down the proportion of budgets going to staff costs (pay and pensions) across HE, driving up surpluses and capital investments. Across our sector, from Westminster to the Open University, we have seen wholesale redundancies amidst shiny new buildings.

In the Pre-92 sector, the market is undermining the pension scheme. And the same approach is now being applied to TPS. Treating Post-92 colleges as independent universities justifies the Tory response to the Teachers Pension Scheme crunch – no more money – triggering cuts and redundancies, and potentially break-away pension plans.

We need a concerted national plan to defend the Post-92 Contract, redundancies and escalating workload in these universities. Most of all we have to fight like a national union and defend the sector.

So once a fightback in Pre-92 begins, we should use this to inspire resistance in Post-92. We are now committed to a pay fight uniting both parts of the sector. See below.

The USS crisis

In UCU Left, we have long argued that the USS crisis derives directly from HE market competition. In 2017, we saw Cambridge and Oxford colleges threaten to go it alone. This May, Sir David Eastwood, USS JNC chair, wrote to Bill Galvin, USS CEO, to say that USS needed to account and pay for the risk of HE institutions breaking away from USS.

Market madness is undermining USS.

Is USS in trouble?

USS is paying out less in benefits than it is taking in. In 2018, USS received £2.2bn in contributions and paid out only £2.0bn – a 10% surplus.
Neither the scheme’s assets, nor returns on those assets, are currently being drawn upon to pay benefits. The scheme is ‘immature’, growing and healthy.
Yet, at the insistence of the employers, USS management is ‘de-risking the portfolio’ by moving investments from equity (stocks and shares) to debt (gilts), causing a loss of 4.8%pa+ to the scheme. This is because government bonds and gilts have a low level of return, below CPI. Long-term this means inflation ‘eats the pension pot’, creating a real deficit.
This is heaping risk upon the scheme and eroding its long-term viability. The models used by USS Ltd to estimate its future viability are seriously mathematically flawed in other ways.
The only reason to ‘de-risk’ is if you think the universities won’t be around to act as guarantors to the pension fund. And the reason you might think that is because of the current market madness engulfing the sector.

The current huge USS contribution hikes are in essence covering the cost of the ‘employer covenant’ – the guarantee that employers collectively make to guarantee the future of USS. This works on the presumption that universities will be around in the future, to support USS in the future. But market competition makes university survival less certain, pushing the scheme into a winding-up (‘de-risking’) valuation methodology. Hence ‘de-risking’, the misnamed process of devaluing the assets by dumping them in low-interest bearing government bonds and gilts.

The root of the problem is simply this. In a winner-takes-all, devil-takes-hindmost cuthroat competition, universities see each other as unknown risk bearers at best, enemies at worst. Thus in May, Trinity College Cambridge announced it was leaving USS because it did not wish to carry the pension risk of other colleges’ pensioners.

It is bad enough that costs on us are sky-rocketing. Worse, paying these additional contributions is to reward and encourage failure!

We cannot address this crisis by negotiating and hoping. We need leverage.

Look what happened after we stopped striking. We went backwards.

The USS Board shredded the First JEP Report – and any move to avoid ‘de-risking’ – because they believed UCU had demobilised.
One of our USS trustees, Jane Hutton, was forced out for criticising USS’s approach to the valuations.
The Pension Regulator is saying that even ‘Option 3’ is unlikely to be viable.

We are heading for disaster unless we fight.

We have to fight back

When we fight we can rebalance the equation.

Before we struck in 2018, everything seemed lost. USS was heading for the abyss of 100% Defined Contribution. Within two weeks into 14 days of strikes, and UUK were beginning to backtrack.

But we stopped our strikes too early. Not because the JEP was not well-intentioned – but because the Achilles heel of the JEP was that USS Board could ignore its recommendations.

Every Pre-92 branch of UCU faces a stern test. How will we rebuild the fight to defend USS?

We need to get organised.

Starting now, how do we organise a Get the Vote Out Campaign that instils confidence in our members to strike in the Autumn?

We will face two arguments.

“We fought before but here we are, so what’s the point?”
- Our strike was successful but it was only one battle in a war to defend our pension. If we had continued to victory, we might have won outright.
“Pension cuts are inevitable.”
- They were not inevitable for the entire life of USS until 2011. What changed is the market competition in the sector, and USS adapting to it by ‘de-risking’ USS.

This is Round 2 in the fight of our lives. A serious fight to defend USS has every change of winning, and in the process building a bigger defence for the future of Higher Education in the UK, uniting with students and everyone who cares about the future of society and the role of universities in it.

We should re-raise the demand that as part of the Augar review, the Government should guarantee USS (and underwrite TPS costs). After all, they are directly intervening in the market they created and undermining the UK university sector as a result.

What next?

UCU’s HE Conference decided on the following key actions:

Declare a dispute with the employers immediately over the imposed extra contributions.
Ballot members in September and October for serious strike action in the autumn term.
Build a big political campaign calling members into action, including a Day of Action.
Call a Higher Education Sector Conference in the late autumn term to review next steps.
Organise a pay campaign alongside pensions and unite the whole union across HE.

Branches need to call General Meetings before the end of the Summer Term, to report back on Congress and HE Conference. Invite our new General Secretary Jo Grady, a USS negotiator or an HEC member to speak.

It is time to wake up the ‘strike committees’, ‘action committees’ and other campaign networks that branches built up before and during the last USS strike. Every single member who took strike action has a stake in this fight.

We need to plan the biggest possible Get the Vote Out campaign for September and October.

We need to explain that we won the battle, but we have not yet won the war.

We can put this right in Round 2.

But we need to get organised.

Obvious Question: How can we fight a climate crisis with a bankrupt university sector?

17 October 201717 October 2017

Pay and Pensions: the fight of our lives

Defending Pay and Pensions – Report from HEC, 13 October

UCU Higher Education Committee met on 13th October. Two key issues occupied the main discussion: pay and the future of the USS pension scheme.

HEC voted formally to call a conference on the 9th November for all HE branches to discuss the future HE industrial strategy and to form the pay claim. The conference will include a meeting for pre-92 university branches to make decisions on the union’s campaign to defend the pension scheme in pre-92 universities, USS. Both meetings will accept motions.

Branches need to meet urgently to submit motions prior to the 25th October deadline.

In this report:

Pay
Gender and equality pay
Suggested motions on pay for the HE Industrial Strategy Conference
USS Pensions
The ‘deficit’
Building the campaign
Suggested motions for the USS Special Meeting

Pay

We need to ensure an industrial action strategy is developed which the union is prepared to properly back. Too often members see a union which does not campaign seriously for its demands, and offers a tokenistic reaction to employers offering below-inflation pay rises.

Following a series of on-off disputes, and last year’s below-inflation increase of 1.7%, our pay is continuing to decline in real terms. But we face new challenges. Intensified competition for undergraduate students following the HE Bill is creating upheaval in the English HE sector. Wales and Northern Ireland are suffering swingeing cuts, and the Scottish Parliament is expected to follow suit in December.

The Trade Union Act also makes winning national ballots more difficult. We have a choice: make the fight for pay part of a national political fight in defence of Higher Education or fight institution by institution against local managements limited by ‘affordability’, i.e. what they have left after spending on buildings, borrowing and Brexit contingency plans.

The “choice” between local and national disputes is a choice between accepting the parameters of austerity and breaking through. Across the public sector several unions are now rightly challenging the government’s 1% pay cap. We need to place our fight for pay in that context.

Gender and equality pay

The gender pay gap stands at an average of 12 percent across HE. It is particularly acute at senior levels. If we include casualised staff among female lecturers it can rise up to 50 percent. UCU has participated in the JNCHES working groups around gender pay and casualisation. While on gender this has have resulted in some recommendations, guidance and analysis overall there has been far too little action. 30 branches are now involved in gender pay audits. There was support for recognising the black and disabled pay gaps the latter being up to 30 percent. In the future, as a union we must plan to tackle pay gaps for all equality groups.

On casualisation (affecting 50 percent of teaching staff and at least 70 percent of research staff), again UCU has participated in JNCHES working groups but these have resulted in so little progress that UCU has withdrawn. This also leaves us in need of a clear strategy (including industrial action) to force employers to tackle these inequalities.

Bargaining guidance for branches campaigning and negotiating for casualised staff have been produced, although they are to be ratified by the hourly paid ratification panel before being published. Due to its importance in mobilising members the Anti Casualisation Committee voted to keep casualisation as a main theme of the UCU pay claim. This was ratified by the HEC.

A motion encouraging engagement, activism and participation in bargaining and negotiation for casualised lecturers was passed, making the most of alliances with the NUS and student unions, new free membership fees for students performing teaching, and the publicity of the anti casualisation roadshow. The slogan “break the pay cap, end the pay gap” can be our mobilising message.

Another important element of the pay claim discussed was workload. Pay is declining as a result of increased unpaid hours for full time and especially for fractional lecturers. In some post-92 universities the national contract provisions are at risk because hours are not provided for research and other ‘non FST’ activities.

This is a health and safety issue as well as a pay issue. Motions on these issues can be submitted for the special sector conference on 9th November (deadline is 26th May at 5pm).

Suggested motions for the HE Industrial Action Strategy Pay Conference

Break the cap: Close the gap

UCU notes

the support our pay equality campaign had in mobilising members
pay continues to decline in real terms and pay inequalities ensure those facing discrimination at work suffer more.

UCU resolves to

demand a pay claim with a substantial level of both pay rise and catch up.
launch a pay campaign with extensive public campaigning, stalls and meetings leading to an industrial action ballot for the beginning of 2018.
centre our campaign material around slogans linking breaking the pay cap with closing the equality pay gap, including Break the cap: Close the gap.

(82 words)

National response to punitive deductions

UCU notes

employers have resorted to punitive deductions for partial performance
such punitive deductions undermine members support if the union does not escalate its national action to deter individual employers from taking such action.

UCU resolves

in any industrial action ballot that explains the potential for punitive deductions to also explain the national action UCU will take if such actions occur.
use escalating national strike action where individual employers threaten punitive deductions

(81 words)

USS Pensions

USS pensions formed the second major discussion for the meeting. The threat to our pension scheme was universally recognised by HEC delegates.

We are in the fight of our lives for the future of our pension scheme.

This is not just an issue for older members – indeed the biggest attack will fall on younger colleagues. This fight is about stopping the USS trustee unwinding the entire scheme and replace it with an individual stocks-and-shares saving scheme called “Defined Contribution”. Defined Contribution is a long-term gamble on the stock market, whose performance will tend to have inferior benefits when compared like-for-like with a collective-based Defined Benefit. Any stock market crash will hit employees’ future pensions, and potentially, pensioners.

The 9th November meeting will form a central focal point for elected branch delegates to decide what form the industrial action should take, and to take stock and build a massive campaign. It is crucially important that branches put forward motions and send delegates to the conference.

We think UCU needs to escalate the publicity and get the message out. We need to launch a high-profile campaign in defence of our pensions. Pensions are not separate from pay: they are deferred wages.

The ‘deficit’

UCU needs to take a clear stand on the ‘deficit’. Members are being barraged with propaganda from the USS itself, the supposedly-neutral government body the Pension Regulator and ‘independent pension analysts’. We need to counter that narrative.

The fact is that USS is not in deficit in any real sense, and additional contributions or cuts in benefits are unnecessary. The so-called ‘deficit’ is a projected deficit that only arises as a by-product of projecting forward on the premise that the scheme is wound up! Since this ‘winding-up investment model’ (called ‘de-risking’ under USS’s Test 1 methodology) involves selling higher-performing stocks and shares and buying expensive and low-performing bonds and gilts, it actually means moving the assets into the class of investments hit hardest by Quantitative Easing and Brexit and likely to increase very slowly in value, if at all. Far from reducing risk, it would be self-defeating.

UCU has challenged this valuation method but we need to explain the critique to members.

Working for UCU, First Actuarial have showed that USS is balancing its books. Income and expenditure is projected to match very closely for the foreseeable future. The entire scheme would pay for itself without a need to touch the assets. This means that there is no need to ‘de-risk’ now. Keeping the scheme as it is not only benefits members but is key to maintaining stability in the scheme. USS has gone from being a better scheme than TPS to being worse.

The pressure from the Pension Regulator to value the scheme in a ‘recklessly prudent’ manner arises from rules introduced by the then Blair Labour Government which, ironically, were supposed to protect private sector pensions. But a greedy private sector pension industry has used them to attack the terms of pension schemes, first closing Final Salary and then moving employees from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution schemes. Many private sector workers have seen their pensions cut drastically.

We should not underestimate the role of past governments in introducing rules which have – far from protecting private pensions – undermined the basic employer pension. We should be demanding that the Corbyn-led Labour Party both critically examine whether these regulations have led to a perverse outcome and argue that the pension industry, like housing, should be regulated in the interests of the members of the scheme.

Building the campaign

UCU Left put forward a motion which was passed in an amended form, calling for a national high-profile campaign in defence of pensions. This needs to begin now. Simply dropping an industrial action ballot on members without a publicity campaign, as was done in the e-consultation, is a risky gamble. Moreover, members are reading stories in the FT and THE referring to the deficit as real or inevitable. Most of all, being bounced into a vote does not lead members to have confidence in UCU’s willingness to lead a campaign. Branches need to organise members meetings to debate the future of the USS now. In branches where this has taken place members are convinced of the need to take action to defend our pensions.

As with the e-consultation, which continues until Wednesday, the dispute will be declared formally against our employers, who are refusing to pay more into the scheme, meaning that either employees pay more or receive less. Some, like Southampton have come out publicly in favour of a fully individual DC scheme.

Our industrial action should be inspired by the methods of the successful strike currently underway at Leeds University, where three days of strike are combined with campaigning and debating with students. Members are involved at every level. Their ‘Striking Insights’ teach-outs have proved hugely popular in building the campaign for reclaiming the university.

If our pension campaign links with the campaign to abolish student fees and debt, alongside cutting VC’s pay and ending the marketization of HE, we can effectively resist the cuts to our pensions.

Pensions are our deferred wages. We need to campaign for pensions and campaign for a publicly funded and accountable higher education system.

Below are draft motions available for branches to put forward from their branches to the two conferences on pay and pensions on 9th November.

Suggested Motions to Special HE conference on USS 9th November

Campaigning alongside other disputes and campaigns

This conference believes

Working with other unions in disputes and combining our campaigning alongside other unions in defence of pay, pensions and jobs strengthens our own USS campaign.
Creating solidarity networks with students and community campaigns provides a further avenue for building solidarity.

This conference resolves

Organise public pay and pensions rallies across the UK, stalls and public campaigns across the UK to campaign for pensions.
Seek to involve UCU members in FE and PCS and CWU workers in our campaign and rallies. Similarly invite student unions and community campaigns to support our public events defence of pensions.
Seek to organise, where possible, joint strike action alongside Further Education, PCS and CWU strikes.

(124 words)

Challenging the terms of debate

This conference believes that

USS reports on the basis of its real assets: a surplus of £5bn.
The reporting of a deficit is a recklessly prudent artificial construct ideologically driven by changes in accounting reporting regulation.
Constructing deficits has provided an ideological justification for the privatisation of collective Defined Benefit pension schemes and movement into individual Defined Contribution pension schemes.

This conference resolves

To reaffirm that UCU does not accept the methodology that creates the ‘gilts plus’ deficit.
To state publicly in our literature we do not believe there to be a deficit and not to seek additional contributions from employers to pay for the constructed deficit.
To refuse to accept detrimental changes to the USS pension scheme.

(129 words)

5 December 20165 December 2016

HESC Calling Motion

Motion to call a Higher Education Sector Conference to debate UCU’s HE industrial strategy

Under Rule 16.11, branches from 20 Higher Education institutions must pass this motion to require UCU to convene a HESC. Please use the wording below, especially the wording highlighted. Send all motions passed to UCU HQ c/o Paul Bridge, Head of HE, pbridge@ucu.org.uk.

Motion

This UCU Branch notes

the end of the HE pay round 2016 with a 1.1% pay offer and proposals that branches negotiate locally to reduce casualisation and the gender pay gap;
the passing into law of the Trade Union Act 2016, imposing a 50% turnout on trades disputes, making national industrial action much more difficult unless we can mobilize members to vote;
the developing context of an HE and Research Bill and tuition fee market intended to set universities against each other, that is likely to lead to employers holding down wages to expand, and imposing job losses and casualisation;
the fact that in addition to pay scales, pensions are nationally determined and cannot be defended branch-by-branch.

This UCU Branch believes that UCU urgently needs a new industrial action strategy, one which combines the building of local organization and nationally coordinated local disputes with a revised and renewed commitment to the preservation of national bargaining.

This UCU Branch therefore resolves to call a Special Higher Education Sector Conference under Rule 16.11 to debate UCU’s industrial strategy in Higher Education.

It encourages other branches to adopt a similar resolution with this call for a Special HE Sector Conference.