Tag: pensions

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Unity is strength – combine the fight over pensions and pay

Friday’s 1000-strong mass online meeting was an important moment in our union’s USS and Four Fights campaigns. At last, Jo Grady has realised that the technique pioneered by the NEU of using the technology to bring together large numbers of activists can galvanise industrial campaigns.

But it was clear from the meeting that the preference of the General Secretary and the new Head of Bargaining and Organisation, Jon Hegarty, is for the dispute over USS to take precedence while the campaign over pay, casualisation, equality and workload (Four Fights) takes a subordinate position or is deferred.

Jo Grady is right to argue that industrial action is again necessary to defend pensions and that if we can generate the equivalent level of impact to the 14 days of strike in 2018, the fight can be won.

Difference

But though concerted industrial action is also necessary to tackle falling pay and to get meaningful agreements on casualisation, equality and workloads, Grady and Hegarty claimed there was a crucial difference between the two disputes.

They said that while the USS dispute is urgent and is being forced on the union by the acute threat to the pension scheme, the fight for better pay is a longer-term struggle, one whose timing and shape is determined by the union, rather than by the employers. There should be no ‘knee-jerk’ move to an early ballot, they argued.

Instead, we were told to build up the strength of our side by aiming to recruit ‘hundreds of thousands’ of new members, build ‘supermajorities’ and ‘structure-test’ our organisation. The clear implication was that only afterthis process should we consider moving towards industrial action in the Four Fights. 

Bogus

But this distinction between the two disputes is bogus. The attacks on USS have been a long time coming and are part of a general desire by the employers to drive down staffing costs – both pay and pensions – as a result of the marketisation of higher education. And as staff on lower grades, casualised contracts, especially our women and black members will testify, the issue of pay is just as urgent as the attack on pensions. Deferring the Four Fights into the future will simply encourage the employers to freeze pay again as they did last year.

The truth is that pay and pensions are two sides of the same coin and it makes no sense to separate them.

Unity

Just as important is the tactical question of how we achieve maximum unity on our side. A decision to fight only over USS sends a clear message to members in post-92 institutions that the UCU is primarily a union for the old universities. But even within the pre-92 branches, it is our younger members on insecure contracts and low grades that staff the picket lines and provide the dynamism that a successful industrial battle needs. Why would these members be inspired to make sacrifices for a fight in which they have little stake, while the issues that matter to them are deferred to another day?

This is a recipe losing members rather than recruiting them.

At Friday’s meeting, the Chester university and Novus prison educators branches were cited as examples of rapid recruitment and increased density which we should follow. Of course it is important to build our membership and organisation before we enter a fight. But Chester and Novus have recruited as a result ofwaging a determined struggle which demonstrated the point of being in a trade union. If they had waited until they had certain density or a ‘supermajority’ before they took action, the jobs would have been lost and membership would have stagnated.

Special HESC

Thursday’s Special Sector Conference needs to pass those motions which clearly mandate the union to organise an immediate and coordinated battle over pensions, pay, casualisation, equality, and workloads. Head office must implement those motions whether the General Secretary agrees with them or not. There is now some urgency. If we are going to get the action we need this term, the circulation of campaign materials to every branch along with help from regional offices in drawing up GTVO plans for the ballots must start now.

Come to the UCU Left pre-HESC meeting to discuss the motions and prepare for Thursday.

Register here for the meeting.

Mark Abel, University of Brighton and NEC

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Strike to defend USS pensions – Link the fight to pay, casualisation and equality

UCU’s USS negotiators are angry that the employer proposals to slash benefits have been voted through on the chair’s casting vote at the Joint Negotiating Committee.  This will mean that benefits are cut by at least 21% and probably a lot more if inflation is high for a few years. 

The three elements of the cut are:

  • Reducing accrual rates from 1/75 to 1/85:  This is a cut of 12% which affects all members.
  • Reducing salary threshold for defined benefits (DB) from nearly £60,000 to £40,000.  This may be a further step in moving to defined contributions (DC) pensions.  
  • Reducing inflation protection to 2.5%.  This will be devastating if we have a few years of high inflation as happened e.g. in the 1980s.

UCU rightly condemns the employers’ intransigence and unwillingness to work with us to put real pressure on the trustee company to cancel the unnecessary Covid valuation and the October contribution increases and replace them with a moderately prudent evidence based 2021 valuation.

It is a step forward that UCU is now organising a mass meeting for members on Friday. This needs to be fully interactive and modelled on the NEU’s approach and that adopted by Liverpool UCU in their successful dispute.

However, we now need industrial action to overturn the JNC decision and save USS.  Otherwise, our pensions will be whittled away until they are worth very little or contributions will spiral up.  Neither are acceptable.  

All the evidence is that current benefits can be paid out of current contributions or indeed from lower contributions of 26%.  There is no need to make any cuts and certainly no need to accepte detriment to the current contribution and benefits in the scheme.

Our action needs to start in the second part of the autumn terms.  We are therefore calling for delegates to vote against motion 1 and to vote for  motions 2-6, particularly 2, 3 and 4 on industrial action at the forthcoming Special Higher Education Sector Conference (SHESC) on the 9th September. 

The UCU proposals were a tactical choice that UCU Left negotiators did not support and which was counter to decisions of the June HE sector conference.  They would have led to a very significant cut to benefits, almost as bad as the employer proposals.   Meeting with employers locally to try to persuade them to provide covenant support for these proposals will divert energy from what is needed now – building for a ballot on industrial action.  

As indicated in the motions to SHESC we need to take action to defend our defined benefit pensions without any cuts to current benefits. We also favour motions calling for lower contributions with the same benefits for all members for lower paid members.  Governance reform, to throw out 2020 Covid valuation and get a moderately prudent evidence based approach in the future should also be supported.

We also need to remember that we cannot disassociate pensions from pay. A united campaign  to defend out pensions in pre-92 universities should not be separated from the pay campaign across both pre- and post-92 universities.

We encourage branches, regions/developed nations and groups of members to urgently hold meetings to help Get the Vote Out and we are happy to come and talk.

UCU Left USS negotiators
Marion Hersh – marion.hersh@glasgow.ac.uk
Deepa Govindarajan Driver – deepadriver@protonmail.com

UCU Left pre-HESC meeting:
Build the fight for pensions, pay and equality in HE
6pm, Monday 6th September

Register here

This week’s decision by USS makes it imperative that the the forthcoming Special HE Sector Conference (HESC) on 9th September initiates a serious campaign of industrial action in defence of university pensions. 

But this fight can’t be waged at the expense of deferring a fight over pay and pay-related issues. The only way to unite the union against the attacks we face in higher education is to fight over pay, pay inequality and casualisation as well as pensions. It is important that the HESC commits the union to a concerted campaign over both the USS and Four Fights disputes, including a timetable for ballots and action.

This meeting will review the agenda for the HESC and is open to all UCU members, especially HESC delegates, who wish to see a serious fightback in HE this academic year. It will be addressed by USS and JNCHES negotiators Marion Hersh, Deepa Driver, Marian Mayer and Sean Wallis.

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UCU Left Meeting – USS crisis: pensions under threat

Monday 9th August 5:00pm

Speakers include UCU Left members on the UCU SWG: Marion Hersh, Deepa Driver and Sunil Banga

Register by clicking here

USS is in crisis and our pensions are under threat, but it’s the artificial valuation not the funding of the scheme that is the problem. This crisis is however now also evident in the majority of the UCU leadership who are abandoning UCU policy to defend members’ pensions and are committed to working within the framework of the 2020 valuation.

UCU’s refusal to implement the decisions of the sector Conference in May and now their counter-proposals to UUK and USS within the 2020 valuation risks massive cuts to members’ benefits, undermining any legal action and most importantly undermining attempts to win members to industrial action. The failure of leadership is also leading to individual branches, such as Oxford and Cambridge, to seek worse outcomes for members by selling illusions in alternative Conditional Indexation schemes. These schemes failed in the past when used for endowment mortgages and their failure lies with the corrupt management of financial institutions managing member’s contributions.

There will be no solution to the USS crisis without changes to the management of the scheme. It isn’t funding that is the problem, nor is it benefits available it is the failed management of the scheme and their concoction of a nonsensical valuation.

The Special Higher Education Sector Conference on 9th September will be the focus for halting this retreat on pensions. UCU Left is organising this emergency meeting to stop this crisis and prepare for the 9th September conference.

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HE Strike Bulletin #1

Take back the university – Unite and Fight

Lobby of UUK, 2018

UCU members have achieved something many thought impossible. We bust through the Tory anti-union threshold of 50% turnout in sixty universities. Activists have breathed new life into the campaign to defend USS, and broadened the fight to the post-92 universities, winning ballots on pay, equality, casualisation and workload.

Democracy, struggle and ballots

This happened thanks to the flowering of democracy in the union. The 2018 strike movement demanded accountability of union leaders in congresses and conferences. One general secretary election, a turbulent congress, recall congress and democracy commission later and we have a renewed determination to fight at the grassroots.

We also have a new general secretary from the left, and a left-activist HE leadership (see below for next year’s candidates). Now 80% of members in the USS pre-92 universities are on strike. The remainder are in branches whose turnout was less than 10% short of that required – in some cases they were only a few votes short. Many post-92 colleges were also close to the 50% turnout.

A reballot campaign – aligned to the strike campaign – can bring them out.

But branches seeking a rapid reballot have not been supported at HQ. Three weeks after the ballot results came out, we should be starting repeat ballots at the beginning of the strike wave. HEC voted to relaunch the ballot campaign to allow branches to join a second wave of strikes. Branches need to demand a reballot now.

Uniting to win

Now post-92 universities have joined the fightback. The ‘four fights’ campaign unites the sector. In total, nearly two thirds of the union’s HE membership are striking in defence of pay, against casualisation, escalating workload and – perhaps most importantly of all – to close the appalling gender and race pay gaps that blight our sector.

Members in post-92 universities were unable to take action in 2018. They were able to deliver solidarity to their pre-92 colleagues. But the astonishing mass strike movement in the colleges inevitably centred on the ‘old’ universities. The action has spread to post-92.

After the gold rush

Post-92 universities bore the first, shattering brunt of this market attack, suffering devastating cuts and closures. Students pay more, staff earn less. And future taxpayers will pay for it.

In the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems claimed that scrapping tuition fees was “non negotiable”. Then they did a U-turn to enter a coalition with the Tories. That ConDem government tripled fees to £9,000 a year and part-abolished the block grant. Then in 2014 they removed limits on student recruitment, unleashing the gold rush and war-of-all-against-all we see today.

Since then university management greed has expanded courses and student numbers. Over £10bn was borrowed for new campuses and buildings. The Treasury’s tuition fee debt mountain is now around £100bn, half of which will never be repaid.

University employers are gradually waking up to the reality that this gold rush must come to an end. Augar proposed cutting the home student fee to £7,500 a year. This would wipe out profit margins universities are banking on.

The importance of this general election to change course cannot be understated. Both the Labour and Green Party manifestos call for abolishing tuition fees and bringing the HE market under control.

Despite record surpluses as much as £2bn a year, pay has been cut by 20% in real terms over the last ten years. Fee-market uncertainty encourages expansion at the expense of job insecurity. Workload has skyrocketed. Workload and job insecurity are two sides of the same coin: the whip of the causal contract driving up workload for all.

Market competition and secrecy means UCL does not know what Imperial has borrowed or whether its sums add up, and vice versa. USS depends on a ‘mutuality’ principle (all universities share pension risk in case one goes bankrupt). This is undermined by mutual distrust and corporate self-interest. That is why a government guarantee to underpin the scheme makes sense.

We can win

Our demands are ridiculously reasonable. The sector is making record surpluses. In many colleges, interest payments on borrowing exceed the few extra million apiece that would be needed to settle this dispute. But if the Treasury needs to help out, so what? This is a national dispute, universities are a national asset, and we need a national settlement.

In pre-92, if UUK agreed to end the fictional ‘de-risking’ USS valuation model, they would immediately recoup 3.1% of salary costs. USS does not need extra contributions. Between 2017 and 2019, its assets grew by £10bn to £74bn. The increases USS is demanding cannot yield more than £1bn over the next two years.

This strike is a warning shot. Eight days show we are serious. By uniting together we have the power to shut down the whole sector. We may need to strike next year.

Fighting for the future

Our strikes prove that the university is the staff. The ‘academic team’ is the entire staff body, from porter to professor. Education is the gift each generation nurtures and hands to the next. Thus universities are central to ensuring that climate science is implemented, and the world economy is moved onto a sustainable basis.

We stand with our students, and the rest of society. University funding is a pact with society: academic freedom is a freedom of a free society. We stand in solidarity with student and staff protesters in Hong Kong and other countries where those rights are being trampled on. We stand against all who would divide us by race, religion, sexuality, gender or physical ability.

Everyone has the right to benefit from a free education. Its time to unite and fight for the future of Higher Education – and for a freer, more sustainable society for all.

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Higher Education Committee (HEC) report of meeting 29th June 2018

 

UCU Congress 2018 Voting

Pay

The successful consultative pay ballot of members demonstrated 82% rejection on a 48% turnout and 65% for extended strike action. HEC voted to initiate an industrial action ballot from August through September ending in early October. A pay campaign over pay casualisation, pay inequality and workloads has the potential to galvanise the membership across both pre- and post-92 universities. This is a record turnout for an e-consultation on pay for the union. The strength of feeling over these issues can be gauged by the report that only one branch in the whole of the UK (a very small branch in a university where UCU does not have recognition agreement) voted to accept the offer.

While real ballots result in higher turnouts, and despite such a high vote in the e-consultation, there is a need to avoid complacency and instead work to ensure branches mobilise around the Get the Vote Out Campaign. Debate at HEC ensured that the ballot will not start until the end of August and continue into October with escalating and sustained strike action in November unless there is a major improvement in the pay offer being made. Pay briefing meetings in the devolved nations and regions with a Special HE Sector Conference in September are also being planned.

Pensions

UCU has agreed to timetable a Special HESC when the JEP reports, which will be empowered to take the dispute forwards. It is possible that not a lot will happen over the summer. And in practice the Special HESC can vote to reinstate a proper dispute committee (see section on democracy below), composed proportionate to branch size and with voting and decision-making capacities, at that time. The latest statement from the JEP can be found here.

Casualisation

A motion on casualised pension rights was discussed by HEC. The discussion reflected the increasing profile of casualised issues within UCU.  The success of the USS dispute particularly helped to raise the wider issues of marketisation, equalities, and casualisation and to galvanise members on picket lines and in teach outs. An obvious disparity highlighted by the USS fight is that many casualised members and lower paid permanent members cannot access pension rights or cannot afford to pay for pensions.  Added to this their contributions are often recorded inaccurately or there are gaps. They often work in two or more institutions across the sectors and can rarely afford to retire. Yet they stood in solidarity with their permanent colleagues fighting for a different kind of higher education system.

Now casualised members are calling for union wide solidarity and a resolve from their UCU brothers and sisters to fight for pension rights for workers on all types of contracts in both sectors. This motion sought to get this issue on the table and for a union wide conversation to be had on pension rights for casualised workers. Though it was agreed that welfare benefits are also an important issue we resolved to focus on pension rights. HEC agreed to ask the Education committee to table a speaker on casualisation and pensions at the Cradle to Grave conference; that there would be a meeting held  ACC would discuss pension provision across HE and that we would do some work, with resources, to enable UCU to provide specialist guidance to branches. This was supported by the whole HEC and passed unanimously.

Now for the less good parts of the HEC

Motions not discussed

A number of important motions were not discussed due to running out of time:

  1. Business School workloads, partly motivated by a tragic death due to overwork
  2. Practical proposals for implementing a sector conference motion on military and industrial research: there is increasing pressure to get research funding and concerns by many members about ethical issues.
  3. Victimisation of striking members in the USS dispute; one of the remitted motions from the recent sector conference and there is great concern by the branch. UCU has transformed.  We cannot allow victimisation.
  4. Resisting the far right and supporting Black and ethnic minority students, motivated by a Black member pointing out the serious discrimination experienced by Black PhD students.
  5. UUK visit to Egypt, motivated by discussion on the activists’ list and concern that links with other countries need to be ethical and UUK did nothing when Guilio Regeni was tortured and murdered.
  6. Funding UCU casualised workers to attend a joint union training and funding a banner and placards for a joint union anti-casualisation march. This is motivated by the experiences of casualised workers and would be important in supporting our pay campaign and making other unions aware of the particular experiences of casualised workers in HE and FE.

Papers

Important papers on precarious work and workload were presented, but there was no time for discussion.  Equally important papers on the rate for the job and how sector conference motions will be implemented were not even presented.

Improved organisation of meetings

Both HEC and NEC are experiencing serious problems in getting through the agenda.  Members’ motions regularly fall of the agenda.  As indicated above, these are often vitally important issues which are brought by NEC members, often in response to concerns from branches.  They are therefore part of how elected members are accountable and respond to grassroots concerns.  There are views that this is deliberate.  Whether or not this is the case, it is of the utmost importance to ensure this does not happen in the future.  Positive changes could include moving members’ motions much earlier in the agenda, limiting the number of speakers on an issue (on a for and against basis, as at Congress, and possibly also neither) and providing a written list of the items motions are assigned to rather than spend half an hour discussing this.

UCU Democracy

Another frustrating day saw the dead weight of the majority HEC members around the so-called ‘Independent Broad Left’ (IBL) and bureaucracy trying to overturn Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) decisions on transparency and democracy. The right wing of the HEC (IBL) decided that the HESC motion which called for the setting up of a national strike/dispute committee with representatives elected on the same basis as the HESC formula (so retaining proportionality to branch size) really meant that HESC delegates should elect a subset of their number as the dispute committee.

The entire motion was written because of defects of Branch Consultation Meetings which had no standing in the union rules, and no voting powers. These defects were made explicit for the entire union to see on March 23rd 2018, when infamously no vote was taken on putting the UUK offer to members. As a result members are still arguing about what different branches’ positions were on that day.

The solution, enshrined in motion HE13 (copied in the Appendix below), was a voting assembly of members proportionate to branch size. This is the same method for electing delegates to the Higher Education Sector Conference, which is enshrined in rules. The idea was to duplicate that structure, but eliminate some of the bureaucractic encumberances.

The IBL voted against this and argued that “composed of” did not mean “composed of all”. The IBL did this because the last two HESCs have voted overwhelmingly for motions that the IBL do not approve of. Members voted for transparency and accountability of the JEP, but also of the union’s structures. They argued for more democracy not less.

Appendix

HE13  Composite: USS dispute: national dispute committee – University College London, Goldsmiths University of London. 

HESC notes:

  1. the reaction of USS branches to the March 12 ‘agreement’ demonstrated that members want a resolution which protects Defined Benefit pensions now and in the future
  2. concerns from many branches and members about the processes concerning the consultative ballot on the USS offer of 23rd March
  3. the lack of transparency about the role of UCU negotiators in the USS negotiations and the lack of opportunities to hold union representatives to account
  4. members feel disempowered nationally, compared to the high level of ownership they feel in relation to the dispute locally
  5. while some aspects of negotiations are confidential, to maintain a sense of ownership of the dispute among the membership and to maintain members’ resolve to take industrial action, members must know how negotiations are progressing.

HESC resolves to establish a national USS dispute committee composed of HESC delegates (or substitutes) from USS branches, to which national negotiators and UCU Independent Expert Panel members will report. This committee will meet at regular intervals until the dispute is officially terminated and will give a representative steer to the dispute for the current valuation round, including during any suspension or re-ballot.

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The vote is YES: Unite to Defend USS

Members know they have to fight to defend their pensions. But despite the weakness of the UUK offer, the hope that the Independent Expert Panel might sort out the valuation and reduce the ‘deficit’ swayed most members to vote Yes. Of course, members were influenced by the four emails from our General Secretary, Sally Hunt, urging them to accept. Even if they did not agree with her argument, the fact that she took such a strong stance for Yes gave members the impression they were being abandoned by the union leadership, and that UCU would not fight to win if they voted No.

Most members did not get a chance to discuss the offer with colleagues before voting because they were on leave over the break. Branch meeting after branch meeting reported that when members did discuss the offer they concluded it was right to vote No.

A Yes vote does not mean that the dispute is over. Far from it. The union now has a complicated dual task: keeping up the pressure for the best outcome from the Independent Expert Panel and, at the same time, maintaining our organisation so that if the outcome is a pension cut – as is likely – we are able to ballot for industrial action and carry it out effectively.

A Yes vote does not necessarily mean stopping the strikes. USS bodies or the Pension Regulator may sabotage the offer. There would be huge anger if this happens and we will need to put the action on.

Indeed, maintaining our ability to restart strike action like the fantastic 14 days last term is our best leverage to get the outcome we want from the Independent Expert Panel. UCU has seen gigantic picket lines with hundreds of members on them.

Members have gained in confidence as they have learned that their strike action can stop the university. Graduate teaching assistants, hourly-paid staff, researchers and other staff on casualised contracts have been the mainstay of many picket lines.
We can take demonstrative action short of strikes. Branches should continue to campaign and protest, and target UUK and hawkish employers. We can take protest action even if strikes are called off.

This Yes vote is not a vote in confidence in the UUK! Members do not trust the employers, or the USS scheme actuaries who promote the idea that the USS scheme is in deficit. This ‘deficit’ is allegedly bigger than in 2014, despite assets having boomed by 12% pa for the last five years to £60bn. Members know the ‘deficit’ is not real but a mathematical extrapolation. Change the assumptions and the projected deficit grows or shrinks. So when the UUK referred to ‘affordability’ and ‘broadly comparable’ pensions, our members are unconvinced.

This is why it is important that UCU should spell out to all concerned, including the employers, that our aim is to secure the best outcome for members in the current valuation: the status quo or better. Members voted for strikes and joined the union because they are sick of cuts in their pensions.

This is perfectly achievable. If the ‘deficit’ shrinks to around £3bn or so, or the employers accept a greater level of risk, there will be no need for either increased contributions or reduced scheme benefits. A ‘no cuts’ (‘no detriment’ or ‘status quo’) outcome is possible, even if the employers do not want to make this commitment in advance.

What we need to do

We will need a strategy with several elements.

First of all, UCU will need to maintain branches at a high level of readiness to restart action should any aspect of the Independent Expert Panel process unravel. Branches that voted to reject the offer could use their strike mandate to demand commitments of compensation from their employer for any losses arising from the Expert Panel report. (It is after all what UCU said at the beginning of the dispute.)

At the same time we need to be clear what we are fighting for. In the USS e-ballot the idea of seeking an upfront commitment to ‘no detriment’ was opposed by the General Secretary. This is a strategic question on which we might disagree. But the demand for no detriment is just a basic trade union position of opposing cuts! UCU needs to set the record straight. UCU must clarify in its public statements that our central objective is to protect USS against cuts in value for money for scheme members, and any changes will be evaluated against that goal.

Reaffirming existing policy, UCU should openly and publicly campaign against a de-risking investment strategy for USS, lobbying employers and the Government to support it. If the current de-risking plan is abandoned, the ‘deficit’ will shrink, abandon de-risking and even disappear.

To facilitate the debate and to advance the union’s position within it, UCU should call a Pension Conference open to the public, at which members of the Expert Panel will be invited to participate.

The second aspect concerns internal union democracy and debate. The various national meetings and the e-ballot has caused reps and activists to be rightly concerned about who makes decisions in the union and how these are made. UCU’s Higher Education Committee (HEC) did not vote for UCU to recommend a Yes vote, but the General Secretary sent four emails asking members to vote to accept. This must not happen again.

UCU must immediately call a recall delegates meeting and recall HEC. The delegates meeting should be constituted on the same basis as a Higher Education Sector Conference in terms of delegate entitlements and rights to call votes. We believe that the HEC should get behind the call (already made by twelve branches) for a special Higher Education Sector Conference to discuss the USS dispute. UCU should expressly invite branches to submit Late Motions on the conduct of the dispute to the scheduled Higher Education Sector Conference in May.

The union will need to determine democratically the process for electing members of the Independent Expert Panel, and how the process will be monitored and reported to members. As soon as the process, parameters and timescale is known, branches and reps will need to understand how they can feed into it, crucially, in extracting commitments from their own employers.

Finally, we have to begin a debate about how to prepare for the next round of strikes. UCU’s Commission on Effective Industrial Action was set up at last Congress to review our industrial action strategy. We think that it now could have a useful role in developing the debate in USS branches. We propose that members of the Commission should tour branches to debate its conclusions and review the lessons of the dispute. We need to debate among reps the next steps and prepare the ground for winning a future Industrial Action Ballot and taking future action should this prove necessary.

The best way to secure the best outcome for members’ pensions is to remain organised and vigilant. We must plan to restart our action with the confidence that members know their strikes are effective. Beware the risk that the employers will try to use the academic calendar to their advantage: announcing cuts in the summer, say, or playing the long game and announcing cuts next March forcing us to ballot for action hitting exams. We should be confident that our members will rise to the challenge. What will matter is that union branches organise the necessary meetings, debates and initiatives to allow them to do so.

What do we do about the General Secretary and the Higher Education Committee?

The General Secretary must not be allowed to substitute for the elected negotiators. Yet she negotiated the UUK offer behind the back of the elected negotiators and HEC. Worse, she publicly quoted the employers’ resistance to the union’s demands as a reason for the union putting the offer to members. Then she put her name to repeated messages to members urging them to vote Yes, despite the fact that the HEC only voted to put the e-ballot to members, not to make a recommendation to vote Yes or No.

Members are right to be angry about this. Several branches have passed messages of ‘no confidence’ in the General Secretary. We have no desire to personalise the issue but she must publicly affirm that negotiations must go through the proper channels. And if she is not prepared to carry out UCU policy then she should stand down altogether.

As for the HEC, there remains a general question about how decisions are conducted and reported, and who HEC members are accountable to. What is clear is that we need to build new democratic structures to conduct the dispute and not trust the HEC to get everything right.

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Kill off DC – and fight for more

Dear colleague

It is Monday evening after Day 10 of our strike. UCU Left HEC members are quite rightly being bombarded with texts, emails and tweets calling for #NoCapitulation.

UCU has two tasks: to kill off 100% Defined Contribution (DC) and fight for more.

We have come to a crunch point in the USS dispute.

What is on the table

This offer is an improvement on 100% Defined Contribution. Therefore if the USS JNC votes to take DC off the table and replace it with a shoddy compromise, that is an important step forward.

By all means, let’s get rid of DC. UCU reps should vote with UUK in the JNC machinery to kill off the existing 100% DC imposed proposal.

So that’s step 1.

But scrapping 100% DC is not enough

First of all, just taking into account the accrual rate and contribution increase, this offer is a swingeing cut. It is at least a 19% cut in pension value. That is before you think about the effect of CPI capping and lowering the threshold.

  • It is a three-year deal at most. The employers will come back for more in three years’ time.
  • Don’t trust an “expert’s group” to solve the problem. Whoever picks the experts picks the outcome.

Our negotiators had a gun pointed at their heads. A gun of “accept this or get DC”. A compromise was born. It doesn’t necessarily mean negotiators are selling out. This compromise is what happens when you work within the projected deficit and face the threat of 100% DC.

But ordinary members are not prisoners of the negotiation process.

We have to keep up the fight

That’s step 2.

Therefore, at Tuesday’s meeting, it is essential HEC and delegates vote against suspending the action on the basis of the offer. We have to show to the entire sector and the public that the fight is not over. Our own members expect this as an absolute minimum.

We should therefore take the action we have already called and keep our strikes on this week.

We should also argue for a NO vote.

HEC can’t vote to end the dispute, but it could agree to send it out to members in an e-ballot.

At the delegate meeting, we should vote no to putting it out to members by e-ballot. But if it is put out to members by e-ballot, we have to argue for voting no in our branches.

This means challenging the deficit that generates the cut.

What is our alternative?

The most straightforward position is to demand no change from the current scheme (status quo) and call for a government guarantee to underwrite the pension scheme. This is straightforward, logical, and easy to understand.

This is also a realistic prospect, provided that we unite around this demand.

Members have been out in the snow and rain. A new union has been born. We are in a stronger position than ever before.

We have to use the last few days of strikes to assemble around the demand for #NoCapitulation #NoDeficit.

For everyone in London – come on Wednesday’s demonstration from Malet Street to Parliament Square. Assembles at 12 Noon. Rally in Westminster Central Hall.

Let’s debate where we are and what we do next!