Tag: UUK

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USS pensions: prepare now for escalating strike action

Planet Pay & Pensions demonstration in London

We enter the new semester knowing, yet again, the resolve of UCU members to fight for the defence of higher education.

Our strikes before Xmas, involving 60 universities and 48,000 staff, were at similar levels – and often higher – than our 2018 strikes. Recruitment to the union is again rising rapidly and involvement on the picket lines and in the Teach-Outs demonstrates the return of the organising spirit that typified the action in 2018.

We now have a further 38 institutions balloting to join the action over USS and the ‘Four Fights one Dispute’ pay inequalities campaigns. These branches all voted overwhelmingly for action first time round, but did not exceed the Tory anti-union law’s 50% threshold for turnout. Escalation of the action to other universities and setting of further dates of strike action will continue to place pressure on employers to settle both the USS and pay inequalities disputes.

On 30 January, the Higher Education Committee (HEC) of UCU meets. It must sanction the call voted on by delegates to the Special Higher Education Sector Conference to launch a further 14 days of escalating action from mid-February over USS. HEC must also link this with the pay inequalities dispute by announcing the same 14 days for this dispute. There must be no wavering in our resolve to fight for the whole sector and leave no one behind in any settlement.

Members’ resolve should not come as a surprise to us, for the simple reason that the underlying problems besetting the sector are not being addressed. We may have knocked back attempts to abolish the defined benefit pension scheme but casualisation, excessive workloads and pay inequalities remain just as intensely as they did previously.

And, it was these issues and more that lay beneath the original USS strikes.

Debt-based Higher Education

The crisis in the sector is one of marketisation, leaving students with unsustainable debts, de-valued education and a workforce at breaking point.

The £9,250 student fee system has led to a speculative and unsustainable debt-driven expansion of the Higher Education sector across the whole of the UK. Even where there are no student fees, such as Scotland, institutions are acting as if they are in the English system and are chasing full fee-paying students from the rest of the UK and internationally.

The UK has adopted the US system of debt-based Higher Education, but it is in crisis just as it is in the US. The UK Government slipped out figures for outstanding student loans just before Xmas of £121 billion (already 87% of the total NHS budget) and expect this to rise to £450bn by mid-century.

The Financial Times on 29 December reported that US student debt has already reached $1.5 trillion, or 8% of GDP. Thousands of students will be left with unsustainable levels of debt and be forced into bankruptcy, just as is now the case in the US. Equally as bad, universities will go bust if the tuition fee is cut as the Augar Review recommended. This will leave thousands of students with an unfinished degree.

In 2019, the biggest private provider GSM London went bust, leaving 3,500 students with no degree or university to study in. The mis-named ‘Office for Students’ claimed it was none of their business, as they did not regulate the company.

Take the Initiative

We now have to learn some lessons. First we need to ensure UCU backs its members’ demands for action to stop the crisis in Higher Education.

This means defending our no-detriment and no-deficit view of the USS pension scheme. The USS valuation is a fraud, and we must not accept any settlement which fails to recognise this and ensure that no future deficit valuation can be artificially constructed. This means an end to Test 1, valuations based on real returns prudently adjusted and no shifting of risk onto members.

We also need to ensure there is no settlement over USS without a settlement of the ‘Four Fights’ campaign. We should not allow employers to play divide and rule.

UCU members also now need to take the initiative in the strike by organising locally and UK-nationally for a strike committee. The #NoCapitulation moment in 2018, when we stopped a sell-out, demonstrated the power of an active member-led union. We need to return to that momentum and ensure elected striking delegates are those taking the decisions on the future of the dispute.

Finally, we need to plan for our strikes by linking up with students, twinning with branches that are balloting to ensure they can join the action and organising branches to meet and vote on support for the 14 days.

JEP2: More Democracy needed

The Second JEP report was released on 13 December with no fanfare and almost no reporting. This is not a surprise as it is a damp squib failing to grapple with the crisis in USS. Whilst it quite rightly rejects ‘sectionalisation’ of the scheme as costly, the undermining of the collective covenant and the unravelling of a single pension scheme across the sector, it suggests regressive changes allowing ‘flexible’ pensions as something to consider.

Worse still, it completely fails to understand the disaster of governance at the heart of USS. Criticism of the involvement of elected members representing UCU members as a stakeholder is completely retrograde. The governance weaknesses it identifies has its origins in too little not too much democracy in USS.

The Second JEP Report would clearly be swept under the carpet by USS and UUK if it didn’t offer carrots to give them opportunities to undermine the scheme. We should not fall for this. UCU should make it clear the recommendations of the Second JEP Report are inadequate to settle the current USS dispute.

We want No detriment, No deficit and nothing less.

Carlo Morelli UCU Scotland President

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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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Now vote No and continue the fight – #RejectUUKDeal

Branches wanted ‘Revise and Resubmit’, but HEC votes to put the UUK deal to members.

Now vote No and continue the fight. #RejectUUKDeal

Download leaflet here

HEC has voted to move to immediately ballot members on the UUK proposals. All UCU Left members voted against the proposal.

Overwhelmingly branches believe the current offer is insufficient to put out to ballot of members. More than half of branches held meetings, consulted through ballots and email consultations and mandated delegates to vote for further clarification over the employers proposals before a ballot on the proposals went to members.

Additional information and movement by UUK and the Pension Regulator reported to the meeting verbally, while welcome, as is more positive words from the employers, demonstrates that the current proposal is not the final version.

Branch after branch reported similar experiences: initial support and indication that the employers were finally listening to members, increasing scepticism as the detail was examined, and an increasing desire to engage in further talks, #ReviseAndResubmit being the common hashtag. Some branch delegates suggested the additional verbal report and a letter from UUK provided on the day suggested these clarifications were sufficient for now moving to ballot members – but very many others argued for further clarifications.

A good number of branches recorded majority votes for insisting that the union should go back to the UUK and demand a ‘no detriment’ clause in the agreement. This would mean that the employers would accept they could not make detrimental changes to USS from the point of view of members in the current valuation round.

The lack of trust in the employers is a uniform theme throughout the union. Members also identified a belief that job cuts are now becoming a focus of employers such as Liverpool and Open University, as they lose ground in the fight over pensions.

UCU Left members submitted motions to the HEC calling for negotiators to return to UUK with further demands. These included proposals for changing the valuation framework, addressing employers’ historic contribution reductions, protecting casualised staff, demanding a ‘no detriment’ clause after April 2019, and insisting that any ballot would need to be timed to come after a decision of the USS Board and the Pension Regulator. They also submitted motions on creating a clear process and on transparency in industrial decision making. The chair asserted (illogically) that all of these motions would fall if the HEC passed the report from officials.

HEC voted by a small majority to pass the HEC report to move to a ballot immediately. All UCU Left members voted against the HEC report. The chair then ruled that motions submitted by other HEC members therefore fell and were not voted on.

Carlo Morelli and Sean Wallis

Acceptance of HEC proposal – For 10: Against 8 (UCU Left): Abstentions 1

 

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USS: Now we’re talking! Time to fight for #NoDetriment

By Sean Wallis – vice president, UCL UCU and UCU NEC member

Dear colleagues

We are on the brink of what may turn out to be an historic victory in USS.

We have come a long way from 100% DC being imposed. Mass strike action by our members took us here. The threat of mass strike action in the future is what is motivating the employers now.

But there is an obvious risk in the current proposal.

Fundamentally, the agreement does not prevent the employers agreeing to set up a panel, and then, when USS’s books are opened, find an even bigger deficit, come back in a year’s time and then railroad through changes in the scheme.

The key issue is the following bullet point.

  • The panel will make an assessment of the valuation. If in the light of that contributions or benefits need to be adjusted in either direction, both parties are committed to agree to recommend to the JNC and the trustee, measures aimed at stabilising the fund to provide a guaranteed pension broadly comparable with current arrangements.

The problem with a new arrangement “broadly comparable with the existing arrangements” is that it is not specific.

How broad is “broadly”? Is a DC scheme “broadly” comparable with DB?

The employers seemed to think so in January. AON was engaged to report that 100% DC was only 10-20% worse than the existing DB scheme. PWC threatened dire problems in the scheme.

We are in an extremely strong position to push the employers one important stage further, as below:

  • The panel will make an assessment of the valuation. If in the light of that contributions or benefits need to be adjusted in either direction, both parties are committed to agree to recommend to the JNC and the trustee, measures aimed at stabilising the fund to provide a guaranteed pension whereby employees neither pay more nor receive less than the current arrangements. To achieve this the employers will either pay more into the pension scheme, extend their temporary line of credit, or reach an agreement with the government to support the scheme.

We propose therefore that as it stands the offer Not Be Put to members by e-ballot. Instead the negotiators should go back into negotiations on this point.

If it is put out to members by e-ballot then there will be no chance to nail this down. First one negotiates and then consults. So consulting would delay resolution.

The negotiators should go back to the employers and insist that they agree that there should be no detriment to members as a result of this new valuation process.

For 30 years we had Final Salary. #NoDetriment was the norm.

In the last two valuation rounds we have had two severe detriments. I see no basis for accepting detrimental changes to USS, now or next year.

Let’s nail this down now. If the employers accept this they get one further advantage to them. If they meet our claim in full, we don’t need an e-ballot!

We will simply have won, and our ballot mandate will then end.

By Sean Wallis – vice president, UCL UCU and UCU NEC member