By UCU member
As a UCU member in the north of England I am a member of one of the 60 universities which successfully balloted to commit to strike action from Month 25th November to 4th December.
There is a duality to what we are fighting for: there were two separate ballots voted on, one being the continued attacks on our pay and working conditions and the other being the also continued attack on our pensions through the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
I will concentrate here on the pension issue. To give the dispute some context, two years ago we engaged in strike action against an attack on our pensions. We were on strike for 14 days and each week we upped our level of action. The first week was one-day, the second week two days, and so on. It was the longest strike in history of UK higher education and it resulted in a victory.
It was well planned, the action being spread over a month for maximum impact, external examiners resigning and with academic boards (where we officially give students their grades) being threatened should we not reach an agreement. The justification for the change was allegedly that the changing economy could no longer sustain the employer contribution expectation. The changes in pensions would have impacted overwhelmingly on younger staff who had not been paying into the system for decades and would have left us roughly £10,000 a year worse off, on retirement.
Universities backsliding on previous agreement
The logic behind removing us from the scheme was flawed however and the basis for management calculations was inaccurate. The figures of Universities UK (UKK), who represented the universities who were in dispute, were manipulated to suggest that our financial standing was not as healthy as it actually was, so therefore we had to take the hit. The very fact that we came to an agreement highlights that there were ways in which our pension scheme could be managed. Irrespective of any of this, we pay into a pension scheme on the basis that the contributions and conditions are upheld.
We find ourselves back in dispute again because USS are backsliding on the agreement to be transparent. They are not threatening to take us out the pension plan in this instance, but they are trying to change the terms and conditions of our contributions, asking employees contribute more to the scheme.
We won last time and I have no doubts we will win again this time should we show the same level of commitment and solidarity as two years ago. This dispute needs to be put in the wider context: there is an attack on both further and higher education in Britain. Pre-1992 and post-1992 universities have different pension schemes. Post-92 universities are in the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS); this has also been attacked and defended in recent years, most notably by Winchester University and the University of Cumbria, who averted dispute by minutes due to agreeing a deal after a series of members’ meeting across its numerous campuses. There have also been attacks on pay, senior management pay increases and casualisation in all institutions in HE and FE, but these are issues probably best left for a separate article.
We need strong leadership
UCU has a new general secretary in Jo Grady, elected on a platform of radicalism and openly holding a left position. It is time for her to back up her rhetoric and be vocal and visible, and speaking to members. She must get on the picket line so we can ensure that our voices are heard. As always, we would like to avert strike action; it is a last resort. But we need strong leadership to either strike a deal or continue this wave of balloting, to ensure that we don’t backslide further.
The implications of losing are massive. Each institution should see itself as a vanguard; if one of us falls then we will quickly fall in a race to the bottom in terms of pension provision and then it will all be up for grabs. We are fighting for standards, fighting to keep our most capable lecturers and academics and to ensure that higher education in Britain is able to equip people of all backgrounds and all nationalities to contribute and be part of a socialist and progressive Britain.
Academics historically have not been the most radical when it comes to industrial disputes, but the last few years have shown us that when you go after our employment rights, our conditions and our pensions we will fight back. We can be an example to both the wider movement in education, with our comrades in the NEU and an example to the public sector more generally. We are all being attacked by this vicious Conservative government, to quote Marx himself “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”.
November 15, 2019
