First off, a big thank-you to all those who have already taken part in industrial action.
Earlier this week our employers made perhaps the meanest decision towards staff in the history of UK higher education, i.e. rejecting UCU’s very modest and affordable way to take USS forward, deciding instead to side with a valuation of our pension when the most of the world’s economy was shut down or heavily impaired at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
University vice chancellors have today chosen to steal tens of thousands from the retirement income of staff. This is a deplorable attack which our members won’t take lying down. If these so-called leaders of higher education thought this was the end of this dispute, they have another thing coming. Jo Grady, UCU General Secretary
For our younger colleagues, or those relatively new to working in higher education, our pay has now been degraded for over a decade – and anyone who thinks the sector will magically award a substantial pay increase this year to compensate at the least for the highest inflation for more than 3 decades is quite simply living in cloud cuckoo land. Plus, don’t forget, for every year our pay deteriorates in relation to inflation, our pensions go down without the actions described above.
We are facing an unprecedented attack on our pensions. It has got to end and the only way to end it is to strike and take action short of strike (ASOS).
The prospect of going on strike can be quite daunting so we have laid out some facts about going on strike and losing pay, how much you can be deducted (it’s often less than people think), where you can get help and how to check your payslip.