Note: This is a crowdfunded legal action separate from the UCU pension dispute. It may be of interest to members and non-members who are in the USS scheme. Updates published on behalf of the team at savepensionsandplanet.org.
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for supporting the USS campaign.
We’re making excellent progress with the crowdfund and are about 65% of the way there. To finish this, we need your help! Almost 90% of the funding for the case has come from almost 10,000 donations from members, £10, £20, or £50 from individual members. We need to wrap up the fundraising so that we can focus on the legal arguments.
Please support the case by:
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- Donating at https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-pensions-and-planet/
- Asking your union branch to support the case using our model motion
- Printing some posters to put up in your school or department; we’ve got one on divesting fossil fuels, one on reversing the pension cuts, and one with more details
- Sending a message to your team, department or school asking them to support the case
- Following us on Twitter
- Tweeting about the case with our model tweets
- Sharing our website at https://savepensionsandplanet.org
UUK, UCU, and USS negotiations – this case is still essential
Do the recent statements from UUK and UCU, which note the possibility of benefit restoration, mean we don’t need to go to the Court of Appeal? No, taking the case to the Court of Appeal is still essential. These statements were made and are likely only possible because of the USS legal action.
A judgement from the Court of Appeal would demonstrate that the USS directors, who run the scheme on our behalf, must act within the law and fulfil their legal obligations to members. If the case is not heard in the Court of Appeal, the directors will conclude that they are unlikely to face any meaningful legal challenge from members. They, and TPR are likely to return to their pre-2021 strategy of ramping up scheme costs to close the DB scheme. The only way to prevent this is by hearing the case in the Court of Appeal.
Please support the case with whatever you can at https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-pensions-and-planet/, so we can win in the Court of Appeal.
As ever, please let me know if you’d rather not receive further emails.
All the best,
Neil, Ewan and the rest of the team