Save university pensions, and save the planet – we are going to court

Save university pensions, and save the planet is a crowdfunded legal action separate from the main 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 Friends and Colleagues

We’ve taken a big decision – we’re going to the Court of Appeal no matter what on 13 of June – and that’s why we need your help more than ever!

We’re so close to our fundraising target – and although this is an action that we all share in – over 10,000 donors, over 25 university branches, and thousands more who supported through publicity and pickets – Ewan and Neil are the only two claimants on the hook for costs if we lose. Our fund target is our costs, plus the far bigger estimated cost of rip-off lawyers that the USS directors hired to cover up their abuse of power, and greenwash their toxic addiction to gas, oil and coal. But even though we’re only 90% of the way in fundraising, we are 100% going through with it. We are determined, and you deserve a fair pension and a living planet.

So, please help us by giving another £10 – the price of a sandwich and a coffee these days – and ask your university branch to send out an email to all staff asking for support.

And don’t buy the nonsense PR: we’ve got USS and UUK to announce that the cuts can be reversed, together, by using every tool in the box: that’s our legal action suing the directors personally, and our collective solidarity. The cuts aren’t being reversed because the markets improved, or university employers suddenly became nice, or any of them became financially literate. They announced they could reverse the cuts just after we got leave to go to the Court of Appeal, and now they’re scrambling to repeat the same as their sorry record of failure is being hauled before the Court of Appeal.

And don’t buy the line that our case doesn’t matter at UCU Congress – the officials in charge need to follow the rulebook and the NEC and implement motions L5, and HE18 if it passes, to finance the case (a few thousand more for the Court of Appeal, and £350k if we need to go to the UK Supreme Court) or even to help us with publicity with a few emails or even some tweets. (You’d think that Twitter had suddenly become the union’s least favourite medium!) UCU accounts from last year showed £31 million cash in the bank, the risks are limited to what we quoted, this action is worth billions to us all, and this is action is worth £200k each for a typical member. We know you see this, and that’s another reason we’re so grateful for everything we’ve all done together. We’ve almost got the cuts reversed even without winning, and now we need to close the deal.

So please keep helping and publicising our case: give £10, ask your branch to mail all members, and give us a plug on social media @PensionsPlanet on Twitter. As we get closer to the date we expect the media coverage to ramp up. And we won’t stop until we hold the failed USS directors to account to the law’s fullest extent, and stop pension and climate damage with a credible plan to divest fossil fuels and decarbonise every company.

Your voice matters and together we will win!

Best wishes, Ewan and Neil