Category Archives: Pensions

We “note” the pension’s not yet saved!

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Update on Save university pensions, and save the planet. 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 Friends and Colleagues,

As you’ll have seen, UCU members just voted by 85% to “note” the statement between UUK and UCU on restoring pension benefits and reducing contributions (by how much, we do not yet know!).

Of course, we know that the reason why USS directors suddenly started predicting surpluses (not nonsense deficits), why they changed the pension asset growth assumption from 0.0% above inflation to 0.29%, and now 1.8% above inflation for 30 years (to get those surpluses), why the failed CEO Bill Galvin resigned, and why they say they could restore benefits, is that we have sued them for their catastrophic failure. It’s great that UUK and UCU have done a joint statement, but we’re not yet done with the USS directors.

The USS directors didn’t suddenly have a change of heart. They didn’t suddenly say, “Eureka – there is no deficit”! They didn’t suddenly find the markets had improved after the Truss mini-budget, after the UK’s growth outlook was worse than Russia, or after the USS itself lost £450m in Russian investments following Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine.

No, we sued them. And we got leave to go to the Court of Appeal. Even though we did not win in the High Court, they know we’ve shone a torch on them. This very public pressure, the prospect of personal responsibility for the first time in the directors’ careers, this case that all the university employers could see, forced them to change. Together with everyone’s work, everyone’s solidarity, and everyone being on picket lines, your contribution to this court case is making a difference. Remember, the UCU Higher Education Sector Conference (HESC) and the UCU National Executive Committee (NEC) and dozens of UCU branches across the UK have agreed to support our case. However, the General Secretary has refused to do this, and so far, despite what was agreed at Conference and the NEC’s instructions, UCU national has not funded or publicised our case.

We still need to get a legally binding agreement on USS. UCU and UUK have agreed to restore benefits if it can be done “sustainably”. They have agreed to “explore” restoring pension benefits needlessly cut in April 2022. The USS directors cannot be forced to act or even be removed by UUK or UCU. The USS directors changed the USS Ltd constitution so that the only people who can remove existing board members are the board members themselves! Therefore it is absolutely essential that we take the case to the Court of Appeal to get the best possible, legally binding USS agreement.

So we still need to go to the Court of Appeal. Help us:

  • raise the final £120k – 90% of donations, have been from small contributions;
  • ask your branch for Ewan and Neil to come to a special or general meeting to talk about the case;
  • ask your branch to circulate a call for donations to all members (even if the General Secretary won’t listen to the NEC and HESC);
  • by considering giving another £15 – if everyone who’s already donated gave again, we’d make what we need;
  • get in touch if you have more ideas for fundraising, especially if you have contacts at environmental groups that could be interested in the case for divesting fossil fuels, and ending climate risk.

Thanks once again for all your help!

Best wishes,
Ewan and Neil

USS legal action crowdfund update

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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:

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

HEC recommend reject on 4F and note on USS

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The emails have started to arrive.This is a formal consultation which has been called by our Higher Education Committee (HEC).

Please read the proposals, the recommendations from our HEC, and the reports from our negotiators. The HEC has recommended reject on the Four Fights and to note on the USS. For the purpose of this consultation note means stand down action on USS for now but keep the mandate so we can strike at the beginning of next session if satisfactory progress has not been made. This is independent of on-going action on pay and conditions. HEC’s reasoning is explained in the email with reference to the supporting documentation. It is in line with branch position and the previous consultative survey.

This is your dispute, so please have your say. The vote will be open until 10am on Monday 17 April.

We did it!

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Today we smashed the ballot thresholds in both of the pension and pay and conditions disputes, renewing our mandate for another 6 months.

In the pension ballot, the yes vote was 89% on a turnout 58.4%. In the pay and conditions ballot, 85.6% on a turnout of 56.4%. The Yes vote is up in both disputes.

Follow-up consultation

Members will now be consulted on how to proceed in both disputes via an electronic consultation.

There has been progress but no offer in the pension dispute and the recommendation from Higher Education Committee (HEC) is that members should vote to note backed by the renewed mandate which will allow us to resume strike action after the employer consultation later this year if necessary. The most recent indications are that the full restoration of benefits is affordable.

HEC recommends that members reject the proposals in the 4-Fights dispute over pay and conditions. A yes vote would see no further improvement in the pay offer for this year or next and we would not be able to further industrial action until February 2024 due to pre-conditions on negotiation imposed by the employer.

The HEC recommendations are consistent with the branch position established at the recent quorate member meeting.

When you do receive the consultation email, please take the time to read the reports from the negotiators and consider the options.

Response to email from the Principal

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I would like to respond to the Principal Richard A Williams comments in the staff update email about industrial action from Tuesday 23 March.

The Principal describes his disappointment that the Higher Education Committee appears to have ignored the wishes of members. This is simply not the case. E-ballots are informal and BDMs are advisory. HEC decided that the offer was not enough of an improvement to be formally put to members. This is representative democracy.

Pausing action to put every offer directly to members in a formal ballot only encourages employers to make a series of meaningless offers in order to disrupt a dispute and kill the momentum of industrial action.

Members had already voted overwhelmingly to reject the pay offer in the previous snap e-ballot and little progress has been made on equality, casualisation, and workloads.

UCEA are also demanding that UCU agree to stand down industrial action for a year as a pre-condition of entering into further talks.

If the Principal would like to talk about ignoring survey results how about we start with recent staff satisfaction surveys where the need for better leadership/management is consistently one of the most commented themes, along with better pay and progression and more manageable workloads.

 

Still here and still waiting

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Great show today by the pickets, our student supporters, and the starfish of solidarity.

This is the final day of this block of industrial action and we are still here. Still waiting for a decent pay rise and still waiting for a proper deal on workloads, casualisation and the yawning pay gaps at Heriot-Watt University.

USS legal action update 7

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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,

We have a date for our hearing at the Court of Appeal – the 13th of June! We urgently need your help to raise funds for the legal action to end the cycle of disputes over the USS and change it for good.

You can help in five ways:

  1. Donating via CrowdJustice, most (90%) of our funding has come from individual donations, £10, £20, £50, so please support the case!
  2. Asking your UCU branch to donate; see the model motion here
  3. Sharing the link to the CrowdJustice page with your colleagues – adapt and send one of our model messages around your departments or school.
  4. Attend the call with DivestUSS on Friday, 24th March, at 16.00 for more information about the USS and climate change
  5. print some posters and flyers and give them out! We’ve got one on divesting fossil fuels, one on reversing the pension cuts, and one with more details. Stick them up behind photocopiers, inside loo doors, in lifts, or where people queue for lunch. Or print and give it out on picket lines!

Thanks to your brilliant support, we’ve raised £375,000 of the £570,000 we need for the appeal hearing. We’ve had further donations from branches, including Warwick and Ulster, with further branches due to pass similar motions. We need to raise the remaining amount, and with your help we will.

Website and Twitter page: Please look at the new website and follow us on Twitter (@PensionsPlanet).

As ever, let us know if you have any questions or would rather not receive further emails about the USS.

All the best,
Neil, Ewan, Lindsey, Thomas and the rest of the team

Making Plans for Nigel

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This handsome chap is Nigel. After a hard life of racing Nigel was fortunate enough to be rescued and rehomed. Nigel is now enjoying a happy retirement. We would all like the same too

In 2018 our employers tried to end our guaranteed pension in favour of a defined contribution scheme where our retirement income would depend on the performance of investments instead of contributions. We fought to stop this.

In 2020 at the height of the market crash USS then conducted a valuation which they used to claim that contributions would need to rise substantially to maintain our benefits in retirement. Cuts applied between 2011 and 2019 had already reduced a typical retirement pot by £240,000.

Changes were forced through which cut the value of guaranteed income in retirement by up to 35% for an estimated 196,000 staff. Our employers have also imposed a cap on inflation protection of 2.5%. The latest 12-month consumer price index is currently 10.1%. The value of our pensions has been doubly impacted and once again we found ourselves having to take action to defend against proposals aimed at destroying the USS pension scheme.

In the Joint Statements agreed for calling off the Assessment and Marking Boycott last summer, the senior leadership team at Heriot-Watt agreed that the return of improved benefits to staff is a priority and that governance reform is needed.

Progress has been made but the fight is not over. In a joint statement published on 17 March 2023 UUK tentatively agreed to prioritising the restoration of benefits back to pre-2022 levels, a moderately prudent and evidence-based approach to future valuations, and a review of scheme governance.

Negotiations have so far been described as constructive but at this point our pensions have not yet been restored. We need to secure a mandate for further strike action to ensure that these committments are delivered on.

Please vote Yes in the the re-ballot. If you have not received your ballot papers you can request replacements at https://yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/ucuRISING-ballotupdate until Sunday 26 March.

A big thank-you to Nigel and to all the staff and students who were also on the picket today.

 

Update on Save university pensions, and save the planet

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We hope you’re having a great morning – we know many of you will be back out on pickets this week. UUK and UCU have done welcome joint statements indicating the pension could be restored, and they could “examine” divesting fossil fuels, and “governance reform”.

But we know it’s not a done deal till it actually happens. The reason we’ve got so far is because of your help in this legal action, and all of our collective action. We’ve got a date for the Court of Appeal, 13 June 2023, and we are absolutely determined to get there. We must raise awareness, and more money. Make no mistake, this is now the biggest pension reform and climate risk case in the UK, ever. What we do could help every other worker with a pension, and it can affect every financial institution and every corporate director. We must have a legally binding precedent that USS directors cannot abuse their powers by reporting nonsense deficits, driving through discriminatory cuts, squandering our money on fancy Threadneedle Street offices and failing asset managers, and bankrolling worthless and toxic gas, oil and coal.

We’ve had so much support from university branches, which is tremendous – but the incredible fact is nine-tenths of our support comes from thousands of individuals like you, with an average contribution of £41. So, we need to spread the word. And this morning we’d like to ask you three things:

  1. print some posters and flyers and give them out! We’ve got one on divesting fossil fuels, one on reversing the pension cuts, and one with more details. Stick them up behind photocopiers, inside loo doors, in lifts, or where people queue for lunch. Or print and give out on picket lines!
  2. ask your branch chair and secretary to send out an email asking your colleagues to donate to our case! Just write “Dear Friends and Colleagues…” and then use the text from “We need you…” from the detailed poster/flyer. We just need half as many new people to donate again to get to the Court of Appeal, so publicity is crucial.
  3. get Ewan and Neil to visit your branch! We’re more than glad to attend branch meetings, and take the time you need to talk to all our colleagues. We can do Zoom/Teams, and we can also come in person.

Also, if you’d like to be more involved, just write to ewan.mcgaughey@kcl.ac.uk and/or neil.m.davies@ucl.ac.uk. We’re also trying to get climate groups on board, because the climate claim is so huge. We can’t do it alone – this is a big group effort – and it’s because we all help and support each other that we’ll win.

And just imagine the effect if every director in the UK had a duty to end investments in stranded assets like gas, oil and coal, and have a credible plan for 100% clean energy, now. Just imagine – and here’s a wild thought – that everyone’s right to social security, and a good pension, was really made universal. That’s why this case matters, why we’re so grateful for your support, and why we’re determined to win a better pension system for everyone.

Best wishes, Ewan and Neil

Published on behalf of Dr Neil Davies, Dr Ewan McGaughey, and many more supporters of Save university pensions, and save the planet at Crowd Justice.