Pensions

Fat cat college threatens to sink pension scheme

Trinity College, the richest college at the University of Cambridge (net worth £1.5bn), recently took the decision to remove itself from the USS pension agreement — the same agreement that saw 2018’s mass industrial action on dozens of university campuses. This verdict, taken based on flawed financial grounds and with disregard to the wider education sector, puts at greater risk the pensions of over 400,000 university workers across the UK, and is already leading other universities to re-consider their long-term commitment to the scheme . University and College Union members in Cambridge have...

Industrial news in brief

GMB and Unison picket lines covered Glasgow on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 October in a two-day strike by City Council employees. A lunchtime demonstration on the first day of the strike also saw four thousand people march through Glasgow to a rally in front of the City Chambers. It was the biggest strike for equal pay in British history. The target was years of pay discrimination against City Council women employees, resulting from the Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR) which was introduced and defended by successive Labour administrations The then Labour-controlled Council rejected the...

Falling off a pensions cliff

Protests are growing among women now in their early 60s who find their state pension age receding fast as they get older. Although Britain’s first old age pensions, from 1908, were payable only over 70 years old, for many decades after Labour’s welfare-state reforms from 1945 the pension age seemed fixed at 65 for men and 60 for women. With more working-class people living longer, the Thatcher and Major Tory governments started the axe. From 1995 the law was changed. Blair and Brown let the Tory changes proceed, and then in 2011 Cameron made them markedly worse. In the supposed name of...

USS strike ballot: Vote No!

University and College Union members are voting on a deal that would see strikes in over sixty universities called off in return for an independent review of pension provision. Voting ends on 16 April. Fourteen days of strike action in February and March forced university bosses UUK to ditch a plan to end guaranteed pensions. But now strikers are being asked to put their trust in a process that may produce nothing better. Back in March, employers offered a transitional three-year deal — better than their starting point but still a huge cut — which was forcefully rejected with the slogan ‘No...

Revolt in the degree factory

On Monday 12 March Universities UK and the University and Colleges Union (UCU) announced they had reached an ″agreement″ at ACAS in the ongoing dispute over the USS pension scheme. As details of the ″deal″ came to light UCU members across the country were at first confused as to why the UCU would have agreed such a deal, and then angry. Ten days of strikes had forced employers first into negotiations, then into making an offer. But the offer was a bad one. Pension contributions would go up to 8.7% from 8%; the accrual rate would go down to 1/85 salary a year from 1/75, and pensions would only...

Student and workers say #NoCapitulation - Support the strikes!

Student occupiers, anti cuts activists and UCU members from across the UK spoke to Workers' Liberty Bristol students occupation An occupation of Bristol University Senior Management’s offices has forced the university to concede to most of their demands. A Bristol Uni occupier writes... The strikes are over proposed changes to the USS pension scheme, in which many staff would lose up to 40% of their pension. So far there have been eight strike days at sixty-four universities, escalating over three weeks with another nineteen possible days planned. It is the first nationally co-ordinated strike...

UCU strike part of a wider fight

By Dan Davison, NCAFC Postgrads and Education Workers Co-Rep On Monday 19 February, Theresa May launched the latest funding review for higher education. Acknowledging that the UK now has “one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world”, May put forward that the review would “examine how we can give people from disadvantaged backgrounds an equal chance to succeed”. This followed Education Secretary Damian Hinds’ suggestions that students might be charged variable tuition fees according to their specific degree’s economic value. Indeed, the themes of “meritocracy” and...

University pension revolt gains strength

See more coverage of student protests here. As Solidarity goes to press, staff at 64 universities are on the fourth day of strikes over pensions which began on Thursday 22 February. Seven more universities are due to join in coming weeks. There has been a strength of feeling on the picket lines unprecedented in recent university disputes. A thousand people joined a protest at Bristol, and at many other campuses numbers have been in the hundreds. The University and College Union (UCU) has already processed 3,000 new membership applications, with an estimated 2,000 more in the queue. At Reading...

Unions must fight pension age increase!

If like me you’re between 39 and 47 years old then the recent government announcement that you will have to work 18 months longer before you can retire will have angered and depressed you. Yet again as the government has moved the goalposts for workers. An increase in the retirement age to 68 was due to apply to people born after April 1978. The government now says the new standard of 68 will be introduced in 2039, which will affect those born between April 1971 and April 1978. This is business as usual — making working-class people pay for the bosses crisis and it will affect six million...

Temer versus the workers

On 22 March, Brazil’s coup government of Michel Temer brought forward a law, previously shelved, to legalise the expansion of outsourcing. Businesses will now be able to outsource workers for their primary activity (for example, teachers in a school). Government owned institutions can now use sub-contractors, opening the door for private sector interference in nationalised sectors. Outsourced workers in Brazil earn on average 24.7% less than directly-employed workers, work three more hours per week, and have a total employment time of less than half of non-outsourced workers. Expansion of...

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