The UCU Strike Ballot: An Explainer
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The UCU Strike Ballot: An Explainer
This briefing provides background information for students’
unions to help understand the issues involved in the UCU
strike. The strike ballot is currently open and will close on
October 30th. NUS will continue to brief unions as the dispute
progresses.
Update: February 2020 • UCU: the trade union for higher education
workers, including professional services
UCU are taking further strike action, staggered
staff, academics and postgraduate research
over different days in the period of February
students. Their Higher Education
20th – March 13th.
Committee, a group made up of reps
elected by UCU to represent their Higher
The full strike dates are:
Education members, has launched both
• Thursday and Friday, February 20-21
strike ballots.
• Monday to Wednesday, February 24-26
• UUK: Universities’ UK is the representative
• Monday to Thursday, March 2-5
body for universities across the UK. They are
• Monday to Friday, March 9-13
leading the negotiations with UCU about the
Fourteen further universities have joined the
amount employers and staff should pay into
industrial action. A full list can be found here.
USS pensions.
This briefing was written at the time of the • Joint Expert Panel: Panel set up with UCU
industrial action ballot, and provides a guide to and UUK nominees and an independent
the key issues at play for academic staff on chair, to re-assess the value of the USS
pension scheme
strike.
Navigating this briefing
This briefing provides an initial guide to the Key terms
potential UCU strike, the issues that it is • USS: This stands for Universities
bringing to light, why NUS is supporting the Superannuation Scheme. Lots of universities
strike, meaningful action that you can do on and higher education employers are
your campus and discussing the issue with your members of this scheme, which means that
officers. their staff have access to the USS Pension
once they earn over a certain salary. The
Throughout the course of the UCU dispute, NUS salary level you need to earn before being a
will brief students’ unions on what is going on member is set by each member institution.
and how to support the strike. It is also the name of the organization that
manages the USS pension pot.
Key Players & Key Terms • Defined Benefit: this is a type of pension
scheme. If you have a defined benefit
Key players
pension, it means that once you retire you
The two key parties involved in this
will be paid a certain amount of your final
dispute are:
salary (how much you earnt when you
For more information, please contact Hannah
Sketchley on Hannah.Sketchley@nus.org.ukretired, usually the peak of your earnings) strike to go ahead, and the union has six
per year as your pension. months from the close of the ballot to call
• Defined Contribution: this is the other it.
type of pension scheme. The amount that
you get on retirement is based on how much It is important to note that not all
you have paid in, rather than what you earn universities are members of the USS
when you leave. Scheme, particularly modern universities,
• Casualisation: this refers to academic staff but most will be captured by the pay
being employed on ‘casual’ contracts, for ballot. You can check whether your
example for a half day of teaching per week, university is in the scheme on their
rather than on an annually-salaried basis. website.
• Joint Negotiating Committee: This is
where UCU and UUK meet to discuss Pay, Workloads, Casualisation
pensions. and Equality
• RPI: The Retail Price Index – this is a way Alongside the USS ballot, UCU are holding
of measuring inflation by charting the cost of a ballot on whether to launch industrial
a shopping basket of standard goods each action on pay, workloads, casualisation
year. Therefore if someone’s wages are and equality. More information about USS
increasing ‘below RPI,’ the increase in their can be found below, however as not all
pay is not going up at the same rate as the institutions are USS members, the Pay,
cost of a weekly shop. Workloads, Casualisation and Equality
ballot will affect a broader range of
How does the strike ballot providers.
work?
UCU opened two strike ballots at UK Pay
universities on Monday 9 September in a The pay offer in 2018/19 for the majority
dispute over USS pensions and pay, of HE staff was yet another below inflation
workloads, casualisation and equality. increase. The value of UCU members’ pay
The union's higher education committee has declined and continues to fall.
(HEC) has launched a ballot of 69
institutions over USS pensions and also for Since 2009, the cumulative loss to pay
a pay, workloads, casualisation and (compared to rises in RPI) is over 20%,
equality ballot that will run at 147 therefore they are demanding that
institutions at the same time. employers increase staff pay by 3% plus
The ballots will run until Wednesday 30 RPI. This is both a ‘keep up’ and ‘catch up’
October and HEC will meet to consider the proposal.
results on Friday 1 November. The ballots
will be disaggregated so each institution Workload
will be polled separately. There have been various reports of
increased staff workload. As early as 2016,
Fifty per cent of UCU members in each 83% of academic staff in HE reported that
institution need to have voted in the ballot their workload had increased1 and 26.9%
for it to be valid. Once this threshold has of teaching assistants reported working
been reached, there needs to be simple over 60 hours per week.2 This is leading to
majority in favour of industrial action for a significant stress amongst staff in higher
1
2016/pdf/ucu_workloadsurvey_fullreport_j
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8195/Work un16.pdf
load-is-an-education-issue-UCU-workload- 2
Ibid.
survey-report-education. UCU believes that this must This is because the scheme is a defined-
urgently be addressed and are calling on benefit pension scheme, meaning that
institutions to limit unsafe and excessive all members of the pension will be paid a
workloads. defined proportion of their final salary, so
it needs to have a lot of funding behind it
Casualisation to be able to pay everyone what they are
Casualisation has become an increasing owed.
problem in higher education, with staff in
insecure work without good reward The Trustees of the Scheme estimated in
schemes and training. Most universities July 2017 that there was a £7.5bn deficit
continue to use hourly paid contracts for in the scheme’s finances, based on its
some teaching staff, and most universities position on 31st March 2017. This was
rely on external contractors to deliver immediately challenged by UCU, as it was
some part of their own services. UCU are an estimate which they did not agree was
calling this ballot to ensure that employers accurate.
reduce the number of zero-hours and
hourly paid positions. In response to this a proposal was put
forward by Universities UK (UUK) and
Equality accepted by USS. The proposal
UCU are asking for a nationally-agreed recommended that all contributions moved
action for HE institutions to close the to a defined contribution model. This
gender pay gap and to specifically address would mean that the Scheme would be
the racialised pay gap, taking account of cheaper to run, as it wouldn’t be based on
the ways in which intersectionality affects predicting how much money would be
pay and grading. Every year the official needed to cover members’ final salaries.
pay data in UK higher education shows UCU claimed that this would result in
continuing and persistent pay inequality, retirement income falling across all
which needs to be urgently addressed. members, with some groups seeing very
The USS Dispute significant losses.
How does USS currently work?
Under current rules, USS members pay 8.8 Strikes in 2018
per cent of their salaries into the scheme. UCU engaged in a 14 days’ of strikes,
The contributions were increased in April supported by students, in 2018 to defend
from 8 per cent and are due to rise to 10.4 their pensions and said it was only fair that
per cent this October and 11.4 per cent in any cost this time around should be
April 2020 in order to plug the deficit. This shouldered by the employers. The
will see a typical lecturer on a £45,000 a employers dropped the proposal to move
year salary paying £1,000 a year more for to defined contribution following this and it
the same pension on retirement. was agreed that the joint expert panel
would be set up to review the 2017
What’s the dispute over pensions valuation, as UCU believed it to be
contributions? inaccurate. This panel is made up of
The dispute over USS stems from planned people nominated by UCU and by UUK,
increases for employee contributions to the with an independent chair.
scheme to make up an estimated deficit.
This means that university staff would The panel concluded in September 2018
have to pay more in, because the Scheme that the scheme’s finances were not as
was at risk of running out of funds if disastrous as had previously been
everyone drew their pension. predicted. It decided members would be
able to keep their defined benefit pensionsat a cheaper cost of 29.2% of a member’s double check whether your university is a
salary, to be made up by employer and member of USS on their website.
employee contributions, rather than the • As it was last year, a UCU strike is likely to
36.6% previously proposed by USS to be controversial among students. We would
address the deficit. Despite support from recommend taking time to talk through
UCU and UUK the trustees did not difficult questions that your officers may
implement this. receive because of their position to prepare
them and mapping different scenarios with
USS launched a fresh valuation in January them.
which halved the deficit to £3.6bn. But • Begin planning for strikes to impact events
they still proposed contribution increases now, and planning your communications to
above the panel’s recommendations. students, so that everyone can be on the
same page well before timely action is
At a meeting of the USS Joint Negotiating required.
Committee (JNC) in August, the
universities' proposals - that will see Showing solidarity and support
members pay 9.6% of their salary into
As NUS supports the UCU in this dispute,
their USS pension, compared to 8.8% at
we would recommend the following:
present and 8% before the strikes, with
• Writing to the head of your institution to
further hikes planned from 2021 - were
urge them to oppose the changes to the USS
backed by the chair Sir Andrew Cubie.
and improve working conditions for all staff.
You can either do this as a union, or
UCU tabled its own proposals to the JNC
organize individual students to do so.
setting out why universities should meet
• In the event of a strike, UCU members will
any additional costs. The union previously
lose pay and this is then held by the
wrote to universities in June and warned
provider. We would recommend lobbying
that if they did not agree to limit members'
your university to ensure that this pot of
contributions to 8%, or meet the cost of
money is safeguarded and used for the good
any additional contributions, then they
of students, for example in a hardship fund,
faced the risk of a strike action ballot. UCU
rather than going into general funds.
General Secretary Jo Grady has said that
• You can issue this information around your
the union have no desire to take strike
institution to ensure that fellow students
action that would see members miss out
understand the issues facing their lecturers
on pay and that employers still have time
and other staff members of the university.
to avert this.
This will be very important in building
support for the strikes, if they do occur, and
Talking about this with your ensuring students understand why their
officers teaching is being disrupted.
This issue can be complex to understand, • Consider how your union services can help
especially for officers who are not engaged in students who are concerned about
thinking about pensions in their own disruption that a strike may cause, or
circumstances. When briefing them on these supporting a strike may cause, for example
issues, break it down using this briefing and our those who are concerned about missing
accompanying communications, but also try the classes due to attendance monitoring.
following things: • NUS’s Vice President (Higher Education)
• Think about how relevant parts of the Claire Sosienski Smith will be leading our
information are for your institution. While work on the pay and pensions dispute. If
the pay ballot will capture the majority of you would like her to visit your union to
institutions in the UK, the USS dispute will discuss this issue, please email
not factor for many universities. You can Claire.Sosienski-Smith@nus.org.ukFurther information For more information about NUS’s work with UCU, please contact: Hannah Sketchley, Policy Officer: Hannah.sketchley@nus.org.uk Taidgh Pledger, Public Affairs Officer. Taidgh.Pledger@nus.org.uk
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