Anyone in the UCU?

[Closetlibrarian]

And striking at end of Feb?

I joined UCU after the last strike, so this will be my first. Even though I voted in favour it, I'm now in an utter quandary. I have an absolute monster of a semester coming up and I'm fretting about all the lectures, tutorials, etc, I'll have to cancel as part of the strike.

If you've gone on strike before how did you present it to your students so that they didn't just get really pissed off with you for cancelling lectures (that we're then, according to UCU, not supposed to reschedule)?

Also, how did you mange with the loss of income? I'm the 'breadwinner', so 14 days of strike action is going to massively impact us (i.e. I'm not sure we'll be able to pay our bills).

There is a Twitter bubble of academics, talking about how this strike will turn the tide on the ongoing marketisation of higher education.

Even if (when) a compromise about pensions is reached, REF, TEF and all the other nonsense will still be there. The government will still be cutting funding and moving it to areas they favour. The nightmare won't be over.

Yeah, no doubt. But what do YOU propose?

I’m staying off Twitter but wonder if anyone has any insight into a possible deal?

But what do YOU propose?

Collective actions from departments/research fields. Instead of e.g. competitively jumping over ridiculous time wasting REF hurdles (annual assessment of publications etc), collectively refuse to do so.

I propose a UCU-led boycott of the REF.

Yesss! Am with you both.

www.employerspensionsforum.co.uk/sites/default/files/documents/ucu-uuk-agreement-acas-12-march.pdf

Tentative agreement details.

Response from UCU members.

That's a shit deal

It is a shit deal, with added sword of Damocles in the ‘transitional’ nature of it.

Gives us three years to save up for the next lot of strikes....

Well there is that!

This is a terrible deal... and those of us still in our forest of temporary contracts really cannot afford to do this again in 3 years. This time was damaging enough. I hope it gets rejected.

Demo at UCU HQ tomorrow at 10.

So bad.

Are you signing the open letter? I think that a clear
response would help the UCU form a clear picture of what the members want, ahead of tomorrow's UCU's Higher Education Committee.

Also - WHAT is this part about?! UCU undertakes to encourage its members to prioritise the rescheduling of teaching in order to minimise the disruption to students

??? Is that the teaching we’ve NOT been paid for? Are we just supposed to add an additional 20+ hours of teaching on top of the rest of our jobs over the next couple of weeks? And not get paid for it?? WTF??

Is this really the best UCU thought they could get? Am assuming they’re pinning their hopes on the independent valuation.

The open letter has over 5k signatures now and what I'm hearing from better clued in people is that they think this deal will be rejected tomorrow - unclear whether that's what the UCU negotiators expected/wanted! I don't have that much faith in them personally. But #NoCapitulation is trending on twitter and the press is starting to notice. Now's the time to make noise.

(And if UCU do recommend this to us, I'll be adding the UCU subscription money to my investment for old age, somehow.)

Unfortunately my experience of UCU negotiations in the past is that they just capitulate, so this is no surprise. If this is it that is the end of the Union for me.

But what happens if a majority of union members won’t accept this deal? Can it be pushed through regardless?

I think the UCU will be in trouble if they suggest we accept the deal. There will be an awful lot of people who decide that the union isn’t representing them or meaningfully protecting their rights at work. So why pay the subs?

Under the original proposal my total pension value was down 43%. Under the compromise reached it remains down 18%.

A double digit pension drop can't be acceptable surely? If it was in single digits I might well have accepted that.

Was so excited to see the email that strikes might be ending, but disappointed in deal reached, and resolve to strike only strengthened.

If they actually put it to all members, and it is rejected, the union is in a very weak position to restart negotiations. We need to to be rejected before that, today. (I find it hard to see how it can turn out to be anything but a bad mistake to let it get this far, but I see people trying to turn in into a demonstration of strength of feeling, deliberate on the part of the negotiators... I think it's more likely incompetence!)

I’d put my money on incompetence too. The UCU negotiators cannot possibly think that’s an acceptable deal.

The deal is actually at the top end of what I expected them to be able to achieve, and I am a wee bit surprised by the depth of feeling against it.

But maybe this is because I'm confused by so many aspects of this! Here's how I'm thinking - I'm sure there are lots of errors of fact and judgement in it, so I'd appreciate thoughts to correct these!

• There is a hell of a lot wrong with the sector right now, but this strike is about pensions and it's important to retain some kind of focus on that issue. Hopefully, further action on other issues will follow in future. I agree with user that new styles of action, such as a mass boycott of REF/TEF shoudl be explored.
• There is a question over the valuation and a separate question over contribution levels. It seems to my poor, benighted mind that these ought to be sequential: i.e. that it is only when we have bottomed out the issues surrounding the valuation (which will take us way longer than the June deadline) that we can really say what the contribution level should be to plug the deficit.
• In addition, the regulator is clearly not going to budge on the deadlines for this valuation, and it seems like they have some legal power in this situation to insist that a settlement is reached in the short term. The union are partly to blame for this, since they should have taken action earlier.
• If I am right on these points (and I might not be), this would surely mean that some kind of transition deal is actually the only way forward?
• Morally, given the disgraceful "pensions holiday", I think any such deal should be as beneficial as possible to staff, but this surely depends on what the regulator will tolerate given the current valuation?? I am not sure how this deal compares to the other options that would fit with this valuation, because I don't understand nearly enough about the methodology for calculating these things.

Can someone who does know explain how this would compare to other potential options, given the need to work with the current valuation?

• Out of interest, how are these negotiations conducted? Is it an employer majority vote or do UUK negotiate on behalf of all VCs? Is there a prospect that richer institutions could use this junction to try to harm poorer ones? (What are the limits of mutuality and of competition in a scenario where universities are sort-of competitors and sort-of not?)

And something I am much clearer about

• It seems to me that many people in this dispute are experiencing industrial action and workers' struggle for the first time in their lives, and are coming to it with some naive assumptions. One of those is that this will be 'over for good' if the employers can be forced to up their offer. Given the size of the deficit, and the fact that we've been here before watching the end of the DB scheme a few years ago (and the union were totally shit then), that seems to be unlikely. Given the fact that capital always pushes back, always tries to find new avenues for exploitation, it also seems unlikely. If I'm right, then until the investment situation turns around (!), we are likely to see a 3-year cycle of pension depradation, and we are going to have to keep fighting for this for years.
• Therefore, we need to think longer term. That fight needs to include replacement of current union top execs with rather better people, and more active involvement by members in its running (how on earth am I going to find time?! But I think we all need to, somehow). The union bloody well need to sack whoever does their comms and replace them with someone far more savvy too, because every utterance they've made during this has been terribly ill-judged in tone.
• We also need to use our collective skills to include a lot more academic oversight of the pension in terms of valuation and investments. Basically, people are going to have to devote time and energy to this, long term.