This statement was written on 11th March, a day before the controversial ‘agreement’ between UUK and UCU. As this has since been rejected by all the local UCU branches, the strike continues.
Several universities in the UK are currently embroiled in a sustained strike action over a proposed pension reform. The issue concerns an attempt from the university employer association, Universities UK (UUK), to fundamentally reform the main university pension scheme (USS) from a Defined Benefits scheme to a Defined Contributions scheme (making pensions 100% contingent on the stock market) as a way to minimize employer liability for staff pensions. There are many facets to this dispute, but a key point of contention has been the valuation that informs the reform, which claims that the existing scheme is unsustainable and is suffering from a multi-billion pound deficit. This valuation has been continuously challenged as fundamentally faulty and deliberately constructed as a way to pave the path for university employers to ‘de-risk’ staffing, a strategy in line with the broader marketization of the Higher Education sector in the UK.
The issue therefore is and has never been ‘just’ about pension reform, but rather about the nature and purpose of the University today. Over the past decade or so (particularly since the tripling of tuition fees in 2010), Higher Education in the UK has rapidly been turned into a sector with all the markings of corporatization: suppressed labour costs for frontline staff (through casualization, wage stagnation, and now pension cuts), a proliferation of auditing measures (form-filling, student satisfaction surveys, activity recording), centralization and bureaucratization of administration (to undermine autonomy), and with that, an ever-escalating tier of management in various forms, whose main function it is to oversee these developments. Emblematic of this corporatization is the rise of the Vice-Chancellor as the CEO of today’s University, along with their inflated pay packets, ludicrous benefits, and dubious expense accounts.
The pension dispute has triggered an outpouring of discontent about the direction of the sector. Over the last few weeks, thousands of university lecturers, support staff, and students have carried out the biggest strike action ever to take place in the sector. Up and down the country, we have seen picket after picket, rallies, teach-outs, and student occupations; Vice-Chancellors have one by one been pressured into changing positions, breaking ranks with the employer association UUK. At the time of writing, the strike action is about to enter into its fourth week and UUK has been forced into new negotiations with the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU). These negotiations are currently ongoing.
We have already achieved a lot. At a time when unions have long struggled to make themselves seem relevant, the pension dispute has illustrated the power of collective action in the workplace, and has renewed a belief that the University is not made up of managers but by the people who actually teach, research and create an environment of learning together with students. These are the people who should be cherished and protected. Standing on the picket-lines, organizing teach-outs and other events, communicating and mobilizing through various channels, we have (re)discovered a stronger sense of collegiality amongst both staff and students that has, in the process, sharpened our focus on what Higher Education is actually about. As we move forward, these convictions remain and will shape relations within and beyond the University to come.
Lina Dencik, Cardiff University
