This is the email I sent my students today to explain the reasons why I am joining the UCU strike.
“Dear all,
I am writing to let you know that I will be taking part in the strike called by the Universities and College Union in protest against the proposed changes to our pension scheme (USS). As a result, I will not be teaching or be available for meetings or office hours today.
Although I am no longer a union member, I am taking part in this strike to defend what is an essential part of our compensation package. I don’t imagine you have any more of a passion for pension policy than I do, but it is important for me to explain why I have taken this decision. None of us ever decides to strike on a whim. We know full well that this is likely to impact our students and strike action is only a last resort for us. I have been teaching in the UK for 15 years and this is the first time I took part in strike action in this country.
Our employers’ organization – Universities UK – have decided to transform our pension scheme from a Defined Benefit scheme to a Defined Contribution scheme. The former guarantees a decent pension based on years of service and employee’s contribution; the latter only guarantees the level of contribution, while the eventual level of our pension would depend on the performance and vagaries of financial markets.
In concrete terms, I would lose 30% of my expected pension. The situation would be even worse for new entrants into the profession, who are expected to lose between 39 and 44% of their expected pension. The situation is particularly dire for universities created before 1992. Colleagues working in post-92 universities are enrolled into the Teachers’ Pension Scheme and would receive, over the course of their retirement, £400,000 more than we would under the proposed changes.
The decision to slash our pension was taken even though only a minority of employers (42% vs 58% of 116 responses) objected to the very modest raise in contributions required to sustain the scheme in its current form. The decision appears all the more egregious than the number of objections was inflated by the vote of individual Oxbridge colleges (16) allowed to vote in addition to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. By contrast, a number of Vice-Chancellors, including Warwick’s Stuart Croft, have denounced UUK’s calculations and called for negotiations to continue.
It’s important for me to explain why we are so attached to a decent pension. Academics do not get into this profession to make money. Indeed, our salaries a significantly lower than those of workers with similar qualifications and experience, even if we do work as many and often more hours per week.
Our careers also start later – often in our late 20s-early 30s – as very few colleagues are recruited straight after obtaining their PhD. Most Lecturers/Assistant Professors are recruited after several years accumulating teaching and research experience as casual, often poorly paid, teaching and research fellows. The competition for jobs is so fierce that a permanent position in modern history routinely attracts over 100 applicants from around the world. Outstanding teachers and scholars often spend years on the job market.
We renounce the higher salaries we could command in the private sector to do a job we love. We have done so because we have always been confident that we would nonetheless receive a decent pension after retirement. Today, our employers threaten to break this critical part of our contract.
I do have a responsibility towards the doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers that I supervise. Indeed, it is our collective responsibility to protect the interest of the next generations of academics, of those early-career researchers who often are in such precarious and legal positions that they cannot afford to strike to defend their own right to a decent pension.
For we should not and cannot take pension provisions for granted. Old age pensions were only secured thanks to the struggle of generations of workers since the nineteenth century. Their relentless advocacy led to strikes, social movements, and their collective mobilization took many forms. Today, after decades of attacks against workers’ rights, pensions are routinely described as an outdated privilege, while they are only ever were a basic social right. In defending our pension and that of our future colleagues, we are also defending your right to a decent pension.
I, like other colleagues on strike, understand the concern and anxieties of our students. We did not wish for this strike and we do hope that negotiations will resume as soon as possible and hopefully today. I will email you all again on the morning of every day of strike, so you know precisely when I will be teaching or not.
In the meantime, I urge you to engage with this debate. Read about it, take a look at the evidence, and discuss it with your fellow students and your tutors. I hope you will support our movement but I also encourage you to let me know if you disagree with the position I took. A democracy dies when debates are suppressed.
All the very best,
Pierre”
