Positive thinking

On Tuesday morning, the Vice Principal of the University of Aberdeen sent out an email to the entire student body. In it, he cheerfully announced that, following an ACAS-facilitated proposalto settle the ongoing dispute over cutting University staff’s pensions, he ‘expect[s] the current industrial action to be suspended from […] Wednesday, 14 March 2018’. The VP furthermore assured students that the university management ‘remain[s] committed to minimising the adverse impact of the dispute’ and ‘thank[s] all students for their forbearance over this challenging period’. Most astounding about this statement was that it was sent out hours before the Aberdeen branch of the UCU union – let alone UCU as a whole – had made a decision on the proposed deal. This means that either the university management was uninformed about UCU’s widely publicised decision timeline or it sent out an intentionally misleading email to the entirety of its student body. Both these explanations are utterl...

Ania Zalewska, University of Bath University staff across the UK are striking over changes to their pensions. Academics at 64 universities, who are members of the University and College Union (UCU) and who are signed up to a defined benefit pension scheme (known as USS), are faced with cuts that could leave them significantly worse off in retirement. Universities UK, the umbrella group for UK universities that manages the pension scheme, claims that the change is needed because there is not enough money to make the scheme financially viable. This is disputed by the striking staff and a closer look shows why this has merit. From the outside, it might look like another case of a pension black hole problem hitting another UK institution. Many companies have made the news in recent years for pensions problems – retailer BHS , construction company Carillion , steel firm TATA in the UK , telecoms giant BT , just to name a few. What’s more, the UK is much worse than many o...