Following two years of pandemic disruptions to student life, will student support for UCU strike action be tested?
Students could face significant disruption to their studies, if a UCU ballot is successful, just as disruption looked to be a thing of the past. This article explores the perspectives of UCU, the Students’ Union and UCL students on the two UCU disputes.
Previous strike action outside UCL. Photo by Sean Wallis on Flickr
From 18 October, University and College Union (UCU) members at UCL and over 150 other universities will be balloted for industrial action over two simultaneous disputes: the ‘Four Fights’ dispute, and the proposed changes to staff pensions by University Superannuation Scheme (USS).
If the ballots are successful, strike action could take place in the first term, causing widespread disruption for students and the academic community at the university. UCL is balloting for both pay and conditions and USS pensions.
The first issue being balloted by UCU members is over pay, workload, casualisation and equality. Collectively, the four issues are known as the ‘Four Fights’. It is being balloted in 145 universities.
One of the key reasons why staff are striking over pay is that their salaries have decreased in real terms over the last 10 years. Between 2009 and 2019, pay for university staff fell by 17.6% relative to inflation; therefore, as inflation rose, the purchasing power of staff salaries to buy goods and other items decreased.
The latest pay offer increase from Universities and Colleges Employers Association was 1.5%, UCU is demanding an increase in pay of £2,500 for staff, which benefits the lowest paid.
The equality of university staff salaries is also being addressed in the ballot due to the disparity in pay between different groups of staff. The gender pay gap sits at 16%, under a third of professors are women, and only 1% of professors are black as of the most recent Higher Education Statistics Agency report. The pay gap between black and white staff stands at 17% and the disability pay gap is 9%.
To address these problems as part of the ‘Four Fights’ dispute, UCU demands “an end to race, gender and disability pay injustice; a framework to eliminate zero-hours and other precarious contracts; and meaningful action to tackle unmanageable workloads”.
Students want to see an end to these problems too. One UCL student said: “I… strongly support striking for tackling disability and gender pay gaps. There is no place for such inequalities anywhere in a workplace.”
The other issue which is being balloted by 69 universities is the proposed changes to University Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions, which would reduce the amount of guaranteed income some staff would receive in their pension at retirement and prevent employers from having to pay significantly higher contributions.
USS is the largest private pension scheme in the country in terms of assets and is the pension scheme for academic and related staff in pre-1992 universities in the UK. This includes UCL.
The dispute has arisen due to the most recent valuation of the pension scheme by USS in March 2020 and the consequences for university staff. USS says that the 2020 valuation “identified a deficit that needs to be addressed to ensure the long-term viability of the scheme”. The scheme cannot pay out at the same level of benefits on retirement unless higher contributions are paid by staff and employers.
The USS consists of two kinds of pension scheme: the defined benefit plan and the defined-contribution plan.
A defined benefit pension scheme pays out a pension amount until the member dies according to the contributions paid in. Staff can work out their expected pension amount and whether they can afford to retire. A defined contribution scheme does not pay out a defined benefit. It is a long-term investment in stocks and shares which is vulnerable to stock market fluctuations.
When the pension is drawn it is turned into an investment called an annuity, paying out according to how long the retiree is expected to live (the healthier they are, the less it pays). Whereas in a defined benefit scheme, USS (and behind it, the universities acting together) insures against the risk that pensions cannot be paid out, for defined contribution scheme there is no such obligation.
The Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) decides how any changes in contributions to the scheme are shared between staff and university employers. It is made up of 5 UCU appointees, 5 University UK appointees (known as UUK, which represents 140 universities) and 1 independent chair.
The current JNC-agreed proposal will lower the threshold between defined benefit and defined contributions from £60,000 to £40,000 salaries. Compared to before the proposal, a greater proportion of staff contributions will be in the defined contribution component of the scheme, which has greater uncertainty for staff’s pensions. The new proposal does not affect any pensions before the new contributions are implemented.
In response to reducing the threshold to £40,000, USS has said: “The impact on members who earn more than £40,000 is partially offset by proportionately more money from salary above the threshold being paid into individual Investment Builder accounts.”
In negotiations, UCU did provide an alternative solution to the current proposal that “sought to preserve as much of the benefit package as possible while reducing members' contributions”. However, this proposal did not go to a formal vote as UUK was not willing to provide as much ‘covenant support’ (willingness to stay in the scheme and accept constraints to the amount of debt employers can take on) for UCU proposals as their own.
USS has said: “Instead of punishing students through yet more strike action, the union should formally propose a solution at the joint negotiating committee, the official forum for making changes to the scheme, and we will consult employers on it.” UCU says that this route has been blocked by UUK representatives imposing their proposal.
UCU also disagrees with the valuation of the scheme that has led to this proposal by UUK of contributions for employers and staff. The valuation was taken in March 2020, near the start of the pandemic in the UK. The valuation at the time forecasted “no real term asset growth in the next five decades”. Since then, the pension scheme assets have risen to an estimated record £87.8bn. UCU has asked for a review of the valuation, which was taken during the pandemic, a unique period in recent history. UCL has sided with UCU in their criticism of the 2020 valuation. Whilst many of the previous forecasts have predicted smaller growth of the pension scheme compared to the growth that took place, which could be seen as conservative forecasting by USS, Sean Wallis, president of the UCU UCL branch speaking to Pi Media, describes the 2020 valuation as “a clear attempt to deliberately break the pension scheme”.
With the possibility of either ballots being successful and Jo Grady, the UCU General Secretary, describing strike action as “inevitable”, many students will feel resentment that a year which was supposed to be returning to a resemblance of normality and free of disruptions could become a repeat of previous years. The universities minister, Michelle Donelan, has said a “strike will not help students in any way”.
Whilst the disruption to students could be substantial this academic year, Sean Wallis is looking further ahead into the long term as well. The undergraduates, post graduates, and younger staff members– our future lecturers, professors, and staff, will be the most exposed in the long term to the proposed contribution changes, and the income they will receive in retirement will be impacted. He argues: “we’re fighting for the sector… we care about the conditions of the next generation”.
When asked if the changes to the pension scheme might discourage students and young staff from continuing in the higher education sector, he responds: “I think the attack on the pension scheme will mean the attraction of working in a university… really diminishes”.
Students also feel that the issues being balloted could have wider implications for the Higher Education sector; a UCL student noted that “unsatisfied teachers will inevitably be less successful in motivating their students, and this affects not only the students' life but the country's social welfare and future”.
This sentiment has been echoed by the National Union of Students (NUS) national president, Laura Kennedy: “Staff working conditions are student learning conditions and we stand shoulder to shoulder with our educators in fighting for a more just education system.”
If UCU members decide for strike action to take place, staff on strike will try to minimise the disruption to students. They’re striking early in the academic year to put pressure on the universities, hoping to come to an agreement before the exam period, which could otherwise lead to even more disruption for staff and students and have much more significant consequences for students’ education. In November 2019, strike action spilled over into the next year and resumed in March 2020 and was only halted by the pandemic. For students who are frustrated by the new wave of strikes in a long series of disruptions over the past 4 years, he insists “we’re fighting for you” and the support of students is very important.
When asked if strike action can achieve results, Jo Grady, gave the example of the 2018 strikes, where the proposal change to the pension scheme was to move from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan: “UCU is the only union that has successfully managed to prevent the transferral of a scheme from a DB [Defined Benefit] to some form of DC [Defined Contribution].” The latest proposed strikes hope to maintain this “victory”.
Students speaking to Pi said they support the strike action as a last resort of UCU staff to “hopefully invoke some change”, that the issues balloted “are not going to go away”, and that there is never a perfect time to strike.
However, one UCL student did not think it was right to be disrupting students' education: “These strikes will come at a very inconvenient time for current students considering the serious disruptions they’ve already had with the pandemic along with the previous strikes.”
In an open letter to the academic community about the industrial action taking place, the UCL Student’s Union has declared: “Once more we stand in solidarity” with staff and academics who are “the backbone of this institution”. “We firmly believe that all staff should receive a fair and secure pension and decent working conditions.” However, the SU has said it cannot support further disruption, writing “Students should not have to endure further disruption to their lives and education, in fact, we feel they are owed what they have lost over the past two years.”
An SU spokesperson said “If a nationwide strike does happen, it will be difficult to avoid disruption. Lectures will be cancelled. It’s really important that you support the staff members on strike. They do not want to go on strike, they’re doing it as a last resort. If a strike happens, all pressure should be on UCL to get the dispute resolved as quickly as possible.”
Speaking to the UCL SU spokesperson about what students are “owed”, they said that students should be able to experience an uninterrupted year of study after the “enormous compromises students have made over the past few years” and have “opportunities they’ve been missing since March 2020. Everything from access to facilities, to in-person teaching.”
They feel that “Students have lost access to the educational experience they were promised before enrolling. That’s why we launched a tuition fees campaign last year.”
It’s not just the academic in-person education students have lost out on, but the “holistic educational experience of being with your peers, meeting new people, trying new things, joining clubs, forming communities, socialising, and experiencing the environment of UCL, and of London – as well as having access to world-class facilities and being taught by world-class academics. Despite enormous effort, this couldn’t be replicated online. We’re starting to get this back, and we need to make the most of it”.
When asked what the Students’ Union will be doing on behalf of students if strike action is taken by the UCU staff, the spokesperson responded: “we’ll support students under academic pressure through our Advice Service – helping them access extensions and navigate the extenuating circumstances procedure, we’ll lobby UCL to provide access to funding for students to make up for lost learning, we’ll promote teach-outs run by academics, we’ll provide general advice and guidance on what and why the strike is happening, we’ll keep our facilities open so students have a place to study, and we’ll put pressure on UCL to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible”.
If students are concerned about the possibility of strikes and the impact on their learning, the Students’ Union has advised: “Communicate with your lecturers. Not all lecturers will be on strike, and some will be organising teach-outs.”
Even though the Students’ Union is affiliated to the National Union of Students, their decision not to support disruptive action by UCU goes against the support given by the NUS to the UCUs campaign of industrial action, including strikes.
When asked about this, the Students’ Union said “We have a different view to NUS on strike action.” The Students’ Union is an independent body, so it can decide its own policy for possible strike action: “NUS policy is not Students’ Union UCL policy, unless adopted through our democratic processes.”
The letter to the academic community echoes the feelings of those students who support the issues on the ballot, but think it is unjust to be disrupting students' education further. If the strikes go ahead, support for the UCU amongst students will be tested. One student said “these issues that the UCU are striking for are not going to go away and whenever they do eventually strike, there will be disruptions to students”.
The disruption to students inevitably renews the many calls for financial compensation for students. Students feel as though they are caught in the crossfire between UUK and UCU “through no fault of their own'' and that financial compensation is necessary due to the “large sums of money to attend university”.
However, students feel pessimistic about the possibility of refunds given that, despite the disastrous past two years of disruption, no financial compensation has been achieved so far. One student said: “I don’t think challenging the financial compensation will be successful and often attempts to challenge seem futile; I don’t think students often feel they have much power in the context of the whole university.”
Another said “Personally, I don't think students will ever be able to get refunds for disruptions caused by the strikes, seeing as there were no refunds from universities for students' tuitions during the unstable year of academic studies in 2020 due to COVID-19”.
On 4 November, the two ballots will close and the UCU Higher Education Committee will decide the next steps for UCU staff members on 8 November. Whether UUK and UCU will come to an agreement is impossible to predict. However, it is clear that further disruption would make students question the extent to which their voices and experiences are heard in the dispute.
The UCL Media Relations Team was asked for a representative to question about the UCU ballot and possible strike action, but no response was made to our requests.
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