USS pensions - a potential way forward
Whether you have been on strike or not, the past weeks have been a difficult period for our staff and students. This week’s blog focuses on how we might start to move forward on both the pension dispute and also as a University.
On Friday evening, Universities UK and the University and College Union agreed to consult their members on a potential way to resolve the dispute. You can read more here. The key points are to maintain the pension scheme as it is until April 2019, and suspend the industrial action, while a jointly agreed independent panel of experts reviews the valuation of the scheme.
I am happy to confirm today that the University supports this approach. I have maintained throughout this dispute that no single Vice-Chancellor could resolve the pension problem and that negotiation and consultation were the best ways to a fair solution.
The proposed plan satisfies these points by offering both hope and possibility: hope that the industrial action can be suspended when UCU meets on Wednesday; hope that the Pension Regulator and USS Trustee will agree the plan; and the possibility for UUK and UCU to agree a solution to a pension valuation that gives everyone confidence.
There is, of course, still some way to go to achieve all of these outcomes. Whatever the next steps in this process are, they need to lead us to a sustainable solution which ensures that the USS pension is viable for the University and our staff now and in the future.
The plan also offers opportunity for us to move forward as a University community. I appreciate that no-one has wanted to disrupt our students’ learning, and ask that we now focus efforts – as we have always done – in supporting their studies, while continuing the spirit of constructive discourse which has been a feature of the industrial action at Nottingham. I am grateful to the University’s UCU branch officers, as well as our Students’ Union officers, for ensuring that picketing was peaceful, respectful and good-natured.
While the industrial action is concerned specifically with pensions, I recognise that for some it has also unleashed general dissatisfaction in the changes to higher education, as we respond to the pressures of marketisation and the rapid and relentless policy changes which have created so much turmoil in our sector.
As a University we need to have an open discussion about the impact of these changes on our community and how we wish to deal with them, to determine what kind of institution we want to be. As I have set out in previous blogs, I will ensure that we create the time and space to do that and invite all members of our University to have their say in our future. Undertaking the kind of culture change that I would like, and that many of you have told me you want, will need time, patience and creativity.
I am in no doubt about the sadness and indeed anger that these last few weeks have elicited. I have listened to the concerns of staff, read the frustrations in student letters, and discussed the arguments with those who simply want the best possible security for their retirement.
I value my colleagues’ talent, dedication, intelligence and commitment. I appreciate the way everyone has adapted to a challenging external environment with resilience and flexibility. I will always want to do the right thing to support that now and in the future, even when the right thing to do is not the popular thing to do.
In less than six months at Nottingham, I have ensured that we pay the equivalent of the voluntary living wage, acted on staff concerns around student support in Project Transform; and introduced loans to help international staff with visa costs. There is so much more to do.
Over the coming years, I want to work with all of you to navigate the challenges of Brexit and changes to higher education policy, improve engagement with staff and students and tackle the many challenges we have around equality, diversity and inclusion – not least the gender pay gap published last week.
Let us hope then that this difficult period is coming to an end. A great deal of rebuilding will need to be done once this dispute is resolved, and I do not underestimate how difficult that is going to be. However, I am confident that at Nottingham we have the people, imagination, creativity and agility to ensure an exciting and sustainable future in which we can all play a part.
Professor Shearer West
Vice-Chancellor
26 March 2018