75% of 600+ Cardiff UCU members voted overnight for Universities UK to #ReviseAndResubmit its proposal on staff pensions. (You can read the full proposal and the letter from Sally Hunt on the national UCU website.)
The proposal is broadly welcome, but today UCU nationally will hear from us that explicit assurances on fair pensions are needed to end the strike.
The vote followed a meeting of over 100 members yesterday which agreed to put four options to the whole membership, and the results were as follows:
- 19% – Yes the proposal from UUK is sufficient
- 75% – Revise the proposal and resubmit
- 5% – No, the proposal from UUK is insufficient
- 1% – Abstain
Here is the full text of the ‘revise and resubmit’ option:
This branch welcomes the recent proposal from UUK in the pensions dispute, and is pleased that the employers have now seen the need for a joint approach to re-valuing the USS pension scheme. We instruct our negotiators to seek some further assurances from UUK before the new offer is put to all members; in essence, to ask the employers to revise and resubmit.
In particular, these assurances should establish:
- that a pension ‘comparable with current provision’ means one that provides defined benefits that are not inferior to our existing provision;
- that all valuations are carried out on a transparent basis in relation both to data and decision-making, and subject to reporting at regular intervals to allow UCU to engage in effective industrial action; and
- that there should be no recriminations for students or staff, including any requirement to reschedule work lost as a result of industrial action.
If these assurances cannot be given by 16 April, then the current programme of industrial action should continue.