tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post5480810919551549968..comments2024-02-19T16:54:06.139+00:00Comments on Trade unions and global restructuring: The Great Pension Robbery – UCU unravelling!Andreas Bielerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920020665441380498noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-40052373187190925782017-05-06T21:44:41.232+01:002017-05-06T21:44:41.232+01:00Oh dear. I'm a tutor at the Open University a...Oh dear. I'm a tutor at the Open University and while I do enjoy the work - well I would have to at the rates they pay (It's that overly tiresome argument about the 'hourly' rate which totally ignores the fact that the management cynically exploit the tutors desire to give a good service to their students) Oh and the management (and I don't mean the academic management but the ones who control the purse strings) do keep telling us that we are 'valued' many many many times througout all the recent UCU negotiations. And indeed regarding the UCU and the Open University I remember the protests at the OU's vicious and pointless cull of the Regional Staff as the OU were once famed for their regional support of OU students. It's all centralised now. Like government. And we know how well that works. Some things are just not meant to be 'centralised' - including education. So the protests led to nothing. Neither have negotiations led to better pay for us or even a contract because negotiations have 'stalled.' But I say 'oh dear' though 'Oh f**k' would be better because I just joined the UCU and then immediately found your excellent dissection of the UCU! But hey - at least OU tutors are 'valued'. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-90038711869781907532015-02-05T18:42:32.836+00:002015-02-05T18:42:32.836+00:00Don't forget that this £55k cap is not tied to...Don't forget that this £55k cap is not tied to a salary spine point, or anything remotely sensible like that. The *plan* is just to move it with CPI. This means two things will happen: (i) when employers at some point in the future agree to an above CPI pay deal in a given year they will likely bargain with "not increasing the cap this year", and (ii) it's not just *some* staff who earn over £55k... if wages rise even a fraction above CPI over the next twenty years then it'll be pretty much ALL UCU members who are affected by the cap as they progress through their career. It's only the employers who care what proportion of current members are above and below the cap (as it tells them how much they need to pay). Us, the employees should be concerned about whether such a cap will affect us *in the future* which I would guess most staff would *hope it does* if they have any ambition of ever reaching Senior Lecturer level.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-72187944373862679162015-02-05T14:06:16.053+00:002015-02-05T14:06:16.053+00:00Thank you for your thoughts Matthew. Yes, I am mor...Thank you for your thoughts Matthew. Yes, I am more confident that members would have been prepared to engage in sustained strike action. First, because this was clearly backed in the ballot on industrial action. Second, and perhaps even more important, industrial action is also a dynamic, collective process. Strikes always offer the possibility to talk to colleagues and convince them to join the action. Unsurprisingly, it is during times of industrial action that unions succeed most at recruiting new members. Finally, the members meeting at Nottingham University on 19 January, the one with the largest turnout for years, demonstrated the importance of regarding industrial action as a dynamic process. When colleagues realised how widespread the anger was against the draconian cuts and that other colleagues were also prepared to engage in sustained strikes such as Tuesday to Thursday every second week, very quickly a strong resolve developed to move forward collectively. <br /><br />Would UCU have succeeded, if we had had a better leadership? I cannot answer this question. There are no guarantees. But not even to have tried large-scale mobilisation has unarmed the union for any future campaign. The employers know now that they do not have to fear anything from us. They can do whatever they want. In my view, the settlement is not UCU's Brest-Litovsk. It is our Waterloo. Andreas Bielerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08920020665441380498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-53384627287901052092015-02-05T13:28:42.778+00:002015-02-05T13:28:42.778+00:00I voted to accept the proposals, and for much the ...I voted to accept the proposals, and for much the reasons cited by the long anonymous post above. The union was still--at any rate officially--defending the final salary scheme, and while that was not the only thing it was fighting for, this weakened its moral case. First, it amounted to asking junior members of staff who would never enjoy such a deal to risk swinging deductions to their salaries on behalf of their elders (including me). Where is the equity there? Moreover, those who would have benefited most from the final salary scheme's continuation would be those who will have higher pensions in any case--viz., professors. I am always in favour of extracting better terms for labour vis-à-vis capital, even for the better paid members of the workforce, but the moral urgency of ensuring that a professor should have a pension of £40k per year instead of £20k per year does not seem overwhelming. Finally, in defending UCU's position last autumn, I had some people ask me whether people who had achieved enough to get promoted early in their careers didn't *deserve* bigger pensions. It is not at all obvious to me that they do, but I also do not have a knock-down argument as to why they don't. Be that as it may, I did not relish the idea of telling my students that I was going to refuse to mark their papers and jeopardize their timely graduation partly in order to preserve a two-tier scheme that was (a) inequitable toward junior staff, and (b) disproportionately benefited the highest earners.<br /><br />That said, this was not only about final salary, as Alan Phelps writes above. Suppose we'd traded that demand away at the end, could we have extracted a better deal on the other issues? I agree with Andreas that we should reject the notion of a 'social partnership'--the employers certainly don't behave as if they were *our* partners--but putting it bluntly, were we strong enough that we could have won? We are not industrial workers in the 1950s--when union membership was widespread--but rather in a sector where only a minority belongs to the union. If we had the strength that Andreas's argument presumes, we wouldn't faff around with one-day strikes--we'd strike like a proper union and down tools for weeks if necessary. UCU, presumably, does not believe its members are prepared to do that; what reason is there to believe that enough of them are willing to hold the line on an assessment boycott when they are losing 25% or more of their salaries?<br /><br />Now, if most people *did* belong to the union, then we'd be in a completely different situation. And UCU Left is right to see that as the goal to be worked for. But we're not there at this point, and given the present correlation of forces, it seems likely to me that industrial action would have led to much suffering and little gain. I'm not a fan of Lenin, but one thing that must be said for him is that he generally knew when to fight and when to strike a deal. This settlement, I would say, is UCU's Brest-Litovsk.<br />Matthew Rendallhttp://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/people/matthew.rendallnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-37745265832073202492015-02-05T10:15:22.703+00:002015-02-05T10:15:22.703+00:00This was a massive historical defeat for the lectu...This was a massive historical defeat for the lecturers of the United Kingdom, which should as Andreas Bieler says be laid at the feet of the UCU HEC leadership. I do not share the view that only strikes can work; I actually think the marking boycott might have been a valid tactic if employed well, and one-day strikes had little power in the past five years, leaving members skeptical about their validity. I also believe that on pensions, given the balance of social forces, an orderly retreat was necessary and that meant sacrifice of the final salary scheme. But the line should have been held at defined benefit, and it was not. Now the consequences will ripple outward. The pension scheme, lacking employer contributions for those over £55,000 will be weakened and vulnerable and will surely go to defined contribution entirely in time. What will this mean? The employers pay far less into such defined contribution plans, employees are captive to the fees charged by financial services companies, which sap returns, and retirement becomes a roulette game based on market performance. Welcome to the neoliberal university.Christopher Phelpshttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/american/staff/christopher.phelps&ei=-z_TVO2FOc3sapqJgZAH&usg=AFQjCNEK2XbmPY0AKdmV9jJzjnxT7MdpDQ&sig2=Gp-l02UtG7tsCG0SjyW5XAnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-7212871256955193602015-02-03T12:37:43.163+00:002015-02-03T12:37:43.163+00:00I think the anonymous comment makes an important p...I think the anonymous comment makes an important point. I was an activist in MSF for many years and became a university lecturer pretty much by accident when I got a PhD at 51, working for seven years before a publish or perish cull thrust early retiirement on me.<br /><br />When I was a senior rep at GEC, pensions were a long way off in time - and a long way from the workplace in the group's structure. Organizing around them was difficult. I can understand why reps may see a compromise maintaining the status quo for existing members as attractive. How do you motivate employees who are told their own pensions are safe to go on strike to defend the putative pensions of possible future colleagues? The problem of a divided workforce may be seen, but how do you stir up the punters to have a go?Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16365402242052425654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-68936484216887591532015-02-03T10:37:26.345+00:002015-02-03T10:37:26.345+00:00The way that the UCU leadership has behaved on thi...The way that the UCU leadership has behaved on this is disappointing and does seem to have been tactically inept. Organizing any effective industrial action in HE is very difficult, but the one thing most academics are most willing (or perhaps least unwilling) to strike for is their pension, so in that sense it is an opportunity lost. However, I can't help but feel that the key battle was lost with the division in the scheme a few years ago, when the existing membership sacrificed the pensions of new joiners to try and save their own. This inevitably created a structural imbalance - did highly paid Profs (who lose the most from this reform) seriously expect new entrants on much lower wages (and often temporary contracts) to strike to defend their vastly superior pensions? Indeed, most of those in the Career average scheme will end up with a better pension than before under these proposals (albeit in return for increased contributions). I’m not surprised that the final salary scheme has been completely closed, but I am somewhat surprised that it has happened quite so quickly (I thought it would take another about five years, when the proportion of staff in the career average scheme would have been quite a lot higher). <br /><br />Marching the troops to the top of the hill to then come scurrying back down also only serves to illustrate the weakness of the union, as numerous colleagues from UCU left have been keen to point out. Of course it is somewhat ironic that by constantly pointing out the weakness of the UCU leadership the Left has probably only served to embolden the employers further. But the fact remains that barely a third of academics are in UCU, and of those many are unwilling (or unable) to take part in sustained industrial action. The salary deductions are punitive and (again particularly at the early career/temporary contract end of things, which is the group of colleagues who in many institutions actually do most of the teaching so have the power to have the greatest impact) the prospect of losing a chunk of take home pay for any sustained period is simply unaffordable for many staff. <br /><br />As such I have some sympathy with the union leadership who had to try and calculate how much pressure they could exert through industrial action without it just collapsing, and again demonstrating massive collective weakness. Most academics don't earn over the £55k threshold, and therefore most won't be dramatically worse off under the new scheme (even compared to the final salary one, given the improved accrual rate of 75ths rather than 80ths). The biggest losers by a long way are those in the FS scheme above this level. So again I suspect many would have concluded that embarking on possibly very drawn out phase of industrial action with no guarantee of success would simply not have been worth it. Many might actually conclude that they are better off cancelling their UCU subscription and using it to help fund the higher pension contributions. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-40326349847614441292015-02-02T23:07:42.958+00:002015-02-02T23:07:42.958+00:00Your argument does not affect the fact that the UC...Your argument does not affect the fact that the UCU is now a busted flush.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-13669629614601878222015-02-02T23:02:56.934+00:002015-02-02T23:02:56.934+00:00Thank you for this comment. It is a good example o...Thank you for this comment. It is a good example of someone, who pretends to know what the so-called 'silent majority' thinks, while branch meetings would only attract a biased sample of the membership and can, therefore, be disregarded. This is exactly the argument used by the Independent Broad Left on HEC, when they argue that members are not willing to take industrial action. We can, of course, all interpret our own positions into what this silent majority may think, but union policy should be determined in members meetings, where everyone can openly speak their mind and try to convince colleagues of their own position. Perhaps the author of this comment attempted to do so but was unsuccessful?Andreas Bielerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08920020665441380498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3081320827566289783.post-86801465538954629262015-02-02T13:40:22.092+00:002015-02-02T13:40:22.092+00:00"the UCU leadership hid behind an electoral b..."the UCU leadership hid behind an electoral ballot, endorsing the negotiated proposals with 67 per cent of the votes". Oh please. When the employers or media misrepresent the democratically-expressed views of Union members, we object, but when it leads to an outcome that you don't agree with, it's an act of cowardice on the part of the leadership? What mandate does this provide for any other course of action? Of course general meetings led to support for action. Branch meetings tend to attract a biased sample of the membership --- the angry, the militant. Favouring their views over the silent majority is no way to determine Union policy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com