Asserting power: The political economy of USS pension fund valuations.

The University and College Union (UCU) and the employers’ organisation of pre-1992 Higher Education institutions UUK are currently involved in an industrial conflict over plans by the employers to impose draconian cuts to the USS pension scheme. At the heart of the conflict is the valuation of the fund in 2017 by USS, apparently revealing a large deficit of about £6 billion, which needs to be addressed. In this post, I do not want to engage in economics arguments over how big the deficit actually is. Rather, I will focus on a political economy analysis of the actual struggle over who is in charge determining the criteria for the valuation in the first place. The valuation of the health of the fund is not an objective, economic task. It is ultimately a political decision on how to estimate the risk and especially on how to spread the risk across staff and employers