Workers in the University College Union have been on strike over pay, conditions and pensions several times in the past 5 years, but their dispute is now in a state of limbo. As the prospect of a summer of pay strikes looms, Ben Jones spoke to workers at two Welsh universities about the conditions they face and what needs to happen next.
By Ben Jones. Cover image copyright voice.wales
When she first came to work in the UK higher education system more than a decade ago, Dr Emma Cavell, a Senior History Lecturer at Swansea University, held faith in her pension and in the belief that she would eventually be able to retire comfortably.
In 2022, that future is now much harder to imagine.
“I’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath me, and I’m not alone,” she tells me. “A lot of people working in universities have suddenly realised halfway through their career that they will not now be able to retire.”
In February 2022, the University College Union (UCU) took strike action across Wales, England and Scotland in response to plans from the USS, the UK’s largest pension scheme, to dramatically cut staff pensions.
The USS, which holds up to £89 billion in its scheme, drew widespread, national criticism when plans were announced that would cut retirement income by a staggering 35%, wiping off tens of thousands from workers’ pension funds and leading to a widespread dispute between unions and universities.
According to Emma, the cuts would come to affect women most of all, whose careers tend to rise much more slowly, and who are generally assigned to more ‘casual’ contracts.
“We haven’t had a raise since 2009, because we generally don’t hold the highest positions,” she explains after work one day. “I’ve spent over a decade on casual ‘fixed term’ contracts. Sometimes full time, sometimes fractional. There have been points where I have simply been unemployed, and have had to rely on my partner’s wage.”
Dr Anita Pilgrim is a lecturer at The Open University, and tells me how the cuts have had a specific impact there.
“In a way, Open University staff and students are even more impacted than people at traditional Universities are,” she explains. “Because the Open University employs a lot more staff to support the students and work directly with them. So we’ve got a lot of staff who are on precarious contracts.”
She says that workers are generally on much lower pay grades compared to others in the sector, and that the constant attacks on staff are having a negative impact on students.
“Our students are usually in situations where they are struggling; they may be single parents, may have disabilities,” says Anitia. “For them to be able to do a part time degree is much more convenient. If we can’t provide that quality of support for them, that high level of teaching support, then it becomes very problematic. But at the same time, it is becoming harder and harder for staff to work – the remuneration, it’s getting to a point where the job isn’t worth doing.”
“So you’re hired for a year, nine months, three months, and then that expires and someone else is hired to do your job,” Emma says of casual contracts.
One example of this is Birmingham University, which she reckons has around 70% of casual staff currently teaching. Despite the disposable nature of casual contracts, and increasingly flimsy job security, the Vice Chancellor at Birmingham steadily earns around £220,000 a year:
“Vice Chancellors are now much higher in status than they ever were.They’re basically CEOs now, because universities under the Tory government have been turned into businesses.”
Then there is the problem of increasingly heavy workloads: “We just can’t fit everything into a working day,” Emma says. “And we tend to work during our holidays and we can do a lot of unpaid overtime.”
She explains that even though there are mounting reasons to take action, and that her co-workers are determined to fight, it’s not easy to get strikes off the ground. “You need 50% of all of the union members of a particular branch to vote overwhelmingly for strike action, to be able to do anything.”
“Swansea doesn’t often succeed, but we did [in February] at least,” Emma says, adding that many students also backed the strikes.
Following our initial conversation, however, workers at the university again tried to strike the following month, but failed to meet the required threshold by a razor thin margin.
This was replicated across several other universities, prompting the union leadership to delay action until 2023, something many activists were not happy with. At Cardiff University, the local union did get over the threshold, but said they were left feeling “very frustrated at the prospect of wasting the strike mandates that many branches, including ours, have secured.”
Afterall, the issues that have been driving the strikes are not going away, but what has changed is the overall situation when it comes to workers being willing to walkout over pay.
Jonny Jones is a UCU activist in London, and believes that now is the time for the union to take action.
“Our sector conference voted to re-ballot as soon as possible, yet a month later there has been no movement,” he told voice.wales. “It’s clear that the time to fight is now. The union leadership must stop delaying.”
“We’re building on strike action and several successful marking boycotts this year. The RMT has made a tremendous impact, followed up by the barristers’ strike. We have potential action by communication workers, airline workers, teachers, and others in the offing.”
“UCU can be part of a wave of action that can win real gains for workers and shift the balance of forces in society.”
Another factor acting in workers’ favour is the revelation that the pension scheme is actually in much better financial health than university bosses made out, prompting fury amongst workers who have been force fed gigantic cuts to their retirement income.
In May 2022, it was reported that the USS’ deficit fell from £14.1bn in March 2020, to £1.6bn in March 2022.
“An independent financial review was [recently] done and it showed that there isn’t a deficit anymore. It’s already rebounded, there is no deficit,” says Emma. “And yet, they’re insisting that they can’t raise pay, because the markets are still so volatile. There isn’t a deficit, and the report proves that, and yet they’re still cutting the payment scheme themselves.”
Emma and her colleagues were told that the cuts were necessary due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown, which began in March 2020: “I feel so incredibly angry at that because first of all, the pandemic was one of the reasons that the USS gave for the pension scheme itself not being able to continue.”
Finally, there is the issue of the widening pay gap between senior bosses and the majority of workers in the sector.
Swansea University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Paul Boyle, Emma explains, is the highest paid public sector worker in Wales, and voted for the cuts to pensions.
Despite this, Emma says he has personally presided over the downgrading of the budget, despite an “unfathomably high” salary. “At the same time, they’re actually taking away our pensions. It’s absolutely sociopathic. It’s really, really hard to stomach.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she says in desperation, “because if I’m just starting out, I could go and do something else and start again with a secure pension, or I can make a provision for myself, take out a private fund or something like that, but that would have to be quite solid.”
She mentions colleagues who’ve lost thirty, forty thousand from their retirement income, and one who’ll soon retire after a 25 year career in the sector, only to get less than the state pension.
“I’ve spent my entire career in UK Higher Education and I won’t be able to afford to retire,” she continues.” We lost the final salary pension strike in 2016, and since then they’ve come back twice more to cut it, downgraded even further to take away various things.”
Despite this, Emma and many of her colleagues are still determined to beat the anti union laws and join the growing numbers of workers on strike against years of cutbacks.
