To the Principal and Members of the Senior Management Team of Strathclyde
Enough is enough. The latest financial statements from USS show that we were right all along, and we demand that you support UCU in bringing about a fair resolution to the debacle around the security of your employees’ retirement.
- There is no longer any meaningful deficit – the fund has increased in value to £88.8Bn. This deficit was a key aspect in pushing through the outrageous cuts to our deferred wages and was always suspect, arising from a valuation performed on the day that Covid crashed the international stock markets.
- The choice of refusing to support UCU’s proposals in the February consultation hurts the university too. Based on figures here, calculated from Strathclyde’s own public accounts, the university is locked into paying £7.6M per annum for at least the next two years to service a deficit that no longer exists! Is Strathclyde so awash with cash that it can ignore spending that could give every single member of staff an annual pay rise of £1800?
- The result of the consultation, based on a valuation that had been extensively discredited in multiple venues, is that Strathclyde employees will see an average decrease of 35% to their guaranteed income at retirement.
However, there is a way out if Strathclyde joins other institutions in actively seeking to force Universities UK (UUK) and USS to change course. Currently, if the cuts to guaranteed retirement income in USS come into force on Friday and are not reversed, they will not only entrench deep inequalities in our sector but threaten its future by leading to a mass exodus of staff.
Having been shown to be right, we demand that you strongly, and publicly, urge UUK to revoke their cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) in light of the recent USS financial monitoring report, and to instruct USS to implement UCU’s proposals as the most sensible short-term solution ahead of a new valuation.
Neither you nor any other institution in USS should be wasting money on a non-existent deficit. And in helping to stop the devastation of our pensions, you will be demonstrating that Strathclyde’s commitment to be a people led organisation is more than a sound bite and tick box on the ADR.