Why I am supporting the Strike
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
-Ralph Chaplin-
Acronyms
UCU - Universities college union
UUK - universities UK
USS - the pension provider
Some of you may have heard that there will be strikes soon. Some of you may have made up your mind about whether you’re supporting them or not, and some may not be sure what it’s all about. I thought I should tell you that I will be striking, and I’d like to tell you why.
This is not a decision that has been taken lightly. I do not want to strike. I want to work. Like my colleagues, I love teaching. Yet this strike affects everyone, which is why the NUS supports it.
While there is a lot of information flying around, the following is an attempt to explain my interpretation of the facts, and to explain why I think striking is the morally correct course of action.
The Strike?
First, what is the strike about? The strike is about UUK (Universities UK - the representative of UK universities) imposing a staff pension cut for those on the USS pension scheme. Broadly speaking, under the proposed changes, staff pensions would follow the stock market, and return up to 40% less in retirement than the current scheme. This means staff will have less money to retire on. We (from students to academic staff and administrators) are not asking for more money, we just want our existing pensions to be preserved. These proposed changes are not necessary.
What is being said, and how we are being misled
Firstly, some facts to counter the doublespeak are important. The university has provided a Q and A about the strike, but this is at best misleading, and at worst entirely disingenuous. This was nicely summed up in the following tweet by Simon Hewitt: ‘If university managements put as much effort into resolving the USS disputes as they did writing misleading letters to staff about it, we wouldn't be in this mess!’
Below are some important points to remember that are not addressed in the university Q and A, which tends to reflect the UUK position.
Asymmetric and generational impacts: Like many educational ‘reforms’, such as tuition fees, the proposed pension cuts will disproportionately impact younger people, who have not had time to pay many pension contributions. Remember, many academics do not really start pension contributions until their early thirties due to the time they have to spend in education. They seek to lose up to £200,000 with the new changes. Emerging young academics are also more likely to be encumbered by tuition debt and growing job insecurity. Ironically, this means that those most impacted by changes will find striking most costly. Some younger staff will not be able to afford rent if the strike goes head. That is why the union have a strike fund. To be clear, those striking do not get paid. While striking is a hard-won right that is important in defining what we’d hope is a free society, the university appears indifferent to the fact young staff will be disproportionately penalised by having wages withheld.
Misleading figures and intimidating terminology: The university website states that these pension reforms ‘are necessary’. This reflects a partisan line, and it is not accurate. It is based on UUK rhetoric (For a quick and entertaining critique of the UUK’s doublespeak on the issue, look at what was created by Sheffield Uni’s UCU branch to combat UUK PR.) The changes are not ‘necessary’, nor is this a fait accompli. To say the changes are ‘necessary’ is extremely misleading. This so-called ‘necessity’ has been disputed by at least 153 academics from around the country. This is because the proposed reforms are based on contested figures and methodologies that have not been addressed by UUK.
No response to critiques
The University and College Union (UCU - our union), along with many academics have argued (without response) that the figures UUK have used to project this deficit are flawed. The UUK have also tried to downplay the impact of the reforms, perhaps to appease academics and make the changes to pensions seem less harmful. They have done this by saying that the changes will only cause a loss of about 10-20% of pensions. That is still considerable, but not as bad as a loss of 40-50%. Why 40-50%? An independent report done by First Actuarial showed that the loss to people’s pensions could reach 40-50%.
Wait why are there two conflicting reports and why do they differ? Well the first commissioned by UUK for Aon (UUK being heavily favour of the pension cuts), used rosy figures about market performance (to which pensions would be tied) and included state pensions to make the figures seem less troubling. Michael Otsuka, a professor at LSE, argues that if these rosy figures had been used in the initial assessment used to justify cuts to the pension, they would not have returned a deficit in the first place. The reasons for this seemingly underhand procedure have not been made clear.
What seems to be true is that the new pension reforms seem to reflect an encroaching risk budget model from finance economics. They also reflect the tenets of neoliberalism, wherein risk is burdened by the individual instead of institutions, whether corporate or government. It is unclear why, with the USS pension fund performing well, UUK are so eager to enact changes. It is perhaps, as is argued in Sean Wallis’ blog; ‘[The USS ‘crisis’] is the result of the misrepresentation of the finances of the USS, and the desire of a new breed of university managements to cut their pension liabilities and thereby ease the financing of new buildings and campuses’.
Disingenuous discourse and divide and rule
University senior management, like staff themselves, do not want staff to strike, but striking is a last resort for staff to try and protect their future livelihood. University management are, among other things, fearful that students impacted by the strike will return poorer NSS scores and feedback scores that will ultimately affect the university’s position in the rankings. Rankings are becoming an almost deified entity in the contemporary climate. The idea that pension cuts will cause good staff to leave potentially leading to rankings being negatively affected does not seem to be a concern for some people, or at least, appears to be a risk they are willing to take.
Nonetheless, because university management and academic departments nationwide are sensitive about student feedback, and also unwilling to pay potentially more in pension contributions (one of the suggestions put forward by the UCU), they are attempting to discredit the strike. They are attempting to divide students from staff, and remove solidarity in order to intimidate staff into not striking. Obviously this is why solidarity is important. Divide and conquer is an age old tactic, aiming to break up larger concentrations of power to weaken them in favour of (in this case), those advocating pension cuts. Staff and students are traditionally united on such issues. The fact some people are now using paying fees as a means to condemn the strike highlights how austerity is succeeding in some spheres of driving a wedge between people. This is a stark example of the individualisation and atomisation wrought by neoliberalism, eroding solidarity. It also reflects how financial insecurity leaves people with less energy and time to engage in democratic politics.
The means of creating division are fairly simple, by making those striking seem unreasonable and inconsequential, they are undermining the seriousness of the cause. One of the ways they are doing this is through language and the selective use of facts. Primarily, students are being told that staff are striking despite the fact such changes are ‘necessary’ (see “These changes are necessary”). In this use of discourse, strikers are made to seem unreasonable because only an unreasonable person would be ‘disruptive’ in the face of ‘necessity’ right?. However, as discussed above, the new reforms are by no means necessary, but the relevant bodies are refusing to adopt other compromises.
There have been attempts to paint staff who favour striking as a minority, seemingly diminishing the importance of the strike, and the worthiness of the cause. The university stated in their email to all students that only 7.5% of all staff had voted to strike, and around 20% of teaching staff. This is misleading, there are 5000 employees at the university, most of whom are not members of the union and therefore not entitled to vote. In actual fact, of those who were eligible to vote (i.e. union members) who actually voted, 92.6% voted yes to a strike. Without a breakdown of university staff, union members, and explanations of whether those staff support the strike or not, or are eligible to be unionized, such figures are meaningless. Indeed, it is important to remember that many staff cannot afford to strike, and in conversations I have had with staff nationwide, some are even fearful that striking will jeopardize their job - a sad state of affairs in a modern liberal democracy.
The strike is also being said to be ‘disruptive’. Of course this is true in many ways, for that is the purpose of strikes - but this is selective. The pensions are referred to in PR speak as ‘reforms’, and not ‘disruptions’. In actuality the reforms could be seen as ‘disruptions’ to both the livelihood of staff and future generations of staff and students. Furthermore the pension disruptions and refusal of UUK to compromise are the proximate cause of the strike, i.e. the events that have compelled staff to action.
Context of academia in neoliberal times
What these figures do not also explain is the current context of academia. It is vitally important to remember too that these proposed changes are not an anomaly, a blip, or an extraordinary event done out of necessity, but part of a process of steady erosion and the marketisation of HE. Just as student fees went up 800% in about ten years due to the ‘necessary’ austerity cuts, there have been a number of strikes over the past few years about constant attempts to lessen the value of pensions. This is on top of poor wage increases for academic staff. According to the UCU ‘the value of university staff pay had declined in real terms by 14.5% since 2009’. Meanwhile, in tune with the the burgeoning gap between the wealthy and less-so, Vice Chancellor salaries have increased by about 5.1%, with average salaries for VCs at Russel Groups unis around £332,000 per year.
These current ‘reforms’ are not the end either. If there is no pushback, no strike, no solidarity, those in authority will be able to pursue their agenda with little regard for what anyone thinks. The likely next step is that universities will want to stop contributing to pensions at all. Although some universities are trying to assuage concerns by saying their contributions of 18% to current pensions will be ‘unchanged’, and that they are ‘committed’ to this, this figure of 18% is actually up for negotiation in 2023, which they conveniently leave out. So universities do have a dog in this fight, they could stand to make(save) a lot of money by cutting staff pensions in the near future.
Where does all this end? This is not just about strikes, this is a fundamental aspect of a functioning civil society, where people should be able to actually protect rights that have been earned over decades of struggle and enormous sacrifice. Those rights ought to be protected. Britain has a rich history of trade unionism and collective action, this is how many important rights were won of course, such as not officially working an eighteen hour day.
Are we getting sick?
An aspect of austerity is the salience of broader processes of market efficiency and competition. Here greater efficiency is often demanded at ever decreasing cost. For example, one might logically expect a lower pension to be compensated by less work. This is not true, the opposite is true. Increasing demands on academics for minimal pay rises and now pension cuts are part of what fuels the well documented mental health crisis in academia. More is expected for less, and it can feel as if human beings are being stress tested. This has a huge human cost, of which we are all a big part. For example:
University counselling staff and workplace health experts have seen a steady increase in numbers seeking help for mental health problems over the past decade, with research indicating nearly half of academics show symptoms of psychological distress
As was highlighted in this survey by Times Higher Ed, ‘The excessive hours worked by academics are once again highlighted as a major problem by respondents to our survey. Most staff appear to routinely work beyond their contracted hours’. Working beyond contract hours is the norm. The extent to which this is expected now has been highlighted by Warwick University, who are actually docking pay if their staff take action short of a strike and only work to their contract. To be clear, Warwick are docking wages of staff doing the work they are actually contracted to do.
There is also an increasing lack of security, brought about for example by metric-based performance measures that quantify yield of academics, like cows producing milk. Increasing casualisation of contracts means less job security. These pressures play out negatively, look how academia compares to other professions?
Survey data indicate that the majority of university staff find their job stressful. Levels of burnout appear higher among university staff than in general working populations and are comparable to ‘high-risk’ groups such as healthcare workers,” write Susan Guthrie, a research leader at RAND, and colleagues in the report.
These pressures are facing many of those at university. Students too are increasingly pressured by a system that emphasises competition, provides less opportunity, and offers less security (such as pensions). From the Guardian:
With higher study costs and increasingly competitive job markets, there is greater pressure than ever on this year’s new cohort of students. Our annual Student Experience survey shows that almost nine in 10 (87%) of first year students find it difficult to cope with social or academic aspects of university life.
To be clear, what is at stake is the quality of education and quality of life for future generations of students and university staff. This is part of a broader pushback against marketisation of higher education and neoliberal politics. As Bambra and Schrecker have argued, neoliberalism is makes us sick by fuelling austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality
The deepening economic inequality promoted by neoliberal societies has greatly reduced social mobility so that your parents’ income, job and education now determines your own future social position and health to a greater degree than at any point since the second world war, at least in the UK and the US where social mobility has declined since 1980.
Solidarity and what can be done?
Regarding solidarity, while the NUS has voted to support strike action, not all unions in the UK are doing this. So far I believe Cardiff and Durham are among those student unions not ‘supporting’ the strike. I am aware the Guild has passed a vote not to support the strike despite a poll showing large numbers of support for the strike among Exeter students (which is great!).
While it is clear there will be disruption, which is the purpose of a strike, beware of certain misleading PR tropes. If anyone says (as has been incorrectly stated by Cardiff’s and Durham’s SU) students are not represented in the dispute this is technically not true. In terms of technicalities, PhD students and PGCE students can be union members, and so technically their interests should be looked after by student unions. On a broader note, the principle at stake here is an acknowledgement that we are all looking after each other’s interests, both now and in the future. This is not a staff/student binary or dichotomy.
While concerns about paying fees are understandable, it is important to bear in mind that treating public goods as commodities and workers as service providers plays into the atomising nature of neoliberalism, placing individual concern above the collective good. I voted and marched against tuition fees after I had completed my studies. I was no longer a student, but it affected future generations and others. I pay taxes, but march in support of the NHS because I believe in a strong healthcare system for the broader community in which I live. For me, helping to protect these hard-earned rights, over which much blood has historically been spilled, is essential to maintaining the commonweal.
Furthermore, it makes no logical sense to criticise academics for a decision that smacks of anti-intellectualism. As an academic it is our job to challenge falsehoods, bad information and problematic ideology. At the very least we expect transparency. The type of misrepresentation of USS finances that is being used to justify these cuts stands against the very purpose of higher education, which is to promote critical thinking and questioning. Ironically, academics are increasingly told that their research must have ‘impact’ (i.e. real world effects and/or impacts on policy ), yet in this case, UUK are rejecting or ignoring the research done by academics to show that these reforms appear to make no sense.
What can we/they do?
The strike is still not inevitable. You can write to the Deputy VC or VC expressing your support for the position of staff, and also to ask key questions, such as, why aren’t concerns and criticisms of the pension evaluation being addressed? Why can’t UUK come back to the negotiating table? You can express solidarity and support for the strike and those striking. If the strike goes ahead, look at this UCU document to show how you can support those striking.
Be ready to critique those offering superficial arguments. You may hear things like ‘but they’re just making pensions more like those in the private sector’. However, arguing for a race to the bottom is fundamentally absurd. It’s also self-defeating, for the underlying logic is that it would be better if public and private sector got roughly the same. I’d be all for this, if it meant literally people getting the same. Sadly it does not, the reality is that it is just shorthand for saying the averages should be similar. The actual wage discrepancies would remain unaltered at the extreme end of the scales. Also, it is now believed private sector pay is outpacing public sector, so it is fast becoming a moot point.
Some may be cynical about the effectiveness of strikes. While cynicism is understandable given the government’s bulldozing of policies in the face of popular unrest, the alternative is doing nothing and simply accepting disempowerment at the face of a faceless administrative ‘logic’. Obviously it is up to the individual if they choose to support the strike, but what is certain here is that this decision is neither frivolous nor desirable. Resist.
