Staff at the University of Bath and other UK universities are taking strike action to defend their pensions. For each day we are on strike, we lose a day’s pay. We believe that our lost wages should go into a hardship fund for our students and towards improving mental health support for students and staff.
All staff and students are invited to sign this petition to university senior management.
To find out why staff are going on strike, see “Background: Why are we striking?” below.
The Petition
Dear Professor Lambert (Pro-VC Learning & Teaching),
The same marketisation agenda that sees universities cutting staff pay and increasing their workloads and job insecurity has led to ever-increasing tuition fees, ballooning rents, and growing numbers of students having to work part-time jobs simply to get by.
When staff are forced to take strike action to defend their pensions, their lost wages should go directly into a fund to support students and staff worst hit by university marketisation, including those hit by financial hardship and mental health problems. Lost wages should not be allowed to disappear into general university budgets or into senior management pay.
We call on you as the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching to commit to ensuring that all money saved on the wages of striking staff goes into the University of Bath Hardship Fund and towards improving mental health support for staff and students.
Background: Why are we striking?
University Vice Chancellors are trying to take away our guaranteed pensions and cut our retirement income by an average of £10,000 per year. Our union, UCU, has tried to negotiate for months, but the employers will not listen. Professor Glynis Breakwell, our outgoing Vice Chancellor, is also paid £50,000 per year to be a Director of our pension scheme!
We desperately want to avoid strike action but have been left with no choice – we simply cannot allow Vice Chancellors, who have already taken so much from staff and students, to take away our security in retirement as well.
University staff have accepted pay levels that are lower than comparably skilled professions, partly because we had a decent pension. Now our right to security and dignity in older age is under attack. If employers get their way:
- Final pensions would depend on how the stock market performs not on how much we pay in.
- Our pension (i.e. retirement pay) would be cut by between 20% and 40%.
- We will have the worst pensions in the education sector and universities like Bath will face a recruitment and retention crisis as staff seek better financial security elsewhere.
There is more information about the attack on our pension scheme and our strike action at the UCU national website.
We are grateful for the support of our students and for this message from the National Union of Students (NUS).
If you are a student and would like to support your staff, please contact the Bath UCU Secretary. If you are a Postgraduate student, you can join UCU for free!
