Strike for USS

Day 1 of the UCU strike for our pensions. The University employers UUK reckon that our defined benefit pension scheme is in deficit and no longer viable. We disagree. The employers use strange assumptions to evaluate the scheme, such as salary increase of inflation +1% (when we had well below inflation during the last decade), an annual increase of life expectancy of 1.5% (we'd reach well over 100 years in a couple of decades). They plan to derisk the scheme by shifting the risk to the employees and turning the scheme into a defined contribution scheme where we can expect to loose about 10000£ annually in retirement. All this while the vice-chancellors are having hefty salary rises and many earn above 400k annually. They are taking the piss and we are on strike. There was a good turn out even at KB.