The first time as tragedy; the second time as farce — “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” — Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon USS issued its 2020 valuation recovery plan in draft form in September…

As a result of the valuation of the financial health of the scheme as at 31 March 2020, large cuts to USS benefits were implemented on 1 April 2022. Assuming such cuts, this valuation asserted a deficit of £14.1bn, and the accompanying recovery plan called for deficit recovery contributions in…

USS once offered a pension on a par with those promised to civil servants, teachers, and local government workers: inflation-protected annual income from retirement to death, worth 1/80th of final salary for every year in which one had paid into the scheme, plus a lump sum of three times the…

Plus responses to arguments against the motion — [UPDATE 4 May: Motion 23 carried by a vote of 85 in favour, 57 against.] In Section I of this blog, I present a case in favour of Motion 23, on which delegates to UCU’s Special Higher Education Sector Conference on USS are now voting. …

(i) A new valuation would not be necessary; (ii) 2020 valuation assumptions and funding principles could justify such changes in light of post-valuation experience — UPDATE 27 May 2022: Through application of Scheme Rule 34A (“Augmentation of Benefits”), the increase in benefits could involve a retroactive restoration of some or all of the cuts to DB accrual that took effect from 1 April 2022. I. Background

A 22% loss at retirement age becomes a 27% loss, and a 29% loss at age 86 becomes a 37% loss — USS has just updated its 2020 valuation assumptions to 31 January 2022. As of that date, it is forecasting CPI inflation of 2.8% per annum over the long term. USS also assumes that, under UUK’s 2.5% inflation cap, such inflation would give rise, on average, to a 0.8% shortfall in…

A formal mechanism to achieve UCU’s third proposal — The third of UCU’s three proposals on which employers are now consulting is as follows: 3. That employers agree to pay a maximum 25.2% and members a maximum of 9.8% from 1 April 2023 so as to secure current benefits or, if not possible, the best achievable…. UUK has raised…

Point by point responses to his objections to UCU’s proposals — Below is a rebuttal of UUK CEO Alistair Jarvis’s 31 January reply to UCU General Secretary Jo Grady’s 26 January letter in which she presents UCU’s proposals for USS. Excerpts from Jarvis’s letter underneath the headlines are followed by replies: 1. The case for a 2022 valuation: A moderately prudent, evidence-based 2022 valuation is clearly in the…

“how are the interests of the employers you represent … served by a consultation webpage which is so unprofessional in its level of inaccuracy?” — [UPDATES 14 & 16 February: (i) In an implicit admission of the veracity of my claims below, UUK removed their consultation webpage yesterday afternoon and replaced it with a completely different, and far more accurate, version. Click here and read upwards for more details. …