The national website has good summary of the dispute over the attach on our pensions: ucu.org.uk/uss-dispute-questions We’d also recommend: What about USS? The Great Pensions Scandal. Video of the open meeting we held with Sam Marsh, 5 February. 10 reasons why USS is a scandal waiting to bite back, by Sam Marsh, mathematician at University of Sheffield Why are we in dispute? This is a good question, particularly when one considers that UCU’s analysis shows closure of the defined benefit (DB) scheme under the UUK proposals is unnecessary, and are instead the result of a faulty valuation method that in turn calls for an expensive change to how the pension fund is invested. That change would involve moving from growth assets to gilts (gilts have a much lower expected return – which we warned about here) in order to try to reduce risk to employers (known as ‘de-risking’). ‘De-risking’ is really a misnomer, and should perhaps be called ‘risk-flipping’, as what it really entails is a shift of risk away from employers and onto staff: because USS would no longer involve guaranteed pension income and instead be at the mercy of the stock market. See here for Mark Taylor-Batty’s helpful de-risking analogy. It’s also useful to note that in their recent annual report (2017) USS themselves reported that “over the last five years the scheme assets have returned 12.0% per year, and outperforming gilts … continue reading