National Stress Awareness Day

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At the UCU stall at the National Stress Awareness Day event, 7 November in Parkinson Court, we asked people what they thought were the causes of stress for them. Many staff said job security was the main cause of stress, and many staff and students said money was the main cause of stress. The overwhelming majority of staff and students said workload is the main cause of stress.

Ball tube physical graph showing lots more balls in the workload tube than job security or money
Most people who participated said workload causes them stress

UCU is campaigning to reduce workloads, but we’re facing opposition from senior management, some of whom are very dismissive, claiming they don’t think there is a widespread problem.

We’re setting up a new network of UCU workload reps to investigate and provide more evidence to show university senior management that they need to reduce workloads for the sake of staff health and safety and so we can all have a rewarding life outside of work. 

Find out who your UCU workload rep is, and, if there isn’t one, discuss with colleagues who would be a good UCU workload rep for your area: leedsucu.org.uk/about-us/departmental-representatives

If your workload is too high and you would like support from UCU to try to reduce it, contact ucu@leeds.ac.uk to request a UCU caseworker.

A USS pension update

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  1. Our University was one of the institutions that wanted us to lose Defined Benefits altogether.
  2. UCU National Disputes Committee adopts a ‘No Detriment’ position
  3. USS letter proposes using an updated March 2018 valuation to supersede the March 2017 valuation

Our University’s position on last year’s UUK proposal to end to Defined Benefits

Members at Leeds may have seen the recent release of the University of Leeds’s recent responses to UUK surveys of its members over the USS pensions scheme. What these documents tell us is that our University is among the most hawkish in willing an end to your Defined Benefit pension and that, in something of a volte-face given that early verdict, they have conceded that the UUK should adopt the JEP recommendations. We link to these documents at the bottom of this page.

Michael Otsuka, who has been instrumental in commenting on and explaining the various vagaries of the pensions dispute, has described our recorded university’s position as “foaming at the mouth alarmist in their claims of DB” and pointed out that our employer was one of the minority that advocated a shift to 100% defined contributions – the base cause of last year’s strike. Professor Otsuka highlights the insensitivity of our University’s response.

He goes on to point out that our University has posted USS’s response to Sam Marsh’s and his own critiques of ‘Test 1’ on their ‘For Staff’ USS 2017 Valuation page and requests that the University consider linking to his reply to that USS communication: https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/test-1-de-risking-is-dead-long-live-de-risking-63540ad44e84

UCU National Disputes Committee adopts a ‘No Detriment’ position


A National Disputes Committee of the UCU was established at the HE sector conferences of May and June 2018. The NDC is tasked with providing direction to the Superannuation Working Group and to Union leadership.
In light of the JEP recommendations, the NDC made the following announcement last week:

  1. UCU members should suffer no detriment in any proposed resolution of the USS dispute. Lost earning should be repaid, any interim contribution increases should be shouldered by the employer, and USS benefits should remain the same.
  2. UCU should call upon UUK and individual Vice Chancellors to apologise to their staff for their role in triggering the dispute [see above for the Leeds position!]
  3. UUK and individual Vice Chancellors should also apologise to students for their actions and offer appropriate compensation for lost teaching.

USS letter proposes using an updated March 2018 valuation to supersede the March 2017 valuation


In a letter dated 23 October the USS has proposed to employers that, in order to accommodate some of the JEP proposals, they might in effect replace the March 2017 valuation with a March 2018 valuation. This, they argue would nonetheless still necessitate the controversial requirement of triggers for more contributions from employers between valuations, and this despite the already increased ‘deficit recovery contributions’ from employers that were put in place partially to avoid automatic triggers of further employer contributions. This is something that the JEP had already suggest should be addressed in the longer term rather than be kept within the envelope of discussion. This letter suggests that USS is still minded to resist all of the JEP recommendations. This last week, @USSbriefs has been surveying various employer responses to the UUK consultation over the JEP recommendations, and collectively these, alongside any UCU position could participate in bringing USS closer to accepting all JEP recommendations.

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University of Leeds UUK consultation documents
2016 UUK response:
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/download/downloads/id/1529/uss_survey_2016
March 2017 response:
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/download/downloads/id/1530/uuk_consultation_march_2017
September 2017 response:
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/download/downloads/id/1488/october_2017_uuk_uss_consultation_response
October 2018 response to UUK consultation on JEP: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/downloads/download/1112/uss_leeds_response_to_uuk_consultation_re_jep_october_2018

University of Leeds should be a Living Wage Employer

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Leeds Citizens logo

We’re calling on University of Leeds to become an accredited Living Wage Employer, like many other universities have already.

Leeds Citizens would like as many university staff and students to sign their open letter to the university, and to attend a rally outside the Ziff building at 12.30pm on Monday 5 November.

Full text of the open letter:


As this year’s Living Wage Week gets underway, celebrating employers across the UK who voluntarily pay at least the real Living Wage (£8.75/hr) to all their workers, we call on the University of Leeds to agree to join this growing movement.
The testimonies of staff at the University show that legal minimum wage rates are no longer enough to afford a decent standard of living in Leeds, keeping those receiving them in a low-pay trap and making them more vulnerable to the widespread effects of poverty. The real Living Wage is independently calculated every year based on what people and their families need to get by. This ensures workers and their families have what they need for a decent standard of living and to participate fully in society. Since 2011 over 4,500 employers, including over 30 universities, have signed up as Living Wage Employers and are accredited by the Living Wage Foundation.
We believe the University of Leeds should seek accreditation with the Living Wage Foundation to ensure that no workers (whether directly employed or subcontracted) are unable to provide for their families. Committing to becoming a Living Wage Employer would be a mark of respect and appreciation for the cleaners, caterers, security and other contracted staff behind the scenes who help keep the University running. It would also help the University to live up to our professed values of making a difference to society, building relationships, equality and inclusion.
There are well documented, tangible benefits to employers who pay the Living Wage. Research has shown they have healthier, happier and more productive staff while benefitting from lower staff turnover, reduced absenteeism and a boost to their reputation in the local community. These benefits are seen in various universities we would consider to be our peers such as Russell Group members like Queen Mary, University of London and Cardiff University and our local neighbours Leeds Trinity University and the University of Huddersfield.
The University of Leeds belongs in these ranks, demonstrating its commitment to keeping its workforce protected from in-work poverty through becoming a Living Wage Employer and cementing its status as an anchor institution for the city of Leeds, providing a vital link between education, business and civil society. We, as a wealthy institution, can afford to take this step to invest all of our staff. If we are to truly continue to be a world-class university, then we must ensure that nobody within our workforce is in poverty and cannot afford a decent standard of living in Britain today.
Today we are asking our Vice Chancellor, Sir Alan Langlands, to meet with the Living Wage Foundation within the next six weeks to develop an action plan for the University of Leeds to sign up as a Living Wage Employer. We look forward to hearing from him and are hopeful of working with the University Executive Group to make the Living Wage a reality at the University of Leeds.

You can add your name at citizensuk.org/leedsuni

UCU committee postgraduate and anti-casualisation vacancies

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We’re seeking another member on a non-permanent contract and another postgraduate member to join the UCU University of Leeds branch committee, to fill two vacancies.

Anticasualisation officer

This is a branch officer position, so the university will usually allocate funds up to 10% of your time to your department to allow them to back-fill 10% of your time.

Postgraduate rep

This is a vacancy for an ordinary committee member (i.e. not an branch officer) who will lead on postgraduate issues, working closely with the anticasualisation officer. (There is no back-fill time for ordinary committee members.)

If you would like to volunteer for either of these roles please ask two colleagues who are union members to email ucu@leeds.ac.uk by 11am Friday 9 November to nominate you.

Nominations for women and black members particularly welcome as white men are currently over-represented on the committee

USS Pension: developments + rapid response tool (90 sec possible!) for the USS Consultation (email)

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Email from branch president Vicky Blake to branch members 24 October 2018

Dear Members,

The situation with our USS pension has moved rapidly since our open meeting with Mark Taylor-Batty and Sam Marsh (a member of the USS Joint negotiating committee) two weeks ago. It is really vital that we all fill in responses to the USS consultation.

Today’s Internal Comms email from the university does note that Sam Marsh has demonstrated that – without changing our contributions and still using the prudent measures that USS apply – the scheme will be in surplus in the time frame applied in valuations (http://sam-marsh.staff.shef.ac.uk/uss/docs/UoS_USS_discussion_document.pdf).

However, the university communication also links to USS’s inadequate response to Dr Marsh’s findings, which contains inaccuracies and, remarkably, fails to use the words ‘test 1’, the mechanism that was at the heart of Dr Marsh’s critique (see the bottom of this email for links to responses to USS’s latest communication).

The USS consultation with members of the scheme is still open, and we now have a recommended set of responses for you to apply. To access those responses and the link to the consultation, please go here: https://medium.com/ussbriefs/resile-and-resubmit-uss-consultation-response-template-4809945fb6bc. It’s really quick to do, and obviously even better if you can tweak and personalise responses.

In a rush? Here’s a 90 second K Pop video guide to filling in the consultation ASAP: https://twitter.com/USSbriefs/status/1054388848493506560

Brilliant further reading: 

Sam Marsh’s response to the current USS position (twitter thread): https://twitter.com/Sam_Marsh101/status/1052775729765670912

Michael Otsuka’s critique of the current USS position:  https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/test-1-de-risking-is-dead-long-live-de-risking-63540ad44e84

Please do give those a read – it is particularly empowering to see how UCU members’ action, and UCU members’ analysis has shifted the debate, and gained us access to previously hidden-but-vital figures.

With best wishes and solidarity,

Vicky  and Committee