The farce of UCU’s “resistance” to universities’ attack on employees’ pensions is now reaching its inevitable climax (see Part I, Part II and Part III for background). Readers may recall that the crisis has been provoked by the employers’ association, UUK, seeking to impose dramatic cuts on the basis of a supposed massive deficit in the USS pension scheme – a position exposed as spurious by many academic statisticians and UCU’s actuaries. In previous posts, I have been savagely critical of UCU’s response. In summary, I argued:

the UCU leadership is using the membership as a stage army while seeking to mediate between an increasingly angry membership and the employers. It initiated the marking boycott without first consulting its members on what an acceptable negotiating outcome would be, rushed out its proposals in secret and put them to the employers without first seeking members’ approval, and now seeks…