There is no silver bullet in the UK’s pension dispute

It's clear that USS (whose ridiculous strapline "for members, for the future", is akin to the oil companies claiming to be green saviours rather than the planetary death machines we know them to be) and UUK (a collective union of universities brought together, ironically, to crush real unions) are in cahoots with each other. Both are licking their lips at the prospect of being able to extract large portions of the pay promises enshrined in the work contracts of a tired and embattled workforce. Dame Kate "don't give an inch" Barker's argument that the cynical timing of the valuation does not matter is complete hogwash. If it were so unimportant then she and those she represents should be happy to listen to those they are supposed to represent and commission a fresh valuation, but they dare not countenance it, because they know that doing so will significantly erode any case they have for further eroding our pensions in the manner that they have been doing over the last decade and more. By all sensible estimations, the scheme is in rude health. A recent article in the FT by Martin Wolf, an impartial observer of these latest developments, argues that the current imperative of the financial whizzes at USS to be overly prudent and pessimistic is attempting the impossible, to insure against the end of our world. This is not how we want our scheme to be managed.

oh please... the USS 'deficit' is entirely a moveable feast; just dependent on the choice of assumptions made. And many academic experts ( far more expert than those 'advisers' at USS) have already crawled all over this, pointing out the flaws in the USS position. Yes, we could agree that the date of valuation is only ONE of many factors in the current mess over which the Trustees should be ashamed to preside - in itself it is ridiculous, using a valuation date when assets were known to be at their lowest is just as bad as using a date when they are artificially high. But if USS has really travelled that long journey from being one of the most well funded and secure pension schemes in the UK to what the Trustees now portray as perilous deficit , well there should be mass Trustee resignations in acknowledgement of their own abject failure. And, call me a cynic, but the woes of USS only really seemed to start once it was no longer the same pension scheme shared by the VC alongside the most junior researcher. Am assuming that was partly due to the government's 'Lifetime allowance' restrictions. But the best safeguard IMO was the old one - that the VC's pension shared the same fate as everyone else's. But all in all there is something rotten in the state of USS Management.

As trustees, is it not your duty to ensure that fund managers perform well? What have you done about their abject failure? For failure it is: a well-funded pension scheme that was the envy of many has turned into a shambles in deficit - or so you claim - potentially unable to meet its obligations to those preparing to draw their pensions, telling us that we shall have to contribute more and STILL receive lesser benefits that we contracted to when we joined the scheme. We need some explanations, not some garbled account of why you think the valuation is correct. Pension scheme trustees are there to ensure that pensions deliver, not to defend poor management, mismanagement even, of the scheme.

There are respectable academic arguments for saying that the current actuarial approach to valuing fund liabilities is radically unsound. The very difficulty of explaining the discount rates used to value liabilities shows how little they have to do with intuitive common sense. However, that longstanding approach represents custom and practice and is the only one recognised by the law/Pensions Regulator. So the trustees have no option. The UCU is playing the role of King Canute's advisors, effectively urging the trustees and employers to defy the law. Their strike can serve only to damage education and the UK's international reputation. It will also aggravate negative perceptions of the academic profession as politicised and unworldly.