Email your VC about USS

A new financial monitoring report from the USS trustee has confirmed that scheme assets have soared to over £88bn and that the deficit has shrunk by 85%. Perhaps most importantly, the trustee has also confirmed if a new valuation was conducted at this moment in time, benefits could be increased and/or contributions reduced. But time is running out to stop UUK's cuts coming into effect.

If your institution is one of the institutions involved in the dispute over the devastating 35% cuts to your hard-earned pensions, please email your VC/principal and urge them to make UUK change course.

Click on their email address below to open an email with some suggested text; or you can copy/paste the text from below. If you can, please personalise your email and forward any replies to campaigns@ucu.org.uk.

Letter text:

Dear XXXXXX

I am writing and requesting that you urge your representatives Universities UK (UUK) to revoke their cuts to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) in light of the recent USS financial monitoring report, and to instruct USS to implement UCU's proposals as the most sensible short-term solution ahead of a new valuation.

The strong financial position of the scheme, as reflected in the new FMP, demonstrates that you and other USS institutions will be paying out huge sums of money to redress a deficit that does not exist. Growth in the scheme's assets of £22bn, soaring from £66.5bn to £88.8bn, has outstripped growth of liabilities, meaning that required deficit recovery contributions now stand at 0%.  

If the cuts to guaranteed retirement income in USS come into force on Friday and are not reversed, they will not only entrench deep inequalities in our sector but threaten its future by leading to a mass exodus of staff.  

For many of us, a good pension was a saving grace in the face of constant decline in pay and working conditions. Sadly, I was therefore unsurprised that UCU's recent survey showed 60% of staff planning to leave the sector in the next five years over these cuts to our pensions.

Neither you nor any other institution in USS should be wasting money on a non-existent deficit. By pushing for UCU's proposals to be tabled and passed — as the best solution while the union and UUK work together to press for a sensible, moderately prudent valuation — you will be protecting the pension of me and my colleagues.  

And in helping to stop the devastation of our pensions, you will be protecting the future of your institution and UK higher education more widely.  

As a dedicated, hard-working employee, I am already profoundly dejected by the attacks on my pensions and pay. If UUK presses ahead with these cuts after they have been decisively shown to be completely unnecessary, it would be an unforgivable betrayal.  

Please do everything in your power to urgently pressure UUK to change course.

Yours sincerely,