Lecturers' pension action resumes

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6 October 2011 Last updated at 23:01 GMT The dispute could escalate to new strikes, the UCU said Lecturers at 67 UK universities are going to re-start a programme of industrial action from 10 October over changes to their pension scheme.

They will start a "work to contract" if the universities do not resume negotiations over the pension changes.

Substantial cuts to the benefits of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) were introduced on 1 October.

The University and College Union (UCU) said 40,000 members at the affected universities might eventually strike.

The union's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said the aim was to force the university employers to renegotiate some of the changes they have just brought in.

"There are key areas that we believe need to be looked at again," she said.

"Examples being accrual rates and another example being redundancy payments for those who are 50 and 55."

The dispute affects staff at the 67 traditional universities which were in existence before 1992, when the former polytechnics and higher education institutions were upgraded to university status.

'Sustained campaign'

The industrial action may be a precursor to more widespread action which has been threatened by unions with members in other parts of the public sector, such as local government, the civil service, NHS, schools, police and the fire service.

The government is trying to press ahead with substantial increases in staff pension contributions, to be followed by full-scale conversion of most of the schemes from their current final-salary basis to become less generous career average schemes.

The lecturers' industrial action will start with a "work to contract" which the UCU said would be the start of a "sustained campaign of industrial action".

Depending on local employment conditions, this might include union members working no more than their contracted hours, not covering other lecturers' classes, and refusing to carry out any additional duties or attend voluntary staff meetings.

"This will affect the universities in very different ways," said a spokesman for the employers body the UCEA (Universities and Colleges Employers Association).

"The changes would be considered moderate by many as they include the retention of a final salary pension for all existing USS members."

The UCU said if the employers refused to start negotiating again at a scheduled meeting later this month, the action might be escalated to a boycott of internal administration, student assessments and even rolling strikes.

Second campaign

The USS pension scheme has 137,000 contributing members at nearly 300 education institutions.

One-day strikes in March, at universities around the country, failed to deter the employers from pressing ahead with the bulk of their pension changes, which have been in train for three years.

So the UCU held a second industrial action ballot last month, which produced a 77% vote in favour on a 42% turnout - even higher than in the union's first ballot earlier this year.

The union said the some of its members would lose ￡100,000 of their pension income over their prospective retirement as a result of the changes.

It said the employers' private aim was to make huge savings by cutting their contribution rate from about 16% of staff salaries to just 10%.

This might be achieved, the UCU said, if the university employers were able, in a few years' time, to impose the career average scheme for new recruits on existing staff as well.

Big changes

The USS changes were brought in from 1 October in a separate process to the one the government has initiated for the other big public sector pension schemes.

The university pension changes were changes were:

A normal pension age of 65 came in for new entrants and for the future service of many existing members. The exceptions to this are those members who were in the scheme before 1 October - and who were also aged 55 or over at that date. They will be exempt from the normal reductions in their accrued pensions that will be imposed if they take their pensions before the age of 65. The normal USS pension age will rise in line with any increases in the state pension age, which is scheduled to rise to 66 by 2020. It is important to note that this will only affect pension built up after April 2020.The employee contribution rate for members of the final-salary section has gone up from 6.35% to 7.5%. Pension increases (for pensions in payment and deferred pensions) will now be inflation-proofed in line with increases in the consumer prices index (CPI) up to 5% a year. But for pensions earned after 1 October 2011, if inflation is more than 5% but less than 15%, the increase in pension will be 5% plus half of the increase above that level. And if inflation is more than 15%, there will be no extra pension increases - they will be capped at 10% a year.A career-average revalued earnings (CARE) benefits structure has been introduced for new entrants. The benefits are still be based upon a 1/80th accrual rate and cash lump sum of three times the pension.The contribution rate for members of the new CARE section is 6.5%. If the overall cost of the scheme rises above 23.5% of salaries, then "cost sharing" will be introduced. This means any further increases in contributions will be shared in the ratio 65:35 between employers and employees respectively.

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Greenpeace 'genius' turns media spectacle into action

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Greenpeace's 40-year history is studded with outrageous stunts, from acting as human shields protecting whales to hanging protest slogans from iconic landmarks. Love them or hate them, those spectacles have turned Greenpeace into one of the most recognizable names in the global environmental movement.

“That is the genius that Greenpeace has always had, with scaling buildings and going out whaling and putting themselves between the harpoons and the whales — getting themselves into the news media,” says Douglas Macdonald, senior lecturer at the Centre for the Environment at the University of Toronto.

"We wouldn’t see the kind of action by governments that we've had in the last 40 years if you hadn’t had that kind of pressure applied by the environmental movement."

Children push a giant soccer ball in front of the office of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, Poland, on June 28, 2011. The ball was part of a Greenpeace rally held to encourage the government to support environmental issues when it takes over the rotating European Union president later this week. Czarek Sokolowski/Associated Press

Sept. 15, 1971, is cited as the beginning of Greenpeace, the day a group of anti-nuclear activists in Vancouver called the Don’t Make a Wave Committee chartered a ship with the aim of heading off underground nuclear tests by the U.S. government on the remote Alaskan island of Amchitka. In anticipation of the protest, the vessel, Phyllis Cormack, was renamed Greenpeace, a term coined by activist Bill Darnell.

The ship was ultimately blocked by the U.S. Coast Guard before it could reach Amchitka, and the scheduled tests went ahead as planned. But the protest aroused significant public interest in the group, which was renamed Greenpeace International in 1972.

While Greenpeace continued its anti-nuclear efforts in the early 1970s — protesting French nuclear tests in the Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia, for example — by the end of the decade it had expanded its mandate to include whaling, toxic waste and the commercial seal hunt.

Today, Greenpeace draws attention to almost every environmental issue conceivable. Earlier this year, it launched the Dirty Laundry campaign, which urges major clothing manufacturers to stop the use of hazardous chemicals in their apparel.

Greenpeace activists dressed up as climate change refugees urge the European Union to reduce its CO2 gas emission by up to 30 per cent during a demonstration in front of the parliament building of Budapest, Hungary, on June 29, 2011. Bela Szandelszky/Associated Press

Greenpeace claims not to have had a single founder, but its foundations were largely laid out in Vancouver by U.S. Navy veteran Jim Bohlen and Irving and Dorothy Stowe, who were one-time members of the Sierra Club Canada.

Greenpeace is wholly funded by individual donors and foundations, and had 2008 revenues of approximately 196 million euros.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Holland, the organization has 28 regional offices covering 45 countries. The current executive director is South African-born Kumi Naidoo, who oversees a staff of 2,400 and 15,000 volunteers.

Unlike many environmental groups, which adopt a democratic approach and often don’t even have a designated leader, Greenpeace is a top-down organization, “basically modelling their internal decision-making on corporations or the military,” says Macdonald. This has allowed them to co-ordinate their protest actions and environmental strategy with great efficiency, he says.

What also distinguishes Greenpeace from other non-governmental organizations is that it has been much less willing to enter into the negotiation process with governments, says Macdonald.

Greenpeace activists form a human banner with a message of 'Detox' in Bangkok on July 14, 2011. They were demanding Adidas and Nike remove toxic chemicals from their products in Thailand after a year of investigation into toxic water pollution in China. Sakchai Lalit/Associated Press

“The general tactic that they used was raising the issue through media awareness, appeals for public support, staking out a position that might be a more hard-line position and thereby compromise that position. The environmental movement on the whole gets its strength from having someone on the outside who wasn’t in the room negotiating, and the implicit message always was: ‘If you don’t negotiate with us, the compromisers, you’ll have to deal with the more extreme — namely Greenpeace.’ ”

Over the years, Greenpeace has claimed victory on a number of issues, from France’s decision to halt nuclear testing in the South Pacific to the European Union’s resolution to phase out drift net fishing.

Greenpeace's strategies remain as extreme as ever. This past June, Naidoo spent four days in a Greenland prison after illegally climbing an oil platform owned by the Scottish oil company Cairn Energy, a stunt intended to bring attention to Greenpeace’s “Go Beyond Oil” campaign.

“Its modus operandi and its function is to get issues into the news media,” says Macdonald. “Of course, some people are going to think it’s too extreme, they shouldn’t be doing these things, but I don’t think that limits its effectiveness, because its effectiveness doesn’t flow from popular support.

“Where you cross that line is going from non-violence to a willingness to engage in violent tactics. But Greenpeace has never crossed that line.”

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