The past few years have seen many strikes and strike threats over changes in pensions. How disruptive have these pension-related disputes been to everyday life?

The University and College Union recently announced that their members have backed strike action from 1 December to 3 December over cuts to guaranteed pensions. This also comes on top of a series of changes between 2011 and 2019 that the union claims will leave a typical member around £240,000 worse off.

The union is asking for pension cuts to be revoked and for employers to improve their pay offer and commit to meaningful agreements and action on casualisation, workload, and equality pay gaps. This hasn’t been the first time; strikes were also conducted in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

What impact has strike action over pensions had?

Research from the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service earlier this year found that conflict involving individuals at work costs UK businesses an estimated £28.5bn a year.

In the month of November alone, drivers on the London Underground threatened to strike over working conditions and pensions. National Education Union members also voted for strike action over pensions, and support staff from Dundee University were striking over a proposed scheme closure.

Universities have seen ongoing disputes in this area for years. University academic years typically run shorter than school years. The number of weeks may vary depending on which institution, but are typically in the range of 22 to 24 weeks. At some universities, in the first 11 weeks of the 2019-2020 academic year, strike action took place, leaving certain modules untaught for long periods of time. Further strikes again impacted teaching from February to March 2020. Two sets of strikes within one university year led to major disruption for a generation of students.

At the time, UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “If universities want to avoid further disruption they need to deal with rising pension costs, and address the problems over pay and conditions.”

Now, faced with the same problem a year later, Grady said that “industrial action can easily be avoided if employers withdraw their disgraceful pension cuts and make credible offers on pay and working conditions”.

How effective is industrial action?

The first UCU strike began in February 2018. It escalated over 14 strike days between 22 February and 20 March and took place at 64 universities. This was the longest ever strike in UK higher education history. The Office for National Statistics found that in 2018, over 60% of all working days lost to strike action were from the education sector.

Now in the third year of disputes over plans to reduce a deficit in the £80bn University Superannuation Scheme, Universities UK and UCU still have not come to a conclusion.

“We regret that the UCU is proceeding with plans for industrial action despite the fact that fewer than 10% of eligible pension scheme members voted yes to strike action. Strike action will not address the urgent need for reform to keep the scheme affordable,” said a UUK spokesperson.

Strikes have been effective in the university sector, preventing a switch to a defined contribution scheme in 2018; in as the dispute at the University of Dundee, the employer has also dropped a proposal to replace the scheme with DC; Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had previously called on the parties involved to get back around the table and “minimise disruption to education”.