University principals have the power to resolve dispute before lecturers strike

It is telling that every student quoted in the article “University students demand lecture strike compensation” (Scotsman, 19 February) backs lecturers and university staff taking strike action. Students understand that striking is the very last thing that lecturers want to do.

As consistent opponents of tuition fees, the University and College Union (UCU) has every sympathy with fee-paying students, and in a funding system that treats them as consumers, it’s not surprising that they are calling for their fees to be refunded.

Students angry at their classes being cancelled should take this up with their principal, because it is them alone who have the power to resolve this dispute and get lecturers back where they want to be, lecturing students. UCU is clear that we want to return to negotiations. It is the principals’ negotiating body, Universities UK, that by forcing through punitive changes to the pension scheme, and then refusing to talk, has led us to this impasse.

In recent years there have been two rounds of attacks to the pension scheme. both were sold to members as being the last cuts required to maintain the scheme’s viability. Scheme members are sick of the same principals who award themselves inflation-busting pay rises, continually coming back with proposals to cut their income in retirement.

The university pension scheme is already worse than comparable schemes in the education sector, and will be further decimated by the proposal to end the defined benefit element. These new cuts will make it considerably worse than the pensions of teachers and staff in other newer universities.

UCU does not accept the calculations being used by Universities UK, and our own commissioned research shows the pension scheme is healthy with no need for such drastic changes. This explains why more than 87 per cent of our members voted for strike action on the union’s highest turnout in a Uk-wide ballot. The only people now who can prevent the coming 14 days of strikes are the principals who need to get their negotiators back round the table and resolve the dispute.

MURDO MATHISON Policy and Communications Officer, UCU Scotland, Ingram

Street, Glasgow