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Open letter

OPEN LETTER TO PROFESSOR COLIN BAILEY, President and Principal of Queen Mary University of London,

Dear Professor Bailey,

We, the undersigned members of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, understand that fellow colleagues in other Schools at Queen Mary University of London have written to you, expressing their sadness at the continued recalcitrance of Universities UK (UUK) to reach a fair agreement with the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) with regard to settlement of the current pensions dispute. We are saddened and frustrated that strike action has proven the only means by which it was possible to bring UUK back to the negotiating table, and we are grateful for the overwhelming support of our students and of the media in supporting our cause. We also appreciate your efforts to communicate with both staff and students in recent weeks about your own position in relation to the dispute.

We acknowledge also that a first offer agreement was tabled to UCU members on Monday evening. As you are no doubt aware, this offer has been rejected by the UCU’s Higher Education Committee, following overwhelming rejection of the proposal from UCU members across the country.

Given that it appears that reasonable and fair agreement has still not been met, we would like to make our concerns clear to you both with regard to the current dispute, and your own position.

  1. We join colleagues in the School of Geography, who in their Open Letter to you of 9th March asked you 'to join the many university leaders who have called for full transparency on the assumptions, data and modelling approach used in the valuation'. It has become clear that a major stumbling block in the current dispute is that no-one knows what the interactions between the Pensions Regulator and UUK were that led to UUK rejecting the majority view of its members that they were prepared to take on the amount of risk that USS had originally proposed. We urge you to ask UUK to make that discussion public, and to work with other VCs to push back on the stress test that the Pensions Regulator has apparently applied, pointing out that it is implausible that the UK university sector will go bankrupt. We recognise that QMUL was one of the universities that accepted the original level of risk, and we ask you to represent that view in the current dispute, joining other VCs including Aberdeen, Birkbeck, Bristol, Durham, Glasgow, Goldsmiths, Loughborough, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, St Andrews, and Warwick, among others, who have acknowledged the value of their academic staff and the importance of their ongoing security through protecting the DB pension scheme to the extent that it is possible to do so.

  2. Recent revelations have cast serious doubt both on the governance of UUK and its capacity to represent the interests of the sector: these include the overweighting of Oxbridge institutions (many of whom have since revoked their previous positions) in consultations for risk appetite among USS members, and the failures of UUK to adequately respond to the requests of increasing numbers of VCs to acknowledge their changed position with regard to risk appetite and the sustainability of the Defined Benefit pensions scheme.

  3. The opacity and lack of accountability of UUK to the affected employees of its member institutions and to the public casts further doubt on the probity and ethics of its claims.

  4. We endorse what colleagues in Geography have expressed to you: 'The proposed changes to the USS Pension Scheme fail to honour promises made in 2015 during the last USS evaluation, in which university staff regretfully agreed to the closure of the final salary pension scheme in order to "safeguard the future of USS". Such a drastic change, proposed only 3 years later, represents poor governance by the USS board. Furthermore, these proposed changes do not honour the agreed compensation that was offered to staff when they took up employment with Queen Mary.'

  5. It is deeply concerning to hear you referring to the necessity of cuts, should the DB pension scheme be maintained, in your letter of 7 March. QMUL runs at a surplus, which is currently used to provide leverage in order to borrow larger sums against capital expenditure such as building projects. Where an institution borrows ever larger sums to build, it opts then to push down the wages of its staff (with the surprising exception of its most senior members). We believe it would cause irreparable reputational damage if you were to become known as the leader of an academic institution that values its capital growth over and above the outstanding contributions of each and every one of its staff members, many of whom would be able to command significantly higher salaries outside of the sector or in higher education institutions abroad.

  6. We are delighted that you have stated numerous times that QMUL’s greatest asset is its unique standing as a diverse Russell Group university. However, by failing to protect the futures of your academic and academic-related staff, especially those who are young, or female, or BME, or already carrying significant levels of student debt, you run the risk of sending out a very different message to these staff. Each one of these staff is likely to be impoverished in their old age as a result of the proposed changes to the DB pension scheme, and this demonstrates clearly that they are not valued in an institution that paradoxically claims to celebrate both diversity and equality. The risk of reputational damage that this may pose to the institution is likely to continue long after the current pensions dispute is resolved.

QMUL has a long and proud history as a collection of institutions which valued education for all, and where moral leadership and a drive for equality were an essential aspect of its identity. As the Principal and President of QMUL, we urge you to represent our voices at the highest levels, and to demonstrate how much you value the bedrock of the institution – its staff and students – by defending our pensions on a protected, defined benefit basis. We will support you in finding alternatives to capital growth, if you will support us in our struggle to protect our continued livelihoods.

Yours sincerely,

David Adger, Professor of Linguistics
Alan Allman, Teaching Fellow
Kirsteen Anderson, Associate Lecturer, French and Comparative Literature
John Andrew, Associate Lecturer
Adrian Armstrong, Centenary Professor of French
Ghazouane Arslane, PhD student and Teaching Associate
Jessica Ballantine, Associate Lecturer

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