(en) Britain, Solidarity Federation, Education #9 - SAUL pension: a small and local sellout

In all the excitement of the large scale pension sellout following the largest public 
sector strike in a generation, you may have failed to notice a small, local pension 
sellout in the University of London, with the changes to the SAUL pension scheme in the 
University of London. This is now more or less forgotten, as UNISON moves on to a campaign 
over pay. Pay, not pensions, is now apparently the battle of our lifetime, with the union 
fully behind it. ---- SAUL stands for Superannuation Arrangements of the University of 
London, it provides pensions for the non-academic employees of the University of London, 
and one or two other organisations linked to HE who have joined the scheme. Up until 
recently it was a final salary pension scheme, and was considered one of the best pension 
schemes around, and was less in deficit than other schemes.

Changes were announced last
year, including putting new
members into a career average
(CARE) scheme. As well as dis-
advantaging most new mem-
bers, once a CARE scheme has
been set up, the danger is that at
some point the existing mem-
bers will get moved into it, and
fighting that change will be
harder, as mobilizing those in the
CARE scheme into defending
those in the better scheme is a
difficult task.

Several University of London
UNISON branches immediately
discussed the matter at branch
meetings and voted to oppose
any changes to their pension
scheme.

The UNISON fulltimer who lead
negotiations contacted branch
officers in mid-November telling
them that they had negotiated
with SAUL and had been as-
sured that our fears about it be-
ing expanded were groundless,
seemingly seeing no problem
with taking this assurance at
face value. They also said that
they had won some other con-
cessions to do with early retire-
ment, that this was the best that
would be achieved through ne-
gotiations and that this informa-
tion should be shared with
members and any other con-
cerns or questions raised.

Understandably the branches
who had voted to oppose
changes were not happy with
this, and asked to be balloted for
industrial action, preferably to
coincide with the other pension
strikes on November 30th. They
were told by UNISON full-timers
that there was not enough time
to do this, that despite
threatened changes to their own
schemes they would not be on
strike on the 30th and that if they
wanted to take strike action they
would have to be balloted separ-
ately to take action on a different
date. When asked how much
time they had between Prentis
announcing that UNISON would
be on strike, and it being too late
to get a ballot organised. The
answer was one day. This was
despite the fact that UCU were
on strike in the University of Lon-
don on the 30th and the rest of
UNISON were also on strike
over pensions. This meant that
on November 30th a larger than
usual number of UNISON mem-
bers in the UoL refused to cross
UCU picket lines and took unoffi-
cial action.

There were also questions
raised about the negotiations.
Unlike in the USS negotiations,
the unions had an equal say on
the joint negotiating committee
as the SAUL negotiators, so how
was it possible for changes to be
pushed through that members
had voted against, unless the
negotiators agreed to them? The
fulltimer reassured branch reps
that he had at all times ?re-
mained neutral? in negotiations!
At briefings UNISON tried to
present the changes as not be-
ing so bad, but were met with
demands that the region back
the calls for a ballot. While reps
put their efforts into forcing the
UNISON negotiating team back
into negotiation, SAUL an-
nounced the changes to the
scheme as a fait accompli, and
even said on their website that
the unions had agreed to the
changes. Possibly because,
despite the express wish of their
members, they had?

Eventually members did get their
say in an indicative ballot. By
this time, not only had the
changes to SAUL already been
implemented, but the recom-
mendation from UNISON was to
accept them. Unsurprisingly, the
turnout was low, and most who
voted agreed to accept the
changes.

As someone who kept in touch
with what was happening
throughout this lack of a battle,
to me it provides a useful ex-
ample of the way reformist uni-
ons undermine potential
struggles. At the early stages, I
saw not very militant or active
groups of workers starting to talk
about taking action over an issue
that finally had them up in arms.
This was exactly what they saw
as the point of the union that
they had been a member of for
some time, perhaps for decades.
And the opponent in this case?

The University of London. The
same institution that the Senate
House cleaners have just won a
victory against in their living
wage campaign. This really did
seem to be a smallish, winnable,
local victory that a significant
number of members would ac-
tually fight for.

Meanwhile, workers who initially
wanted to take action realised
that the whole thing was not
worth losing a day?s pay over, as
with the attitude of their union
?leaders?, often in this case, un-
elected, an unsuccessful one
day strike is the most that?s go-
ing to happen.

The problem for workplace milit-
ants in this situation is that many
loyal union members who would
never cross a picket line once
they have been balloted and the
action sanctioned by their union,
are still not prepared to take un-
official action. So the lack of a
ballot over SAUL for November
30th did not lead to as much un-
official action as some of us
hoped. They instead just felt that
the union had let them down and
they may as well cross a UCU
picket line and go to work.

We need to be getting the idea
across to our co-workers that
rather than fight a battle on two
fronts against our employers
and also against our union bur-
eaucracy, we should be leading
our own struggles. If we vote to
oppose changes to our condi-
tions of employment we should
then start planning how we take
action rather than having it de-
ferred to an ideal moment,
chosen by officials, which may
never arrive.