oubucu GM 2012-7-18 mins

open university branchof the university and college union

minutes of the special general meeting held on 18th july2012 in the berrill lecture theatre, walton hall
Present: / Roger Walters, President, Pauline Collins, Vice President and severalbranch members.
In attendance: / Deb Shann (Branch Administrator)

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/ Roger noted that members in the Scottish office had asked him to explainthat there is still no facility for remote participation– i.e.voting – at branch meetings. He said that the working group set up to bring forward proposals have not yet met, mainly because some key members of this group had their time taken up with more urgent concerns, for example staff in Europe being made redundant.
Roger noted that an updated Agenda had been circulated, and this contained a significantly amended motion, including that the proposer would now be Roger.

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Minutes of last meeting

The minutes of the branch meeting held on 2nd May 2012 were agreed as a true record.
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president’s report

A statement has been put onto the intranet that morning confirming that Council had the previous day reaffirmed its decision, in principle, to ceaseto employstaff in Continental Europe. A Voluntary Severance package for these staff is still under discussion.
At the JNC meeting last week:
a)There was in principle agreement that with effect from 2013 the leave year will run August-July. For October 2012 to July 2013, staff will have 10 months proportional leave assigned, plus 1 day extra. Full details of the agreement, which would include more flexibility for carrying forward and anticipating leave, were being finalised.
b)Therewas no agreement to curtail or abandon staff fee waivers for OU courses, as there will be no significant cost saving, and is anti-educational.
Roger invited Alan Carr to report on developments relating to the USS dispute before any discussion of the motion for the special Sector conference.
Alan reported that negotiations had been going well until Sector Conference decided to abandon the suspension of industrial action, which led to the employers unsurprisingly pulling out of negotiations. However, UCU negotiators nowhad conflicting instructions, and these needed to be clarified should negotiations resume.
The position from November 2011 was that negotiators were to seek three broad objectives:
1)reinforce final salary benefits for existing members;
2)secure enhancement for new members who would enter under the Career Average scheme (CARE), for comparability;
3)ensure that USS was broadly comparable to TPS and other public sector CARE schemes.
The USS negotiating committee had agreed a programme of work to end in October 2012. Alan was confident that a satisfactory outcome could have been reached. Now that industrial action had resumed the employershad broken off negotiations.
In June 2012 Congress gave negotiators the conflicting objectives of:
1)seeking to get all imposed changes overthrown;
2)getting parity of benefits with TPS.
The unanimous judgement of the UCU negotiators is that:
1) is unachievable, unless there is an exponential escalation of industrial action to bring HE to a standstill. ie, on 1 October 2012, have one day of strike action, the next week have two days, and so on until members are striking 5 days per week until further notice. The Special conference will have to decide if that is deliverable; and that
2) is undesirable, as there are some aspects of TPS which are good, and achievable, but without losing the parts of USS that are better than TPS, eg lower contributions and better death-in-service benefits.
A member asked about USS now having a 2 tier scheme
Alan reported that the new CARE scheme for new entrants to USS is not good, it has a poor accrual rate, 1/80th of salary whereas the TPS accrual rate is 1/57th.
Alan mentioned the other improvement to USS – if you are 50 or over and are made redundant, there is a right to an unreduced pension. This protection was due to expire in 2013 and had been extended to 2014 as part of the negotiations, butnow that the negotiations have been suspended, the employers had not been going to honour this agreement. However Sir Andrew Cubie, the independent chair of the USS JNC has now used his casting vote to vote with UCU and so the protection is guaranteed until 2014.
Alan reported that UCU’s objective is to force the reversal of all the changes imposed onto new entrants to USS.
TPS now has an indexing rate of CPI+1.6% whereas USS is using the basic CPI rate.
A member reported that he is unhappy about the changes imposed to the USS scheme.
Alan reported that pre-92 universities now have an inferior pension scheme to those employers who provide TPS and other public sector schemes. Alan believes that we can get a better USS CARE scheme through negotiation.
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MOTION FOR THE UCU SPECIAL HE SECTOR CONFERENCE IN SEPTEMBER

Roger introduced this motion, the aims of which were to restore the original negotiating objectives to what they were prior to the Sector Conference in June and create the conditions for negotiations to resume. This was the only realistic way forward since the alternative was to move towards serious and highly disruptive industrial action, rather than the tokenistic work to contract that had a minimal impact on employers.
Conference re-affirms the HESC policy of May 2011 to:
  • de-risk USS through the introduction of an acceptable CARE scheme for new entrants;
  • close the gap between the value of the CARE and final salary sections by negotiating improvements to the CARE scheme which would secure broad comparability with TPS, including the removal of inflation caps; and
  • protect the final salary pensions of existing members.
Conference believes that it is a priority to resume negotiations in order to achieve these objectives, and therefore authorises HEC to:
  • suspend industrial action if the employers agree to negotiate on the above agenda within an acceptable time scale; and
  • maintain this suspension while serious and constructive negotiations are taking place and an acceptable settlement might be reached by early 2013.
Proposed by Roger Walters
A member expressed his opposition to the motion and felt that it was better to continue action rather than compromise on the imposed scheme for new entrants.
Another member expressed their concern that more than 80% of members voted in a consultative ballot to continue with the suspension of industrial action in order to allow negotiations to continue and yet sector Conference went against the wishes of those members.
The following comment by email was read out to the meeting:
I agree with Alan that our current action – i.e. action short of a strike – is not achieving anything, but feel that suspension of it, as proposed in this motion, will not make a jot of difference in encouraging the employers to talk. These next few months is going to be crucial to all universities in terms of recruitment, and now would be the time to plan a serious campaign of strike action for the autumn. That will make them a bit more eager to return to the negotiating table, and then we’ll actually have something proper to suspend if we choose to do so. Otherwise, all we’re saying here is, “Please come and talk, and if you do, we’ll be so grateful that we’ll go back to working over our hours and doing miles more than we’re paid for as we’ve always done before.” If I was the employers, I would be laughing.
The motion was put to a vote and was carried with 1 vote against.
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ANY LATE (EMERGENCY) LOCAL MOTIONS

None
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Any other business

None
7 / DATE OF SECOND SPECIAL BRANCH MEETING ON USS: 12.30PM THURSDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER 2012 IN BERRILL LECTURE THEATRE
DATE OF NEXT STANDARD BRANCH MEETING: 12.30PM THURSDAY 27th SEPTEMBER 2012 IN BERRILL LECTURE THEATRE

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