USS pensions on track for restoration with significantly lower contribution rate

I am very pleased to announce that a consultation launched by the USS Trustee today shows that the scheme is on track to significantly reduce your monthly contributions and to restore your pension benefits by April 2024. This would mean a full reversal of the 35% cut that was made to your guaranteed pension benefits in 2022.

New data included in the report exceeds even the most recent predictions in May, and could see the contributions that you make to your pension lowered to 8% or less, even as little as 6.1%, once agreements between UUK and UCU about ensuring stability for future valuations have been concluded. Today I have written to the Chair of the USS Trustee Board to establish if this can be done earlier than April 2024.

UCU pressure has also meant that USS has recognised the potential to uplift benefits from the surplus in recognition of the last two lost years of benefits.

I have lost count of the times we were told this would never happen or were mocked by pensions 'experts' who said our campaign and our actions were pointless. And yet here we are, a step closer to delivering back your pension.

This achievement is yours. Every ballot, every picket line. Not just over the past few months, but over the past few years. We will now use the coming months to ensure the employers fulfil their obligations and we see this through to full restoration. 

This is also good news for the university sector as a whole. If the employer, through UCEA, can now table a proper pay and conditions offer then we can bring much needed stability to our sector for the first time in nearly a decade. This is what's needed. It is what students deserve and it is what staff deserve.

UCU and proud.  

In solidarity

Jo Grady
UCU general secretary