The employers are currently consulting on the proposed changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). Your branch officers (Paul Hubert, President, and Owen Lyne, Secretary) attended a collective consultation meeting about them on 2 April with university management.

We strongly encourage all members to feed any questions and concerns through us, so we can convey them at the next meeting (May 8th) and at any other opportunities we get, whether or not members also submit them directly to the USS consultation website. Please note that the views of UCU members who are not members of the USS but who are entitled to be should also be taken into account in this process.

Please also consider attending the university’s presentations, at which these changes will be explained and a chance to comment will be given. Even if little is changed by the consultation, it will at least ensure you are as fully informed as possible about these enormously significant changes to USS. It is also important to register concerns through this means – we need to impress upon the employer that there is strong feeling and try to ensure that answers are provided to any questions we have.

Information on them and how to sign up is given here . We are told that there are many places still available at these sessions. See also dates and times below.

We encourage all members to make individual submissions to the consultation through the USS consultation website as well as through the other channels – the UCU centrally has published material about how to do this and we intend to circulate further information in the near future which you may find helps you with this. Two (personal) resources for responding to the consultation questions are the following:

Dennis Leech’s blog – emeritus professor of economics at Warwick University and UCU branch pensions officer

Mike Otsuka suggestions – one of those who drove LSE as an institution to making critical comments on the reality of the deficit

If many people make similar points, the USS will have to consider and respond to them after the consultation. Time expressing your views is therefore well-spent.

Please feel free to pass this message on to non-union colleagues – you could use it to encourage them to join to make sure they are heard as loudly as possible but if they won’t do that they can still lodge individual queries and views.

Dates, times and venues are:

7 April 2015 – Medway Campus, Rochester Building R2-09 at 9.30, 11.00, 13.30 and 15.00
8 April 2015 – Canterbury Campus, Gulbenkian Cinema at 9.30 and 11.00 and Jennison Lecture Theatre, 13.30pm and 15.00
13, 14 and 15 April 2015, Canterbury Campus, Grimond Lecture Theatre 2 at 9.30, 11.00, 13.30 and 15.00
The sessions will last approximately 90 minutes and can be booked by visiting: www.towerswatson.com/events/21036