{"id":442,"date":"2019-12-12T10:05:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T10:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/?p=442"},"modified":"2019-12-12T10:05:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T10:05:55","slug":"please-vote-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/2019\/12\/12\/please-vote-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Please VOTE today!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">Dear University of Kent UCU members,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">Please VOTE today! As well as the General Election though, please do vote in the UCU USS re-ballot (you don\u2019t need to be in USS to vote).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">\u00a0<\/span><b><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">You should have received a new &#8216;pension&#8217; ballot<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">Following our historic strike action over pay, workload, casualisation and equalities in the last few weeks, University of Kent UCU is <b>reballoting<\/b> members to defend our pensions in the USS Scheme.\u00a0More info\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px;font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif\"><a title=\"https:\/\/www.ucu.org.uk\/strikeforuss\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ucu.org.uk\/strikeforuss\"><span style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif\">here<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">Anti-trade union law means we must reach <b>50% turnout<\/b> to take action.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">The pensions dispute is vital<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: #3a3a3b;line-height: 18pt;font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">The employers originally wanted to\u00a0<strong><span style=\"margin: 0px;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif\">end<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0guaranteed pension benefits.<\/li>\n<li style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: #3a3a3b;line-height: 18pt;font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\"><strong><span style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif\">They said<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0your final pension should depend on how your &#8216;investments&#8217; perform and not on your contributions.<\/li>\n<li style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: #3a3a3b;line-height: 18pt;font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\"><strong><span style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif\">We defeated that proposal<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: #3a3a3b;line-height: 18pt;font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">They now want you to\u00a0<strong><span style=\"margin: 0px;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif\">pay more<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0for your existing pension.<\/li>\n<li style=\"background: white;margin: 0px;color: black;line-height: 18pt;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">The pensions ballot explicitly permits us to undertake a marking boycott as a part of action short of strike.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">The pensions issue affects everyone<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">Winning the pensions reballot will <b>strengthen UCU\u2019s hand<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\">Decent pensions are essential to the long term viability of the sector for staff and students.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">You can make the difference<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li style=\"margin: 0px;color: black;font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;font-size: 11pt;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400\"><b>Talk<\/b> to your colleagues &#8211; <b>Update<\/b> your email auto-reply &#8211; <b>Tweet<\/b> @UoK_UCU<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: medium\">Vote YES to strike over pensions &#8211;\u00a0\u00a0Vote YES to action short of a strike<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear University of Kent UCU members, \u00a0Please VOTE today! As well as the General Election though, please do vote in the UCU USS re-ballot (you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/2019\/12\/12\/please-vote-today\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39717,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[155772,155769,19092,155770],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39717"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ucuuok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}