Yet more criticism of UUK’s plans
The University of Aberdeen has joined a growing list of UK universities to criticise damaging plans put forward by the employers’ organisation, Universities UK, to change the pension scheme for academic and related staff at nine Scottish universities.
In a letter from the university to UCU a key proposal put forward by the employers is not backed because the university states that they haven’t seen ‘sufficient evidence’ to justify the damaging change. Specifically, the university said it hasn’t seen grounds to allow it to support the proposal to introduce a limit to a defined contribution scheme and that even if a limit were to be introduced it should be above what is being proposed.
The letter also indicates that, in their view, there may be scope to make efficiencies within the operational costs and overheads of the pension scheme rather than all difficult choices with regard to the scheme’s deficit falling on staff. Additionally, in the letter’s final paragraphs the university concludes that their own view ‘correlates to a significant extent’ with that of the union.