UCU Strike at University of Aberdeen to Defend Pensions

ATUC sends solidarity and support to University of Aberdeen staff in the University and College Union (UCU) who will begin fourteen days of strikes throughout the rest of February and into March today after drastic cuts to staff pensions were announced which would see their pension entitlements being cut by £10,000 a year.

They join colleagues from over 60 branches across the country who are fighting to defend their pensions after plans to end the defined benefit element of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) continue to be pushed through.  This is following the current trend of attacks on pensions across other sectors, where profit and short term concerns are used to justify sweeping changes to pensions at the expense of workers.

Staff have also received support and backing from students and the Aberdeen University Student Association who said:

"AUSA are in support of the strike: we believe that our lecturers deserve fair pay and conditions, and recognise the long-term negative effects these pension cuts will have on the quality of students’ education" - AUSA

Staff and students have set up a number of fund-raising events for the strike action - if you'd like to get involved, go along to one of their Aberdeen events here:

For more information see Aberdeen UCU's twitter feed, https://twitter.com/aberdeen_ucu and website at https://www.abdn.ac.uk/ucu/