The National Education Union has voted to encourage members to ballot for industrial action against plans by the country’s largest trust to offer less generous pensions in return for a higher salary.
Schools Week revealed last year how United Learning, which runs 90 schools, plans to offer staff the chance to opt out of the teachers’ pension scheme in exchange for higher starting salaries of up to £45,000.
Last month the i paper reported the Department for Education had told United Learning Trust that it opposed the move. But chief executive Sir Jon Coles vowed to press ahead with the plans, despite what he called “threats from government officials”.
Today, delegates at the NEU’s conference in Harrogate voted for a motion calling on its ruling executive to “encourage districts/branches to hold meetings with members in ULT schools, recruit reps and hold ballots for industrial action to ensure all state-schools remain within the TPS”.
Trusts wants to boost salaries
Currently, teachers pay between 7.4 and 11.7 per cent in contributions, with employers stumping up 28.6 per cent of the worker’s salary.
Under the United Learning plan, teachers who wanted to opt out of the TPS would be able to contribute either 0, 5 or 10 per cent of their salary in a new defined contribution scheme.
The trust would contribute at least 10 or 20 per cent. The money saved by United Learning on employer contributions would go towards bumping up pay for teachers on the alternative scheme.
For teachers contributing nothing towards their pension and getting 10 per cent from their employer, this would equate to a 15 per cent salary uplift.
This would mean starting salaries rising across its schools outside London from £32,850 to almost £38,000, and from £39,000 in inner London to £45,000.
At the conference today, ULT employee Michael Holloway said staff first heard about the proposal on July 11 last year, a week before they broke up for the summer.
He said alternative scheme was being “sold as yet another recruitment tool”. But added: “You opt out of the TPS and you get a small salary boost. But the price? Much lower pension contributions from United Learning…In other words, you trade away long term security for short term gain.”
‘Urgent action needed’
Holloway called for “urgent, targeted action to fight this scheme and protect the TPS for all of us and for those who come after us”.
“Jon Coles wants this to be a test case for the profession, and we need to say no. Like Jon Coles, I’m a qualified maths teacher, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to know that this doesn’t add up.
“Robbing teachers’ futures to entice new people into the profession is not only unsustainable and the wrong way to recruit. It’s just plain wrong.”
Another delegate, Mark Hopper, said ULT’s proposal was a “real worry.
“ULT’s plan is unlikely to remain a choice for very long. It will have consequences for the future sustainability of the TPS. Others MATs are likely to follow. But it’s the wrong choice.
“Better for ULT to campaign for fairer funding, rather than choosing to weaken our pension funds. That is hardly collegiate.”
United Learning schools ‘in the TPS and staying there’
United Learning pointed out one in 10 of its teachers under 40 had already opted out of the TPS because it is too expensive to them. The aim of its alternative scheme is to boost recruitment and retention and compete with other graduate jobs, it said.
Coles added: “The good news for the NEU is that all United Learning schools are still within TPS and are staying there, so they don’t need to do anything to achieve that aim.
“The even better news is that we’re offering NEU members a personal choice as to whether to stay in TPS or to take their compensation in a different way – with more pay now and lower pension contributions.
“That doesn’t affect any other scheme member, whose future pension is guaranteed by the taxpayer.”
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