The Cost of Doing Nothing: Jobs Must Go, But Not Ours
While currently seeking to cut over 30 jobs across the institution (without ruling out compulsory redundancies), Northumbria University management are simultaneously proposing to offer staff on Teachers’ Pensions – the statutory and primary pension for post-92 universities – a 1%, taxable, one-off, non-consolidated, non-recurring, non-pensionable sum of between £411 and £695 (which will equate to less than £1 a day for some people). On 1/7/26, at a quorate, well-attended hybrid branch meeting, Northumbria UCU members rejected this offer, calling it an ‘absolutely offensive’, ‘insulting’, and ‘vindictive’ way of ‘robbing’ staff. Why?
If management are as serious about resolving the dispute as they say they are, and want to avoid prolonged industrial action, they need to make a serious offer. But this, clearly, is not a serious offer, or a ‘1%’ pay rise – it is an insult, and barely a tip. It is less than half of the national pay offer (2%), and well below what is being offered to staff on a USS pension (3%). It will ‘cost’ the university around £400,000, and ‘save’ a similar sum. Yet management are doing this despite employer contribution rates for TPS falling from 28% to 17.6% (compared to 14% for USS). Again, why?
The answer to that question is much less clear. On 6/1/25, Northumbria’s ‘Chief People Officer’ Jane Embley and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor (now VC at Hull) Tom Lawson published a blog (Universities and the Teachers Pension Scheme: the time for change is now - HEPI) on what they called ‘the great pensions crisis’. The crisis was due, they said, to the ‘disparity in the costs of TPS and USS’ in terms of employer contribution rates. They said the rise in TPS rates to 28% (with USS rates at 14%) created a ‘gulf between the two schemes’ that ‘became a chasm’ imposing ‘additional costs’ on post-92 universities like Northumbria. That blog mentioned in passing how ‘employers have no say in how the TPS is run and have no levers to keep employer…contributions down’. This implied employers have more say in USS, and is not true: both UCEA (the university employers’ association) and UCU (the academic staff union) lobbied government to reduce TPS employer contribution rates, and as of July 2026 this has now been announced. Equally, any individual university subscribing to USS is one of many, and USS is a private scheme subject to the vagaries and volatility of the market and shareholders, with negative changes liable to provoke intense reactions (Embley and Lawson began this blog noting how good it was a previous industrial dispute about USS had ended). From a UCU perspective, neither offering nor incentivising USS is a problem; penalising and punching down on people in TPS is.
Nonetheless, Lawson and Embley stated ‘one option is to do nothing, but the finances of the sector mean the status quo is extraordinarily difficult to justify’. Doing nothing was not an option, then. What they really meant was this, though: they wanted ‘to take control of salary increases to contain the total costs of employment’. They said they knew this ‘is not an attractive option’. After months of terrible publicity and reputational damage, industrial action involving hundreds of staff (termed ‘very disruptive’ by Embley, and supported by 75% of students), votes of no confidence in senior management and the Board of Governors, and formal censure from UCU nationally, this proved to be uncharacteristically prescient.
The key point from that blog is that controlling costs comes first and last in their framing narrative that doing ‘nothing’ was not an option; having a say in how USS set contribution rates was incidental.
When the Vice Chancellor, Professor Andy Long, wrote to all staff about this (6/11/25), citing Embley and Lawson’s blog, the day after UCU had been informed of the plans, he similarly focussed on ‘one specific significant financial pressure’, namely the ‘very high cost of the TPS employer contributions’: ‘Based on our TPS membership of 1200 salaried colleagues, this costs the University over £22.5 million annually. If these same colleagues doing the same role were members of USS, the cost would be £11 million less per year – saving almost £1 million per month.’
This line - £11m cost to be saved – was repeated again and again by the VC, the CFO, and Embley and Lawson. Indeed, for Embley and Lawson, writing to staff (18/12/25), cost remained ‘a priority’. The VC also repeated the mantra that ‘while ensuring the University remains financially healthy and competitive…doing nothing is not an option’. Like Embley and Lawson, Long does suggest how ‘access to USS provides an opportunity to take greater control of our pension costs in the long term as it allows us to align our reward offer with pre-92 universities, like Newcastle and Durham universities’. But, again, this isn’t the focus, and there is no discussion of how Northumbria – not a pre-92 – would actually exert more control over USS itself as compared to TPS.
In a later blog on pensions (12/4/26; WEEKEND READING: The time for change is right now: why Northumbria is moving ahead with pension reform - HEPI), Lawson and Embley again lead by focussing on the ‘disparity’ that arises ‘from a structural unfairness’ in different contribution rates. They discuss the course of negotiations with UCU from their perspective (and with varying degrees of inaccuracy: UCU have never given up on negotiations, and management recognise the dispute continues) but as in the first blog maintain imposing a ‘differential salary for TPS and USS members is at the heart of these proposals’. Again, the focus is a cost differential which has now almost vanished. There is barely a mention of having more control over pensions if subscribed to, and having a ‘say’ in, USS.
Again, rates have now changed, as UCU suggested they might. Doing nothing was always an option. No-one disagreed TPS rates were high, but they were so high it was very likely they could only come down, as they have, ‘saving’ institutions like Northumbria millions of pounds, and providing a huge windfall.
However, instead of modifying plans to impose contractual changes on all staff, or pay USS staff more than TPS staff, university management now claim costs are and were not the key issue.
Hence, in her latest communication to staff (2/7/26), Embley claims, incredibly, and in denial of the key elements of all previous communications, ‘our work in this area has never been driven solely by the current cost of TPS. A key consideration has also been the volatility and lack of employer control over future contribution rates’. Any reading of management’s position on this shows this to be false and disingenuous, not least because, again, TPS rates are fixed until 2031, and USS is volatile, as Lawson and Embley’s first blog acknowledged.
In another sense, though, Embley is correct. For management, costs were never the issue. Their heinous ‘Total Reward’ approach meant they did not care what pension you ‘chose’: they either saved money by paying you less salary, or less to your pension. The emphasis on choice was a feint: management were choosing to do this to you, but your capacity to choose was limited. Hence the requirement to agree you had not been ‘pressured’ to change pensions if you did so; the pressure was self-evident.
No, the key issue was, and remains, control. Not over USS or TPS, but you.
During communications, management consistently stressed any departure from national bargaining to effect these changes was only ‘a kind of temporary step’, because ‘as we've said in our communications, we are committed to resuming full participation in the national bargaining process as soon as is possible’ and this meant it was not something people should be ‘too concerned’ about (JE, transcript of all-staff briefing 11/2/26). This matched other communications such as the ‘Final Offer’ (10/2/26) which stated ‘We are committed to offering competitive salaries which keep pace with sector increases and we aim to resume, as soon as possible, our previous position of participating fully in the national process’ (‘Implementing the Total Reward Approach’, ‘Final Offer’ 10/2/26); ‘we will participate in national collective pay bargaining where we can’ (TL and JE all-staff email 2/4/26); and ‘we do wish to participate in national collective bargaining’ (VC, All-Staff Briefing 12/11/25).
Those commitments have now disappeared. Outside national bargaining, management now think they can do what they like to your pay and conditions (including workload, their next target), year on year, whatever pension scheme you are in. Don’t let them.
Doing nothing should have been and always was an option for management. Instead of implementing pointless plans they could have saved staff and students a lot of stress, hassle, and money, around £8-9m when you combine transition support payments, fees for Mercer consultants, £500 for everyone to have an independent financial advisor, and 3% pay rises for those on USS. On the VC's own figures (£22.5m at 28.68%), the TPS cut to 17.68% is a 38% drop – about £8.6m a year off the TPS bill, on all 1,200 staff, for free, from April 2027. Saving £400,000 seems pointless in that context.
But doing nothing is not, and should never be, an option for you. This is even more true as the university launches yet another round of voluntary severance, and will not rule out compulsory redundancies if not enough people leave that way. Given the windfall and stability the university now enjoys as a result of TPS rates coming down (and staying down until at least 2031; this is a fixed cost), there is no need to cut jobs now or penalise staff in TPS.
On the evidence of how this mess has been mishandled by management, jobs should go.
But not yours – theirs.
Proposals
University management should:
- End and withdraw the ‘Total Reward Approach’ immediately.
- Commit to return to national bargaining by April 2027, consistent with conditions for Professional Support colleagues, and management communications and commitments made regarding this.
- Commit to no compulsory redundancies for 2026-31, the period of known TPS costs.
- Reinvest TPS windfall savings, and cut University Executive salary costs by 25% to reflect poor performance, to fund a 3% consolidated pay rise for all (including staff in TPS) from 1 August 2026 – this removes inequality and inbuilt detriment, and preserves parity and a single pay scale.