At its meeting on 24 March 2011 the trustee board received a letter from the chairman of the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) advising that the committee was unable to carry out its normal duties because the UCU nominees had failed to attend scheduled meetings on three occasions.
The trustee board sought legal advice on how best to resolve this issue. The nature of that advice is confidential. The trustee board, through its legal advisers, issued a letter to UCU and to UCU’s representatives on the JNC expressing its concern at their actions, and confirming the steps that the trustee board would intend to take to remedy the situation. USS’s chief executive Tom Merchant said “The normal business of USS has been disrupted by the failure of UCU representatives to attend the JNC on a number of occasions. This is intolerable to any scheme, not least a large scheme such as USS with 280,000 members and approximately 390 employers, and the board is taking steps to remedy the situation”.
The next meeting of the JNC was originally scheduled for 14 April 2011. However, in order to provide UCU with a further opportunity to formulate and bring forward its alternative proposals for changes to the scheme, the trustee board has confirmed that the JNC meeting will be re-scheduled to take place on Tuesday 10 May 2011. The trustee board will ask the JNC to formally decide on the scheme change proposals at the 10 May meeting, and in the intervening period UCU will have this further opportunity to produce its own alternative proposals and invite the employer representatives to respond to them.
The chairman of the JNC, Sir Andrew Cubie, said “I am content with the arrangements to re-schedule the meeting of the JNC to 10 May 2011, and I would urge the UCU representatives to attend. I am also content that in re-scheduling the meeting UCU has been given a further opportunity to bring forward its alternative proposals, and I would confirm that no-one should presume to know how I might exercise my vote if and when any particular proposition is put to the committee”.