One big question is whether 2 motions of the National Dispute Committee (NDC) will be ordered onto Wed's agenda. See this tweet, including further tweets & comments below: 2/
Without taking a view as to whether it should be ordered onto Wed's agenda (and perhaps the *procedural* case for doing so is strong), here's my take on the *substance* of NDC motion 1. 3/ 
In this earlier blog post, I say more about the problems I see with the substance of such a No Detriment motion: 4/4
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medium.com/@mikeotsuka/wh…
A list of the motions on Wednesday's agenda has now been released. I'm now reading and digesting them. Further thoughts below anon.
ucu.org.uk/circ/html/UCU9…
ucu.org.uk/circ/html/UCU9…
Having now read the motions, I see no trace of the two NDC motions, either as ordered onto the agenda or not ordered. My further remarks below will be about motions ordered onto the agenda. 1/
Motion 1 (composite Nottingham, UCL, & Royal Holloway) is a No Detriment motion. It "calls on the HEC" to undertake a strike ballot even in the event that #USS agrees to JEP valuation adjustments that make it possible to preserve existing benefits (minus the 1% match)... 2/
...via a 3.2% increase in contributions to 29.2%. A strike ballot would be triggered to reject any employer offer that involves any increase in member contributions, even if that increase is only +1.1%, as suggested by JEP's modelled solution. 3/
I think this motion is substantively flawed for the reasons I offer in my screenshot email to the activists list above, plus my linked blog post above. 4/
Motion 2 (Leeds) 👇. I'm a bit confused by point a, since we already have only one DB scheme for all members. 5/
Motion 3 (Newcastle) 👇calls on universities to do various things. Since universities are not under the authority of conference, they will not be bound by these calls and will ignore them. 6/
Motion 4 (Liverpool) 👇includes 4 conference demands, w/o clarity as to how they will be enforced. Clause 5, however, has teeth, since it instructs UCU negotiators, who are under their authority "to press for all deficit recovery contributions to be covered by employers". 7/
The above instruction 👆is pointless, however, since it's already the case that all deficit recovery contributions are covered entirely by employers. Members are not assessed such contributions. 8/
Motion 5 (Leeds)👇. Since it merely calls on 'negotiators to press for', clause a is a weaker than the instructions in Motion 1. 8/
Re clause c 👆, the salary threshold is currently uprated by CPI & spine point increases have recently fallen short of CPI. I have more faith in the ability of the CPI index to raise the threshold than in the ability of national negotiations w UCEA to achieve this. 9/
Motion 6 (Glasgow) would instruct negotiators to introduce a rule change via JNC to ensure that causalised workers have access to USS. 10/
From this point onward, I will more selectively comment on motions. 11/
Motion 9 (Strathclyde) instructs UCU negotiators "to agree the JEP recommendations with UUK". 12/
Motion 12 (Aberdeen) calls on negotiators to "use their best endeavours" to bring about: 13/
"the recommendations contained in the Report of the Joint Expert Panel dated September 2018, which will result in the modest increases of contributions from employees (to 9.11%) and employers (to 20.071%) that the Report recommends." 14/
NB that if such an employee increase is among JEP's recommendations, then Motion 9 conflicts with Motion 1. There is, however, some dispute as to whether 65:35 cost-sharing is among JEP's recommendations. 15/
Motions 13, 14 & 15 take different positions w/r/to the interim valuation as at 31 March 2018 that #USS has recently proposed, and which I discuss here: 16/
Given its more favourable baseline, I think the best way forward is via interim valuation as at 31 March 2018 and therefore support Motions 13 & 14. 17/17
UPDATE: It turns out that the motion that Leeds actually submitted to conference doesn't contain the proposal to link the salary threshold to point 49. See here:
UPDATE re Motion 5: It turns out that the motion that Leeds actually submitted to conference doesn't contain the proposal to link the salary threshold to point 49. See here:
