Last night, UCU announced that they were proposing a deal to its members to end the strike. This deal is going to a vote today. If the majority of members vote for it, there won't be any more strike action.

Essex's branch of the UCU doesn't support this deal, and has released this statement:

Reasons to reject the agreement reached by UCU and UUK:

• It protects Defined Benefits for the next three years only - and emphasises that a Collected Defined Contribution model should be sought after this point
  • UUK's claims that the Defined Benefit System is broken have fallen apart over the course of the strike, under the scrutiny of various analyses: UCU should be clear that the onus remains firmly on UUK to show why we need to move away from Defined Benefit at all
• The idea that there is an urgent need for 'de-risking' USS has been massively deflated over the course of the strike, with public climbdowns forced from Oxford and Cambridge, among other institutions who initially backed UUK - whose input, as has been proven, was over-weighted in the first place.
• It seeks to encourage UCU members that have been on strike to reschedule teaching after the strike is called off - in other words, to take on additional (i.e. unpaid) work on top of teaching, research and administration that already unduly fills their weeks. UCU should protect members from such punitive requirements.

If students want to support lecturers they can send an email to the UCU president asking them to reject this deal. Here is some suggested text from UCU Essex:

"As a student at the University of Essex, whose lecturers stand to lose out on a fair and secure pension as a result of the changes proposed by UCU-UUK agreement of Monday 12th March, I wish to signal my firm opposition to the agreement, and my full support for my lecturers in continuing to fight to protect their futures."