@Bollockstothat
UCU are utterly fucking useless. Totally fucked any chance of taking on employers effectively on things like pensions devaluation by binning the idea of focused campaigns in favour of wanking on about 'four fights' - who the fuck thinks they can win on four fronts simultaneously? That level of stupidity should have automatically disqualified you from getting anywhere near a university job.
And in the middle of the biggest public health crisis the universities have ever faced, when staff are often being made to work in unsafe environments, they'd rather bang on about Israel and attack a lesbian academic.
UCU is functionally useless now. Time for a new union.
I think this is very important.
The UCU are pretty toothless on issues which are the 'traditional' job of unions.
We can probably trace it all the way back to Thatcher's reining in of Union power.
The UCU have been missing in action over the decimation of Further Education - and the impact of that on all those working in FE.
They may have been pretty hopeless with regards to HE - but workers there have masses more power and prestige than their FE colleagues - FE workers really, really needed a Union.
And the UCU really didn't/couldn't step up there. Partly as a result of being tied into changes in the law around what action unions can take, partly through being outmanoeuvred by changes in contemporary working conditions.
The UCU are left with symbolic gestures.
But it's madness.
Who needs to pay Union dues for symbolic gestures? You can do that for free, yourself, on Twitter. Or with a badge, or a t-shirt.
It's a depressing expression of futility.