Anyone in the UCU?

[Closetlibrarian]

And striking at end of Feb?

I joined UCU after the last strike, so this will be my first. Even though I voted in favour it, I'm now in an utter quandary. I have an absolute monster of a semester coming up and I'm fretting about all the lectures, tutorials, etc, I'll have to cancel as part of the strike.

If you've gone on strike before how did you present it to your students so that they didn't just get really pissed off with you for cancelling lectures (that we're then, according to UCU, not supposed to reschedule)?

Also, how did you mange with the loss of income? I'm the 'breadwinner', so 14 days of strike action is going to massively impact us (i.e. I'm not sure we'll be able to pay our bills).

whiskyowl

Well done you and your DH.

I think a good HoD is "one of us" and has the interest of the department at heart rather than that of senior management. They act as an umbrella to shelter us from the shit SM showers on us from on high. And as return we try to be as supportive of the HoD as possible. For us I think this partnership generally works and makes the department such a nice place to work. That's what I call leadership - to be brave enough to defy those above you rather than those less powerful.

This strike thing is making me all idealistic.

That is exactly what DH thinks never. He views his job as protecting his people. He and another HoD with whom he works closely literally spent the entire day yesterday convincing HR to back down from docking another day's pay from staff who didn't reschedule lectures in 2 days, while I was trying to drum up support from local MPs and alumni on Twitter. I doubt any of his staff even know he went to bat for them, because he's not the type to let anyone know. All they know is that the university mysteriously backed down.

It's great that you're supportive. I think a lot of staff don't really ever think that the HoD might actually be doing the job out of a sense of duty and obligation rather than to advance themselves personally. (God knows, you don't get much in the way of remuneration for it at our place). Some people were real arseholes about it when DH took over, in an "oh, you've joined the dark side" kind of a way. When really, the job is the very opposite.

I think it varies a lot what kind of HoDs you get. In most of the universities I’ve worked and studied at the HoDs were like your DH - people saw it as their duty to take a term as HoD and to make the best of it for everyone. Where I am now is totally different. The only people who become HoDs are doing it purely for their own advancement. I’m 100% certain that my HoD does not give a shit about the staff.

I agree with unimaginative. My HoD is brilliant - totally 'on our side', a lovely person and a good line manager. I don't know if he's in the UCU as I don't work with him closely, but I'd hazard a guess that he is. I also know that he very much sees his job as protecting us from the shit that gets dealt from up on high, so that we can get on with what we're good at.

My previous HoD (at same institution, different dept) was a spineless snake. Basically a 'yes man' to the odious senior management and ran the department out of existence. I have no doubt that he would not have 'been on our side' during a strike.

I think most of us are very aware of what kind of HoD we have though. So @whiskyowl’s DH’s department probably do realise that he’s doing their best for them.

You definitely know when you’ve got one who simply sees it as a stepping stone to becoming one of those odious senior managers.

I really hope so unimaginative

I feel terribly for those without a good HoD. They really are a buffer between staff and a shower of shit from the top.

Interestingly, our fairly recently promoted pro-VC was my ex HoD, and he's still absolutely "one of us" despite his rank (and very popular as a result). He is an interesting person to watch in leadership terms, because he does actually take things on board and adjust (even personal stuff that most people would reject to protect their ego), yet he has his own way of doing things that is distinctive and not at all managerial. Am fascinated to see how he responds to the strike - I am pretty sure he thought it would fail going in, and he's keeping a deliberately low profile at the moment. If he listens to staff concerns about neoliberalisation and reacts to them in a clever and productive way, it could be amazing for everyone in the Faculty.

Support from senior colleagues is hugely important, especially for ECRs. One very senior Prof in my department is our union rep and has been fantastic. He’s principled as well as sensible.

Good leadership is so rare in our universities. We are amateurs and it shows in our appalling governance.

We are amateurs and it shows in our appalling governance.

We are professionals.

You get appalling leadership everywhere. Look at the government. You'd think their job is to lead and what are they doing!? Leading us in bloody circles. It shows that this so-called meritocracy, where rich white men from privileged background are unfairly advantaged, doesn't quite work ...

I mean amateurs in HR and administration. Yes, many of us are brilliant teachers and researchers, but expecting us to also be brilliant in still more professional fields is ludicrous. It’s not expected in many other professions as far as I can see. It adds to workload and also means that people who are good at what we are meant to be doing often get dragged away into time consuming roles that a professional administrator should be doing.

Not a single professor striking in my department. They’ve crossed the picket line each day. Sickened by them, to be honest.

@whiskyowl your PVC sounds very like mine are we at the same place? very committed to unionism in his research & management style. I really feel for him in the current dispute.

I'm interested in this question of management. I think in the Humanities (my field) we really do ourselves a disservice in often spurning managerial roles and those that undertake them, out of our ingrained scholarly oppositional stance.

That is, we are trained to read and think critically, and 'against the grain' (as Terry Eagleton writes). And we tend to turn this critical gaze on university management. Which is fine.

But it can be corrosive for those of us in HoD and higher up academic leadership roles. My approach as HoD and Research Director (I've done either/both of those roles for most of the last 20 years) is always to try to protect colleagues from a lot of the rubbish that comes from above. However, there are times when I need to do things which my colleagues don't like or don't understand or don't agree with and sometimes it's quite tough to have to keep on explaining and making the argument with my colleagues. These kinds of jobs suck up emotional energy, and to have one's colleagues questioning adds to the stress.

I realise, of course, that there must be discussion, debate, and questioning. But if I'm doing a check in with a colleague about the progress of their research, so I can answer all the REF-related palarva that upper academic management goes on about, I do not need a 20 minute rant about the REF.

So I think we need to cherish and support the good leaders amongst us.

But more than that, we need to see going in to academic leadership as something that is valuable & worthwhile; not something you do because your research has stalled - I've had people say that to me - even though I've had a string of external research grants & books.

A VC (who is currently demonised) once said to our humanities school that he thought that humanities academics shot themselves in the foot by shunning serious academic leadership roles. And I tend to agree with him. In my experience of dealing in quite fraught contentious matters with DVCs and PVCs those who came to the roles from the sciences - always men, often engineers - were the least flexible and the most dictatorial. We can use humanities critical thinking in academic leadership - I'm lucky to work with senior colleagues who do just this, and the ethos in my faculty is wonderful.

I mean amateurs in HR and administration. Yes, many of us are brilliant teachers and researchers, but expecting us to also be brilliant in still more professional fields is ludicrous.

It is simply not true that academics lack management/admin experience, for those who have led very large research teams and research projects throughout their careers. Picking up on RagingGirl's comments: this is one reason why so many people in senior leadership positions do come from engineering/sciences.

And as somebody who works both in academia and in high revenue companies: my experience is that academic management is not worse. Even the worst of the DVCs and PVCs do have some experience of being an academic. People at the top of companies often don't understand many of the roles in their own companies.

@TheRagingGirl That's such a great post. Agree with everything you have said. A friend of mine who recently joined the university as a HoD in an adjacent department to DH had a colleague say to him "I don't think we will get on. I'm really left wing, you see". This person is one of the least colleagiate people in the entire deparment - their politics may be laudable, but their behaviour towards colleages is atrocious. I think you see this disconnect between political stance and personal action quite a lot in academia. It's like people just write shit without ever thinking that it might need to be reflected in their behaviour (one of the biggest academic bullies I know writes on social justice, one of the least colleagiate people in my department is a Marxist). Adam Tickell is currently the poster child for this kind of hypocrisy on Twitter!! (Don't write a highly cited paper on pensions and justice, and then become a VC who acts against people striking over pensions!!)

At the end of the day, it's lazy. If you can't translate your moral or political stance into meaningful action, then perhaps there's something wrong. Simply saying "My stance is that all management are evil" is just too pat, too easy, and swerves all the actual complexities of figuring out how we can best help one another and resist the most neoliberal pressures.

I didn’t say we lack experience, I said we lack the skills. But I am in Humanities where we generally don’t manage large teams. I can see that Science is probably different.

HR is my particular concern. This should be left to professionals, especially when it comes to complaints and disciplining colleagues. Dealing with bullying and harassment, for example, is complex and is too often done in-house.

Not a single professor striking in my department. They’ve crossed the picket line each day. Sickened by them, to be honest

Exactly the same in my department, Soupy.

my experience is that academic management is not worse. Even the worst of the DVCs and PVCs do have some experience of being an academic

That's interesting @user150463

My observation of some cognate industries for my specific field is that management is of much the same standard - mostly really smart people who are in management/leadership roles because of their expertise & excellence in the original field. They're usually smart people wit vision, so their management is usually pretty good.

In cash-rich areas allied to my field, though, I'm often quite shocked at what goes on 'expenses' and the lavishness of accommodation, travel, subsistence etc expected. And a level of wastefulness in operational matters that again, I find quite shocking. We'd never get away with some of the stuff that goes on in the industry sector/private sector related to my field.

@whiskyowl I have had personal experience of Adam Tickell as a PVC ...

This should be left to professionals, especially when it comes to complaints and disciplining colleagues. Dealing with bullying and harassment, for example, is complex and is too often done in-house.

But you could make the same complaint about any company with a large number of employers.

BTW dealing with bullying and harassment in all university departments I have been in does involve HR support. It is standard for the HoD/head of division to consult with HR and have HR representatives in all meetings. The bigger issue is that bullying and harassment often don't get reported - but this is also the case in big companies (think of recent stories about big tech companies).

Not a single professor or even lecturer is striking in my department, as far as I know. It's really bizzare. I've just joined recently but it's another reason why I would like to leave.

I've recently joined as an ECR on a short term research contract. I'm feeling awfully guilty for not striking. I do have what I think are valid reasons, but I made the mistake of not looking into it before the strike started. I'm going to speak to my line manager next week and request to strike one day. As everyone is so anti-striking, I feel like I'm digging a hole for myself . ..

You don’t have to request to strike! Or inform your line manager in advance. In fact i suggest you do neither.

BTW, going off at a tangent, one of the biggest differences for dealing with disciplinary/bulling behaviour in academia is that it actually has to be dealt with, as people have "permanent" jobs. Outside academia, such issues more often resolve themselves by people leaving.

@SoupyNorman so what do you do then? just let her know on the day I am striking? I've got 2 busy days next week and 3 quieter days. If i wanted to be disruptive I should strike on the busier days...

Yes and I would make the same argument about all large companies. We need to be able to report to external bodies and to know that the culture of protecting our own doesn’t prevail.

In my experience, which obviously colours what I’m saying here, bullying and harassment are not dealt with by HR. They are dealt with by peers and it’s just appalling.

Mad Tea: just don’t go to work. Easier said than done I know, but you do not have to announce it before hand.