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).

And I’d imagine that all sorts of complex stories are hidden behind the other patchy CVs that get filtered out in favour of the ones with brilliant lists of publications and research grants.

Of course there are - and those on the panels know it.

But in many fields of academia there is a desperate shortage of jobs. Until people stop putting up with bad situations and start leaving in large numbers (and perhaps even then), panels are going to choose the research "star" who look able to deliver 70 hour weeks.

It is a fight on panels to get people to take into account education, diversity, collegiality instead of just hiring the arrogant research star who clearly is going to do the minimum possible for the department. It still bewilders me that academics don't think through the implications of having the person as their colleague for many years when they go through the hiring procedure. If they did, they would be much keener on people with the "patchy CVs" who are often delivering much more in terms of education, contributions to the department, collegiality.

Of course there are - and those on the panels know it.

That’s the most depressing thing about it.

My humanities field is absolutely littered with people who go on about equality, diversity, social justice and so on in their research and bang on about it in their teaching. But do they apply any of this to the department’s recruitment and promotion practices? No.

It would be one thing if I could believe they just didn’t understand or know any better. But they absolutely do. I am not impressed with the number of hypocritical virtue signallers my discipline seems to contain.

Anonymity in assessing grant bids would be a very good thing.

You could either
a) tell them to do your bit and you'll look over it when you're back or
b) invoke my in-case-I'm-not-insured rule for travelling.

closet have you discussed it with the non-strikers? Ideally they can work around this and keep you on. If not I'd do your bit as you'll lose out in a major way otherwise, but I think I'm in the minority in this thinking.

Anonymous grant applications would be good. I'm in humanities where I think large grants are harder/less of them going (?), and that the key is a grant track record. I wonder how grant success would change if anonymous and the application in hand was the only thing looked at

Closet - what about Skyping into the meeting? Then you are not crossing the picket lines, but keeping your place in the team.

I can't see how union members could object to this, if you are declaring yourself as striking, not teaching and not crossing the picket lines.

I wonder how grant success would change if anonymous and the application in hand was the only thing looked at

There have been a number of recent studies related to this. Women do better if the project - rather than the person - is evaluated.

There are a few "test" calls that are using anonymous reviewing for the first round, at least.

closetlibrarian please find a way to be involved. Don’t martyr your career for the sake of the strike. Skype should be a perfectly viable option, or could you all meet off site? BTW this is a good test of how easy your co-is will be to work with, if they’re willing to accommodate your genuine issue with crossing the picket line.

LOL at UUK’s social media this evening

Just saw that, sherry or intern is the current debate!

Not sherry, pornstar martinis surely!

Or hacked.

"panels are going to choose the research "star" who look able to deliver 70 hour weeks."

I think this is changing. I am not nearly senior enough to be in on recruitment but I see DH doing it and he has recently made strenuous efforts to avoid precisely the "primadonna star" candidates, in favour of people he knows to be collegiate troopers. They might not have the same research profiles, but he looks for skills with students and in admin instead. This is largely because a previous HoD was obsessed with star quality and had no judgement, and as a result of this they had a series of truly horrific and selfish people come through, all of whom have fortunately now voluntarily left on discovering that no special case exempting them from all the grunt work would be made. He also makes sure that all staff, including TAs, have research leave.

The result is quite a different style of department. People do pull together and they do share the load. It will be interesting to see whether they can maintain their top REF results, my gut feeling is that they will, because the "star" people were actually surprisingly unproductive.

So yeah, maybe things are changing in more thoughtful departments where management has actually grasped the realities of the modern academic situation??

What happened on Twitter last night? Was the hack the message that UUK we're ready to meet today? Sally Hunt's emails are low on info but it doesn't seem like there has been any progress. Is there any hope talks tomorrow (or today) can end the strike?

I think this is changing.

I sit on a lot of panels, at a number of different universities. The culture is not changing - it's arguably going even more in the direction of quantitative metrics.

There is considerable churn at the moment, pre-REF. Research stars are being hired at premium salaries even when it is clear they are not collegial.

I sit on a lot of panels at my university. We don't shortlist people who are clearly just research machines any more. We also recently started making candidates deliver a sample lecture to a student audience. The students give feedback and their opinions are genuinely taken into account. There is a change in the research/teaching balance where I am. Will it survive REF? I don't know. I was promoted entirely on teaching and admin contribution with no trouble in the new regime, having been stuck at the top of lecturer for years, dodging REF sanctions by being part time.

Don't universities count work that was done at their institutions as theirs for REF? I think that's what we do. So you can't take your ref outputs

We do that clemenger - candidates have to give lectures and students invited to give feedback, but in the end it still comes down to research in the final analysis

I think that it has changed this time round, only things produced at the new university count. I suppose people could play games and save stuff to publish when they have moved. REF is all one big game anyway.

I think that it has changed this time round, only things produced at the new university count

Not quite accurate - it’s more complicated, but as I’m on strike, I’m not going to look up my notes from the latest briefing.

I think that it has changed this time round, only things produced at the new university count.

No, that recommendation from Stern was not accepted - the old and the new institution share credit.

Lack of portability would have been bad for academics imo - it would have made it harder for people to move institutions, and moving institutions (or the threat do so) is one of the main ways people move up the career ladder.

Of course, hiring REF stars at the last minute is also not ideal, but overall I am glad that (partial) portability still exists.

I'm happy to corrected!

happy to be corrected. Striking is rotting my brain.

I just put my pension figures into UCU modeller. I want to die now. Fucking hell.

70% loss. I will never retire. That is great for the next generation and my students.

I must have done something wrong - I have not seen such high figures quoted.