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).

Oh my, it all seems to be unravelling for UUK. They’ve handled it incredibly badly, even by their standards.

Where are you getting your info 20nil? All I'm seeing is general statements about talks happening (media reports, sally hunt's messages)

UUK’s Twitter is worth looking at for an object lesson in how not to do PR! They are looking inept and incapable of dealing with an intelligent and informed opposition in an argument. Who would have thought that academics would be hard to fool? [sarcastic]

Ah I'm not on Twitter. I know , prob leaves me out of touch, but I have put limits on my social media. All I can see on UUk Twitter is a lot of posts about MH and one announcement about strike talks (can't see the comments, which is I guess where it gets juicy)
I hope USS makes progress today. This strike is stressing me out!
At the same time I feel like it's all going to blow up in our faces -or maybe just mine. Like a round of redundancies is coming after this. We haven't had it yet for academics where I am. Just early retirement packages and progressional services (large numbers took it and ended up working back st the uni it seems!)

"Who would have thought that academics would be hard to fool?"

I know! Friend's department used to be told they were getting numbers wrong. It's the maths department... There is a certain amount of contempt for academics somewhere, isn't there?

I'm not on Twitter either Yogafire, and I don't really understand how it works did you try clicking on the tweet about talks, that should open up the replies, I think, there are many!

Here's a link that might help:
UUK tweet

Ah thanks!
And gosh I was even laughing reading that. UUK Twitter comments are robotic

The UUK tweets manage to sound both robotic and petulant. That’s quite impressive really.

Brilliant breaking news from Oxford - sounds like a u-turn on the frankly disgraceful events in congregation yesterday.

What’s happening at Oxford? I’ve just driven past my own university and there are more pickets out there now than I have ever seen. I feel guilty about not joining them now. Maybe tomorrow.

So yesterday, Oxford's VC basically screwed over their congregation, causing a governance crisis. There have been moves from dozens and dozens of academics to have a debate on pensions in congregation designed to change the university's position. However, there's some kind of ridiculous and technical rule that states that if 20 people stand up, any resolution in congregation will be suspended. So yesterday, 20 of the VC's cronies (mostly management, apparently, rather than academics) duly got to their feet, and prevented any further discussion. Most other members of the congregation walked outside, where they held a symbolic vote at 418:2 to change the university's position on UCU.

Today, the VC has had to back down and has written to staff saying she is going to recommend reversing the university's position.

This is important because Oxford are one of the few hardline institutions in the UUK, and it looks like this is now changing.

If you don't already do so, you really should consider following @MikeOtsuka on Twitter - he's great for the latest.

I actually joined twitter yesterday so that I could keep up with what's going on.

what happened at Oxford

Sorry, that should say 'to change the university's position on USS', not UCU

Getting info from UUK tweets and news from Oxford. It was very hardline so its reversal is a major climb down. Other VCs will now follow.

I wonder if UUK will ever get round to addressing the issue of the late 90a reduction in employers’ contributions that looks quite a lot like the explaining any apparent deficit in the scheme. I suspect not.

I suspect we need to force them to do that unimaginative. I think many staff members still don't realise that employers took a "pension holiday" for 10 years, and didn't pay in and that this goes a long way to explaining the deficit. It really has been a case of daylight robbery.

Yes, I've just seen a tweet about the Ox VC backing down - I'm feeling a flicker of hope. Still too scared to look at my bank balance though ...

I suspect we need to force them to do that unimaginative. I think many staff members still don't realise that employers took a "pension holiday" for 10 years, and didn't pay in and that this goes a long way to explaining the deficit. It really has been a case of daylight robbery.

But not one that is easy to fix at this point. Universities paying significantly more into pensions from fixed budgets means cuts. Even if they cut the things they should cut first (reduce administrators, cut pay back for senior management), they would probably still have to cut back on staff.

user - Actually, the picture is highly variegated. Some of the universities in UUK - indeed, some of those with the hardline positions - would not struggle at all to pay extra into the pension. Others really would. This is one reason negotiations on this are going to be very difficult - employers in the scheme are not all in the same boat in terms of their financial position. One of the difficulties, and one of the oddities here, is that UUK is a rag bag of different players.

Our VC has said that he wants our institution to pay in to a greater extent, and he's agree to spread the cost of the strike over four months' worth of pay packets, which is a huge relief.

whisky by 'cost of the strike' do you mean split the 14 days' deduction of wages over 4 pay packets?

closet - yes, sorry, that wasn't at all clear was it? The 14 days of deduction will be divided over four months' worth of pay packets, instead of staff having to take one big hit.

God, that's amazing. I'm going to push for my institution to do the same

Closet - definitely DO, I think this is a major thing that institutions can do to soften the blow.

Another brilliant thing is that the salary deductions are going to be given to departments. So we can spend them on the students themselves.

In our case, I think the soft line is largely due to the fact that the university had a bit of a PR disaster in the early days of the strike because our HR department threatened to deduct 100% of another day's pay if teaching wasn't rescheduled immediately. This led to a social media stink, alumni withdrawing donations etc. and an awful lot of internal discontent, with a band of HoDs taking a brave stance in telling HR where to go.

I don’t know what I’d do if my university were striking tbh. (Regardless of our relationship status) if both P and I lost 14 days of pay in a month we’d struggle to cover the bills. My branch of UCU did a collection for the striking university in this city’s branch’s hardship fund which I have contributed to.

As I’m in USS (oh I wish I’d switched to TPS but my thinking was that this post-92 post was going to be temporary), I am so greatful to those of you who are striking on my behalf.

whisky my uni stated right from the beginning that pay deductions go to the student hardship fund. So I'm ok with that.

One thing I find odd is my uni is holding out on making any decision about what they'll do re pay re ASOS. I.e. they are 'reserving the right to deduct up to 100%', but haven't said yet that they'll actually do it. But my institution isn't on the boycott list and there's no wider rumblings about this. I find that odd.