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).

"I’ll put my all into research but just doing the minimum for all the other stuff. "

That's basically my plan too.

I’ll put my all into research but just doing the minimum for all the other stuff. No more steping forwards, I am a prof but get tons less than male colleagues.

Yes, this in bucket loads.

I think university managements are completely underestimating the impact that the gender pay gap reports will have on their female academics. So many of these reports conclude with "We should mentor women more, encourage them to go up for promotion more...." i.e. putting the blame for the pay gap back onto women instead of directly acknowledging that many women are being paid less than men, while outperforming them.

And how do I know I got tons less? Because I was HoD, for no recompense. Have my male colleagues ever taken on that arduous and time consuming role? No!! Course not, they always have better things to do. Plus there is no financial incentive, except perhaps a small increment on payscale after. Havent had a male HoD for 20 years. Makes me sick.

In physical sciences/engineering it's relatively unusual for there to be a female HoD. Much more common for a man to get an offer from elsewhere, use that to bump up salary and get various perks, and then take on HoD role. HoD role is perceived to be important in shaping research direction of departments i.e. men want to be HoD so that they can hire people in their own research field. HoDs are often good at deputising some of the more tedious aspects to their jobs too.

Financial incentives for HoD seem to vary according to university. The ones I know offer a payment of 5-8k during the job plus an extended sabbatical after it ends.

Yes, in Humanities. Even so, I do know of an HoD in another uni in similar role, happens to be male, who got £10000 bonus for HoD role. I did get an extra term’s leave so guess I should be grateful!

Problem is though with some places the students / admin come first so up until now the reason we have gotten research done is because we sacrifice our spare time. This obsession with the student experience is likely to get worse not better.

If academics though fuck this and spent their free time not doing research - well that would hammer REF results etc. I don't know about you all but I've never been able to spend contacted hours doing research.

of course most of us are motivated by research anyway. I'm not really sure what the answer is for folk in SL roles etc.

I'm not really sure what the answer is for folk in SL roles etc.

Why do you draw a distinction between lecturer/senior lecturer and professors? (Is this again the claim that professors don't teach and do admin..... if only this were the case in my subject areas.)

Only because that was my experience in the last university I worked - I can only talk from experience but of course would assume that is the way it is elsewhere.

I'm fed up of the idea of students/admin coming first. We don't get promoted on those. They keep saying this or that student-related or admin-related stuff will look good for promotion but when it comes down to it it is still about your grant and publication. I have had bloody enough of that kind of bollocks and will simply focus on research - seeing that the goal posts seem to change for me all the time I shall stick to doing what I bloody well like.