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).

LisaSimpson I found the advice on the UCU web pages too but it only pertains to entitlement rather than actual level of pay.
Basically nobody is going to get on your back if you work during the strike because you are pregnant and about to go on maternity leave. If I were you I would work, as the usual advice is to work if you are pregnant and would otherwise lose entitlement to SMP.

On a slightly related note, I asked Payroll about flexible benefits and whether they'd continue to pay them while we were on strike, and they got back to me quite quickly and said yes.
So it would also be worth asking your HR/Payroll (in my institution payroll is 60 million times more helpful than HR as it is a one very efficient man and his dog enterprise while HR is revolving professionals and their revolving newly graduated assistants).

Thanks, worstofbothworlds - I found quite a lot of unions seem to explicitly say that pregnant women and those in their last year of service are exempt from striking, but UCU (in their FAQs) have explicitly said they don't consider anyone exempt. I really don't think we can afford it if I strike given how desperately we're trying to save at the moment (I'm on a temporary contract that'll end eight months after my due date, so everything's pretty fraught), but I do think I'm going to get a lot of judgement - I'm only 17 weeks so right now just look like I'm being a bit slow to lose my extra Christmas weight, and because of a history of miscarriage I've been funny about telling people. So it's either make some kind of public announcement pre strike or face a lot of disapproval as I cross picket lines (or maybe both?!). Again, sorry that this is a bit of a distraction from the thread, I realise that it's a very specific to me problem!

I do sympathise in that I am going to have to cross the picket line to take DC2 to nursery (and I'm not keeping them off for all the nursery days that are strike days - though I may take a little extra time with the DCs especially as it may save a little childcare cost - but nursery won't refund us!).
I have actually read something from the UCU about avoiding striking if it will stop you being exempt, that may be from a previous strike but it nearly applied to me (did some quick calculations and found it didn't but only by about 1 week).

Lisa - thanks for raising the maternity issue. It hadn't occurred to me, and it applies to me too I suspect.

I'm in UCU but pension is TP so we're not being asked to strike.

My daughter's university however is - and I'm having a devil of a time trying to get her to see this as anything other than hugely unfair to her in the last semester of her degree! Doesn't help that her tutors have been generally fairly unsupportive throughout - things we would never get away with, like ignoring emails, or changing the dates of assignments at the last minute, cancelling sessions, withholding feedback for ages. As a lecturer in post-92, it makes me quite resentful of what RGs still seem to get away with, in fact.

I do strike when we are asked to, and am on the side of the strikers generally, but this is a very tough sell to DD!

Liv I may be wrong - which is why I wanted to ask for opinions! - but if I'm right that it'll affect maternity pay in this way then it should be more widely known. I've checked the government advice on calculating SMP carefully and there isn't any reference to this kind of situation there, but since it is reduced if you take statutory sick pay or unpaid leave during the calculation period, I can't see why a different principle would be used. As I said, I couldn't find much information at all and what I could find was a bit different/outdated because I think they used to calculate maternity pay from the period before you took leave, so in late pregnancy, but now its the very confusing 'eight weeks before qualifying week, which is 15 weeks before due date', which I take as weeks 17-25 of the pregnancy (which I guess is actually much fairer in general, as you're much less likely to be on sick leave then than in the third trimester).

ignoring emails, or changing the dates of assignments at the last minute, cancelling sessions, withholding feedback for ages. As a lecturer in post-92, it makes me quite resentful of what RGs still seem to get away with, in fact.

That would never happen in my RG institution. I think you’re generalising.

Oh of course, sorry - in all likelihood it's not even all schools at hers! I just mean because in a post-92 you face certain prejudices and assumptions, and TEF hasn't helped... so it astounds and irritates me how much her lecturers get away with that we (and many others in all kinds of universities) would not.

Fair enough

Hmmm, it would never happen in my department of my RG institution - indeed, such things are, and have indeed been, disciplinary matters. It would, however, happen in an adjacent department where all senior staff are totally feckless and selfish. There is a great deal of unnevennes in how things are run in departments across the faculty, with practice ranging from really world class to utter dysfunctional basket case.

On the strike, is there much talk of it at your place - amongst students, I mean? There doesn’t seem to be that much media coverage. Wonder if I’m brave enough to start an AIBU thread....

My final year students keep asking what's going to happen and whether the classes will be cancelled, so they're definitely aware (and very anxious about it).

I guess we also need parents to get sufficiently annoyed to start contacting VCs and even MPs(?).

This is the bit that I'm uncertain about.

Parents getting in touch with VCs is a symptom of what's wrong with the education system. In saying that, I'm not criticising those parents for doing this - but it's part and parcel of the whole instrumentalism and the debt culture, and the lack of personal growth/development that sees kids developing ideas/independence of their own.

I also think that with this contractual, "customer service" culture parents are quite likely to be angry with lecturers, rather than supportive. As far as I can tell, no effort has really been made to explain this to the wider public or to parents - instead, UCU seem to be replying on a rather old-fashioned notion of solidarity between students and lecturers that has been significantly eroded by the fee structure and by the fact that a disciplinary school system that does far too much spoon-feeding, plus indebtedness has left so many of them struggling with chronic levels of anxiety. Solidarity is still there, but it's been weakened.

On top of that, there are so many misconceptions about what academics do. So many people think that we only work our teaching hours, or have hours for research every week etc. etc. etc. The amount of managing/administration, grant capture work, project work etc comes as a shock to most people who have left a PhD/post-doc, let alone those outside the sector!

I completely agree with you whiskyowl on the consumerism and infantilism underpinning the idea of parents contacting VCs.

And I do think that UCU have been atrocious at the media side of things. Letters to the Guardian just don't cut it. They need to be getting opinion pieces, editorials, appearing on breakfast tv, even coming up with a proper hashtag for goodness sake.

So is an AIBU thread a bad idea...?

Perhaps someone can start an AIBU thread of how we imagine other people do in their jobs all day?

xpost soupynorman.

My pension is also in the TPS, am worried that will be next!

As a lecturer in post-92, it makes me quite resentful of what RGs still seem to get away with, in fact.

They really don't get away with it - it hits them in NSS, and as pp have written this is kind of behaviour is simply not acceptable to senior management. In all the RG departments I know, consistently ignoring emails and not turning around feedback in time would lead to disciplinary warnings and performance management. In universities that are looking to reduce staff, it could even lead to loss of job.

And turning your point around - I have a family member taking a course in a post 92 university in which the teaching/materials have been utterly appalling and quite shocking to me. As a pp wrote, there is patchiness across the whole sector - not accurately captured by NSS or TEF. Remember that TEF benchmarks (which in themselves are flawed measures of teaching quality) are set much higher for RG universities, i.e. the comparisons are not straight comparisons.

That would never happen in my RG institution

Ditto.

The amount of managing/administration, grant capture work, project work etc comes as a shock to most people who have left a PhD/post-doc, let alone those outside the sector!

Yes - I am constantly amazed that on various sites - here, Facebook, etc - even PhD students in the system can seem almost clueless about the level of work, its variety (we are top multi-taskers), and the very high standards required.

It would be interesting simply to tweet each & every activity across an academic working day: the time, the activity. Each time we did something different.

I'm sorry, I really didn't intend a slur on RGs generally. I didn't emerge from the university I'm in now, and it's not my only experience - it's just in the particular conversations with dd, I can't help but compare there and here, and the fact that it is highly regarded (and they boycott the NSS anyway), makes it sting a bit. I genuinely don't mean there's a black and white binary, or that RGs generally are crap at teaching, or all post 92s are awesome.

My students are talking about it, and quite supportive - but also very unclear on when the strike is actually happening, so I am going to start confirming my dates with them soon (I am doing some, not all days), so that they are less inclined to miss sessions which are happening just because they think mistakenly that it's a strike day!

I'm in a shortage subject and switched out of a private sector practical career into academia, taking a pay and security cut (even then, never mind the effect on my prospects for future pay). I've been asking myself whether I'd have done that, if I'd known what would happen to university jobs and pensions. I'm afraid the answer is "Hell no!". I advise students and my own children not to be academics. This is sad for the future. Making pensions worse is an unbelievable false economy.

"I'm afraid the answer is "Hell no!"."

This is it, isn't it? We used to do a whole bunch of stuff out of good will, in exchange for some research time and freedom to do something we loved. But the latter is gradually being taken away, and the pay and workload and conditions just don't look all that great without it. As far as I can see, they're either going to have to redress the balance or start paying us more.