When do you think the strikes will be?

[JasminaPashmina]

Just that - when do you think the strikes will happen?

Before Christmas by chance?

Mid November is what we’ve been told

I saw November 18th somewhere - possibly on a local branch email.

Thank you both, my local branch are really shit so we've received nothing!

I've read somewhere that it's 18th Nov (which is a Monday), then Mon/Tues the week after, Mon-Weds the week after that and Mon-Thurs the week after that. Bit like last time. So ten days total. Hoping it doesn't come to that though.

It's saying in the press from 25 November to 4 December. I haven't heard/seen any more details.

Yep, I saw the 25th date in the Independent today.

They will decimate struggling universities as students will likely shit on staff in the NSS - obv I do support the strike though.

25th. Great just what I need before Christmas. I support the conditions one more than the pensions one but I will be striking

Oh dear, I voted NO - I think that a strike is a blunt weapon, which really won't get us anywhere. There are more creative ways of stuffing up the system to make a protest.

@bakedbeanzontoast Last year there was a lot of goodwill from students and they largely supported the strike. My Department saw minimal impact of the strike on NSS (some students even commented positively about how we'd accommodated it and that we'd organised some out-of-classroom events during the strike).
I don't see that we'll get the same goodwill this time around at all. I think NSS will be brutal. I think Universities will then use NSS as a way to make conditions worse (i.e. you need to work harder to make student experience better) or to make redundancies.

@Awaywiththepiskies What do you think we could do? I agree with you, I'm just interested in what your ideas are.

I worked somewhere where we simply refused to attend meetings at lunchtime - or teach for that matter. WE said we were taking 12:30 to 13:30 as a lunch break.

Another thing we did was simply press Reply All on any emails from admin on topics deemed unnecessary by the union. It soon ground the whole IT system to a halt.

These were direct action things which made the point about the specific things that were bearing down on us.

@Awaywiththepiskies That's brilliant. We've spoken about lunch breaks here too actually. Our discussions are more about the use of our work for REF but I'm not sure how well that'll go.

Some issues I have about the strike:

It wasn’t made clear during the ballot that it would be for a long consecutive block of days. That’s the opposite to the message put across by Jo Grady. People weren’t expecting eight days in a row immediately.

The 8 days are for both pensions and precarity but they are negotiating with two different bodies so how would they decide whether to call off the strike? How could they settle the pensions issue on the promise of calling off the strike if they haven’t settled the precarity issue? Would seem to only work if both bodies happened to settle at the same time. Seems really badly thought out.

The strike is meant to be for precarious staff but the UCU gave virtually no notice and placed 8 days of strike right before Christmas. This will make financial conditions almost unbearable for those who are already badly off. No, the strike fund isn’t the magical solution it is posited to be and it won’t be able to cover all loss of salary, especially for those living in the south east.

If many are unable to strike, it undermines UCU. I suspect the current GS doesn’t really care about the precarity issue and has just tacked it on. She is mainly concerned about the pensions. I wonder if she will throw the precarious workers under the bus if she gets a deal on pensions that requires the strike to be called off.

UCU did not communicate the strike dates to members. They found out via the media.

Total shit show in my view and given Jo Grady’s horrendous lack of concern for academic freedom and female academics who are harassed for having gender-critical views, I am again seriously considering leaving UCU. It doesn’t just not protect my rights but it seems to not even be able to effectively protect the rights of precarious workers. What is the point?

@Pota2 I completely agree with you about the strikes, particularly the paradox of saying you care for precarious staff but then announcing loads of strike days right before the Christmas period.

I left the union just after Grady was elected because of her treatment of gender-critical women (many of whom are friends of mine). Then I re-joined because I feel I have to be in a union. I'm seriously thinking of leaving again after these strikes. Or maybe even before, I haven't decided.

@Pota2 yes, I'm similarly a bit aghast. I'm quite senior on a good salary, but single with a big mortgage (moving for work from north to south - argh).

8 days will kill me financially - and as a senior person, I really can't morally allow myself to draw on the strike fund. I'm putting off some fairly significant house repairs until February, so I can just pay the mortgage over CHristmas. Goodness knows what it'll be like for my junior colleagues.

I think Jo Grady is trying to prove herself to be everything Sally Hunt was not.It's Momentum/Corbynista style left-wing woke "I'm harder than you" style politics - which I saw at university as a student in the late 70s/80s - the Trots and the Sparts each vying to be more ideologically sound. I'm liberal left, but I find the fascistic thinking of the hard Left really unsettling (supporting the #NoDebate over TWAW, for example - this is not how academics should argue!).

I trusted Sally Hunt; I don't trust Jo Grady, particularly when she calls people like me "t*s"

I really couldn't contemplate leaving the union though - when I was subject to a fairly trumped-up complaint of transphobia (doxxed really), the local UCU case worker was amazing. I needed that support, and I think we do need a union.

But we need to be more subtle & sophisticated about what 'withdrawal of labour' means for academics. We're not SouthWest Trains train guards whose absence has an immediate effect. We're far less important in everyday life than that - but we are important in the nation's future productivity and development.

I am pleased your Union rep was helpful Away. Like Jasmina I also feel like I have to be in a union so it is an agonising decision. I don’t know my rep that well but will see how she acts during the strikes. But I am seriously losing patience.

Agree with you about the behaviour from the left. It’s completely totalitarian and the lack of tolerance of different viewpoint is the exact opposite of what academia should be. I think Jo Grady is showing her inexperience here. It’s bad to go in this hard because it will hit the employees much more than it will hit the universities. They know there is a limit to how much staff can take and if they start with 8 consecutive days near Christmas (and you’re so right about this not being like train drivers striking), where will they go if there is no settlement. There was no need to call them this soon either. I can’t see the urgency that would require action to this extent.

Grady is also unrealistic and idealistic when it comes to pensions. She has her own theory which doesn’t necessarily match reality. I wonder how constructive the negotiations will be. Plus where is the incentive to settle when both disputes need to be settled for action to be called off?

I also think that some academics need to accept that they personally benefit from and contribute to precarity. Every time you apply for funding to buy out your teaching time, you are creating a precarious position. So it’s a bit rich for some of them to say how awful it is when they have personally applied for funds that rely on a 1 year RA or similar. If everyone is to be permanently employed, then there needs to be some serious structural changes that not all academics actually want.

I worked out if I strike for 8 days, I lose about £750 net. If I got the maximum from the fund (and like you, I can’t morally justify applying) I would be able to get back £300. £450 right before Christmas is a lot to lose with no warning. Some people seem to think the strike fund is a magic money tree. It’s not- striking has a huge effect on salary and the fund will not compensate it fully.

I personally wonder how long Grady’s halo will continue to shine. I have seen that quite a few of her ‘comrades’ have already started to voice their annoyance about the strike on twitter. I really don’t sense the same support for the action this time compared to 2018 and when I voted, I did not realise it was for a block of 8 days with very little notice.

I join the misgivings voiced here as well as the concerns about idealism trumping realism. How clear was it that the vote was for 8 consecutive days? The impact on students is also something not to be discounted lightly. It's all very nice to hold lectures in alternative venues and the like, but it is clear from what I've seen online that the mood of support of last year is unlikely to continue at the present time.

I left the UCU over its misogynistic #nodebate policy, and so has one of my (male) colleagues, who was really angry when I told him about it. I won’t be re-joining. Grady might have some vocal and visible social media support but the majority of academics are not Twitter loudmouths, and I’m already sensing support for these strikes dwindling. Admittedly I work in a small department, but only one of my colleagues will be striking, from what I can tell. Once the UCU understands what it is to be a collective, stops bullying individual feminist academics through its local branches, and starts to understand the importance of academic freedom to our roles, I’ll join again. But I suspect it will be a long wait.

Re pensions: do you all read Michael Otsuka on Twitter & elsewhere? @MikeOtsuka

He's worth a follow - particularly as his analysis of the USS & the VCs' position on it is largely on the side of academics: he called out the USS TRustees. However, I think (iirc from his Tweets during the ballot) he thinks that the current strike acton is badly thought through and badly led.

I think Jo Grady is doing it to show she's "hard" and to show she's different from the Sally Hunt regime. It seems to me it's about internal UCU politics. But there has been a majority in favour at 60 universities, so I'm clearly in a minority.

I voted No for the strikes, but Yes for action short of a strike.

I don't think striking is the way to force the issue on pensions - the USS Trustees seem to be acting in bad faith - much better to negotiate really hard with legal back-up/threat re their biassed valuations.

I think Jo Grady is doing it to show she's "hard" and to show she's different from the Sally Hunt regime. It seems to me it's about internal UCU politics. But there has been a majority in favour at 60 universities, so I'm clearly in a minority.

This was my initial view, too, not holding any particular candle for Grady and finding the prospect of 8 consecutive days' strike action financially and emotionally ruinous. Your point about internal politics seems right though - Mike Otsuka posted this blog by Michael Carley, a member of the Higher Education Committee (michael4hec.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/is-this-really-a-good-idea/), which decides on the length and timing of strike action, not the GS. HEC is apparently dominated by UCU Left, whose candidate in the GS election was Jo McNeill.

According to Carley:

At HEC the General Secretary made a set of recommendations which could be summarized as strong action now on USS with limited action on pay to be escalated in the new year. Branches which did not reach the 50% turnout threshold would be reballoted if they had reached 45%, with the aim of allowing them to join the second phase of action. These seemed to me to be reasonable suggestions which would let us use our strength where we have it, conserve our hardship funds, and avoid putting us in a position where we are running a pay dispute for the whole sector with a third of our branches taking action.

However,

These recommendations were rejected on the strength of a motion brought by the UCU Left members of HEC, which proposed simultaneous action in both disputes and reballoting branches which reached 40% turnouts. (It also, incidentally, proposed measures similar to motion HE3 from the 2017 Sector Conference which was treated with contempt at the time.) I opposed the UCU Left motion and proposed treating it in a way which would allow HEC to deal with the General Secretary’s recommendations in turn and pick and choose which elements we wanted in a strategy. The motion carried, however, and I supported the proposed strike dates in this phase of industrial action.

It's going to be a long few weeks.

Oh dear, we really do have a lot of arm chair revolutionaries, don't we? I didn't vote for Jo Grady - her anti-feminist stance was enough to put me off. And I usually vote for women out of principle.

Will the full-time UCU Exec all take an 8 day pay cut?

BingoBango thanks for that. I accept that it came from HEC but Grady is the GS. The buck has to stop with her, surely. If they went against her recommendations, then that is surely a sign of her leadership? I note that during the 2018 strikes, Sally Hunt copped all the flack for UCU decisions (from Grady herself) so I think what’s good for the goose is good for the gander here. She is leading the union and the union has made a big fuck-up. The employers will of course sit this one out and they will know that the majority of staff won’t have the resources or will to do another lengthy period after this 8 day block.

Also Grady still believes that final salary is a viable option. It shows how little insight she has despite her ‘expertise’. I know it isn’t something that UCU are seeking but she believes that a huge mistake was made in ending that. The average academic probably works for 30-35 years if they get a first permanent post at say 30 and retire at 65. Some will start later than that. Many of them, being affluent and with a higher life expectancy than the average population, will live well into their 90s and may draw a pension for 30 years. How can someone still believe that that is a sustainable model? It doesn’t make any sense. I actually believe there is a deficit and I think the UCU leadership needs to be realistic in its negotiations rather than just thinking that everyone is lying to them.

And Grady will of course continue to be paid her 6 figure salary while the rest of us are on the picket lines. It’s because she is on over 100k that she must be held accountable and she doesn’t get to hide behind ‘it was the HEC’ when things inevitably go tits up. She needs to do her job.

All of the full-time UCU people need to forego 8 days' salary.

I'm well paid but it's going to kill me. Indeed, I'm thinking of not striking except on crucial days. I feel such a coward, but I'm single with a mortgage that eats over half of my post-deductions (nett) salary. It's a lot.

twitter.com/mikeotsuka/status/1192805629179678720?s=21

This is very interesting. I was not aware of this.