When do you think the strikes will be?

[JasminaPashmina]

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

Before Christmas by chance?

The union reps at my university try very hard to get out the vote with personal reminders. This seems to be UCU policy, along with the ‘I’ve voted’ stickers. More coercive nonsense - why have I put up with this so long??

So the NEC results are out: www.ucu.org.uk/article/10339/UCU-trustee-national-officer-and-national-executive-committee-elections-in-2019-20. Really not sure what to make of this. Holly Smith has been elected, which is amazing, and some of the "sensible" candidates (i.e. not UCU Left, not anti-free speech) are in as well. Generally speaking I don't think UCU Left has done great. On the other hand, I find it incredibly depressing to see on the list the names of some (particularly a certain women's representative) who have been incredibly dismissive, to the point of mockery. of members' concerns re free speech/women's rights.

Thanks for posting. If academic freedom is your concern, then these were the recommendations by UCU4af: ucu4af.wixsite.com/website-2/how

I think this is a mixed bag. And for what it’s worth, J. Edge, the new women’s officer comes across as extremely aggressive and unreasonable on twitter. Maybe she is lovely
IRL but I do not think she will represent most female members’ including my concerns in any meaningful way, quite the opposite.

Yes I voted following a combination of ucuaf's and Mike Otsuka's recommendations. And that's the very women's officer who said on Twitter that Selina Todd should "go for a walk or something" because "it's the weekend" - this is when Selina was given security guards...

I am so glad I'm out of UCU with Jo Edge as a women's officer.

This tweet basically sums up most of UCU right now - a fucking popularity contest.

Hey, I might actually start identifying as a man now for UCU purposes so as to escape the remit of this particular "women's officer" (tbf there are two more who have been elected).

Yes, Joanne Edge is absolutely awful. Like Jo Grady but much more aggressive and unreasonable from her twitter behaviour at least. There are lots of other instances of her mocking women and belittling their concerns, as well as swearing at anyone who doesn’t agree with her. It’s not great but it could be worse I guess. I’m definitely not tempted back by these results but I am very pleased Holly Smith was elected.

arid what a great idea! Yes I have no doubt that she will try to make things worse not better for women, given her total inability to see nuance. The aggressive attacks are more akin to what I’d expect of a teenager than an elected member of HEC.

At least the UCU left VP candidate wasn’t elected.

There are some other officers who give cause for concern, Mark Pendleton and Chloe Vitry for example. I still haven’t left UCU and now I think I should stay to not vote in the ballot but this is very hard ...

Leon Rocha is also a cause for concern. Apparently there are 8 who are pro Grady4GS on the committee now. While they might not be as crazy as the Left on strike action (although certainly deluded and misguided), they are are worse than the Left on academic freedom. I would seriously get the hell out after the next ballot.

Should I get out quietly, though, or tell my local branch why?

I emailed head office and got some shitty response about how they appreciate that sometimes members want to leave. I didn’t bother with the local branch because they’re all really woke and would probably try to make my life more difficult.

@Daca I think you should tell your local branch why. I didn't when I left initially but since then I have told the local branch secretary and several of the more vocal Grady fan-club members at my institution. I've met with some resistance and disagreement but also debate and empathy from others.

I think if people sneak out of the door without telling branches why they are sneaking out, this allows retrospective narratives to be produced about potential loss of members.

I really admire that some people have very publicly declared their leaving on Twitter - I haven't been brave enough for that but I think it's important that these critiques and concerns are made public.

This is interesting... michael4hec.wordpress.com/2020/03/10/whos-the-mudguard/

Thanks for the advice, I’m taking it on board. I have some fairly rabid, Jo Edge-style activists at my institution (they love nothing more than hunting ‘transphobes’ on twitter), but I’ll try to talk to the more sensible (relatively speaking) ones.

I won’t make a public announcement, though, as I don’t want to harm potential academic collaborations. As much as I hate this morality policing, it’s real.

Very interesting, arid, thank you!!

It is indeed a mixed bag. Depressing, but not surprising to see the bullying Jo Edge on there, but there is definitely someone else who is a second-wave feminist representing women, which balances things out. I'm really glad that Holly Smith has been elected. It's not as bad as I'd feared.

Personally I find many of the UCU member and branch Twitter feeds t tone deaf at the moment.

While they are tweeting about pressuring for improved offers for pay and pensions, outcomes of HEC elections etc, those of us in university management are making contingency plans for corona for multiple case scenarios; worrying about the impacts of the stock market falls on pension contributions and projecting the impact of a complete collapse of our international fee income.

I agree, qwertysci. There’s a pronounced reluctance to engage with the current challenges affecting the sector. Some of my students get it, though.

Some very staunch Union members here aren't observing the strike, or only partially - including teaching some classes. Although I don't know if they'll be reporting to HR that they're striking for the numbers and effectively working for free? And just about everyone is doing research on strike days, and quite open about it, and saying they're working for free.

I don't even know what to make of this sort of thing. In meantime, I've basically given up on my own guilt about ignoring it - my health is in a very poor place at the moment, and I'd probably end up taking a week off ill if I did something like stand in a picket line a few hours one day. I wouldn't be able to just keep working during the strike period, or working massively intensively on non-strike days, like others are doing. I've already had two sick days since the strike started.

Haven't taken the plunge to the leave the union, honestly mostly because I completely lack bandwidth.

What you’re describing, anotheracademic reminds me how I felt during the last round of strikes but something just made me think ‘fuck it!’ this time. Think it was Jo Grady’s luxury spa tweet. Does that make me a resentful and spiteful person?

anotheranonoacademic I’m sorry to hear about your health. It sounds pretty tough. I think the first step is to stop listening to what the UCU hardliners say. As others have pointed out here, many of them don’t know their arse from their elbow when it comes to financial issues, including complex pension schemes. They have convinced themselves that the employers are evil liars out to con them and that anything apart from no detriment is terrible. They also engage in bullying and misogyny, including from branch leaders. I have no respect for them anymore and I don’t want to be part of their club. Furthermore, I know that my position does not mean I don’t care about student or staff wellbeing. My line manager isn’t striking but she does so much to help reduce pressure when allocating workloads that she has done far in excess for me than the UCU ever could. I write detailed crib sheets for the GTA who teaches on my module so that she doesn’t have to do hours and hours of prep. I often have the students of the wokebros on the picket line coming to my office hours asking me to write references for them because said wokebros are uninterested in students. So I know that the accusations that UCU members make are rubbish and that being in the union isn’t the only way you can improve things or show you care about others.

Ditto @anotheranonacademic Sorry to hear about your health at the moment. Do what you need to be healthy.
It's interesting what you say about intensive working on non-strike days. Friday was a non-strike day at my University and my inbox got absolutely pounded with emails from about 7am until about 10pm. And these were not generic forwarded emails about bullshit research meetings etc., they were proper personal emails about proper things which colleagues had written which indicates to me that people were working very intensively on Friday to make up for lost time on strike days. This seems to defeat the object to me and what happened to ASOS? Another colleague said in her auto-reply (and followed it up in practice) that she wouldn't respond to anything sent during the strike period and all emails would need to be resent - that seems much more in the spirit of striking to me. And don't get me started on the colleague who was emailing me all day Sunday prefacing her emails with "Sorry for emailing on the weekend, I'm trying to catch up and clear work ready for striking tomorrow" and signing off with "in solidarity". Boners.

@Daca Nope, not spiteful and resentful just engaged and critical, the way academics should be.

Fuck, I meant bonkers

Jasmina, I would not be surprised if those academics had composed those emails and saved them in their draft folder during the week, ready to be sent out on Friday. It’s an elaborate charade that fools no one. Working on Sunday during a strike about, among other things, workload. What an own goal ...
And thanks for your kind words!