When do you think the strikes will be?

[JasminaPashmina]

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

Before Christmas by chance?

@Daca That thought had crossed my mind too

They’re idiots. They’re handing their salaries back to their employers while continuing to graft away. The employers must think their Christmasses have all come at once.

Did anyone read Jo Grady's e-mail from last night announcing the new ballot? (Funnily enough, after all the optimism from last week about the "offer", this seems to have been dropped and is simply touched upon in one paragraph).

She seems to be hinting that the UCU won't call for 22 days of action this time round. She writes:
"If we do have to consider further action after next week, we will need to have a serious strategic conversation about the form it should take."
and
"Your elected reps on the higher education committee (HEC) have consistently called bold and ambitious strike action, but that kind of action means nothing if the union as a whole does not work to carry it out."
But frankly, even with this and with the relative defeat of UCULeft, I don't think I'm going to vote and basically give UCU a blank cheque, which is what happened the last time round.
I am also astonished that UCU officers either don't talk about the coronavirus crisis at all, or they more or less say that UCU won't let universities hide behind it to avoid giving UCU what they ask for. I see the risk of the universities trying to do that, but I think it's clear that this isn't going to be the best time to be negotiating unflexibly and that most if not all universities will suffer from the crisis.

It’s also simply not the case that all employers save money by not paying striking lecturers. Some universities have started giving out cash payments to students to compensate for the disruption, under pressure from the Office of Students. These payments can be substantial, in the hundreds of thousands.

That’s interesting arid. I don’t get the emails anymore after I left so I haven’t seen it. The thing is, Jo Grady herself told us that striking was the way forward so it’s a bit rich to now blame HEC. It clearly wasn’t the right action, at least not now. I haven’t heard anything convincing from UCU or Jo Grady about what form alternative action would take. I wouldn’t trust her or the rest of UCU to organise a piss-up in a brewery so if I was still a member, I’d refuse to return my ballot to limit the chance of action. The problem isn’t just the type of action, it’s the fact that the timing was so so wrong and that UCU is refusing to see any nuance in their view that the employers are lying to them and trying to trick them. They’re using plainly wrong figures and misrepresenting facts. I don’t think anything they do at this present time will have much effect so maybe they should chalk this disaster up to experience (and their own delusion and arrogance) and promote action on a more local level to improve things for more precarious staff. I just don’t see success happening either on pensions or pay at the moment.

I agree that they are failing to realise the impact of coronavirus. Whatever the truth is, it’s not a great time to ask for a guarantee that pension contributions won’t rise, when it’s already having a serious impact on world markets.

Latest JG email - blatantly 22 days of strike have got UCU precisely nowhere... so they want more action ... as we predicted!

My faith in academics has diminished over the years but I really hope that a majority will plainly see that giving UCU another strike mandate would be disastrous.

Yes, you’d think. I hope that people will see sense too but my eyes have been opened to a huge issue of lack of critical thinking and following the crowd or whatever idea happens to be fashionable so I am not 100% convinced. I hope to be proved wrong though.

I cannot believe that Jo Grady seems to think that the most important point to raise regarding Coronavirus is whether the reballot papers will get out and how to get them to people’s homes. Clearly she has not been anywhere near a senior management meeting in a university where the contingency planning is being done if she thinks that is going to be the biggest concern facing colleagues.

She doesn’t have a clue. She has neither union leadership experience nor academic leadership experience. It’s just so depressing that so many thought that this was the right way forward for UCU.
I was never a Sally Hunt fan but my god they are miles apart in terms of leadership and professionalism. The idea that someone with no experience just thinks she can waltz into a job like this and then fuck with people’s livelihoods by putting them on a strike that was doomed to fail from the outset beggars belief really.

I agree with you both.

With Jo Grady, I've always felt that there's a lack of basic professionalism, a lack of awareness of how to behave in the role. Maybe I'm being unfair but makes me think that if she cannot even understand the basics, how is she going to deal with the important stuff? When you're elected to a position like hers, a basic rule is that you're not just representing the people who voted for you, and I think she isn't really aware of that, like it doesn't even cross her mind. She is still in election campaign mode, pandering to those who were already her supporters in the first place. Her behaviour to Louise Moody last year (at the time she was running for GS) is another example of her lack of self-awareness. I wouldn't think that reporting a union member to the employer for saying something offensive online after much provocation from the other party should be a priority for union officers or representatives.

Well, it’s not exactly the Grady Fanclub round here, is it. As soon as she was elected, I was worried about her divisive politics, lack of strategic vision and lightweight persona. It’s really beyond me why colleagues who I have a lot of respect for voted for her.

She reminds me of Trump, forever in ‘winning’ mode, holding rallies, rousing supporters. Destroying ‘enemies’ and gloating when you do so. But that’s how you win elections, not run a big organisation.

Here’s her latest missive: “The union, and in particular the higher education committee (HEC), will need to consider this very carefully, putting the safety of staff and students first. The HEC may wish to consider scheduling different kinds of industrial action and/or with different timings, depending on how the situation develops – but at this point it is too soon to say what will be the best thing to do.”

Timid, tunnel vision focused on disruption, not the sector as a whole. I mean, who does she think she is? At some point, we all want to go back to work, and we need a constructive dialogue with the employers in what is a major emergency.

I honestly don’t know why they bothered with the last few days of the strike. Everyone is in panic mode and nobody cares about the few people on the picket lines. At least two universities have moved all teaching online and I think more will follow suit.

Daca and arid I agree that it’s all very gimmicky. Lots of clever hashtags, merchandise etc but no real substance. I also agree about the lack of professionalism. I think she wants to show that she’s ‘one of us’ but by becoming GS, she no longer can be and it doesn’t help her do her job. People don’t want someone who posts endless selfies of herself in a pink hat, they want their financial sacrifice from taking strike action to pay off.

I can’t see universities coming to any deal in the near future given the uncertainty of the global pandemic. So the strikes this year have achieved nothing, probably damaged the goodwill with the employers (seeing as they made an offer that would have put USS members in a better position than they are now) and exhausted the financial resources of the strikers.

I’m really pissed off and I only lost 7 days so god knows how someone who took the full action feels.

I’m pissed off, too. Not sure where we go from here, though. Still union member, still paying subs but in the current situation I wonder if UCU will not now delay the ballot. Unfortunately, the coronavirus will provide the union leadership with a convenient scapegoat for their own failures. Agree with you, Pota, they should have called it off this week.

Yes it’s annoying if they try to blame it on that even though the strike was an utter shambles before we’d even heard about Coronavirus. They could at least have saved their striking workers the money they will have lost this week (that is if anyone is still taking part).

Yes, pickets were noticeably diminished at my institution this week. I think all but the hardcore have run out of steam.

I also think it’s not good PR for the union to be demanding more money while global stocks markets tank and people face involuntary loss of income from the impact of quarantining and social distancing.

Of course it’s utterly ridiculous to cancel a picket because of coronavirus. Standing outside, in the fresh air, a good distance away from guilt-tripped colleagues who avoid looking at you while crossing the picket line - should be pretty safe!

It seems more like a face-saving exercise.

At my place, picketing seems to involve a lot of hugging!

I agree with you all. The last 2 or 3 days were effectively a donation of money to the universities, by that point the strikes were probably quite low in the list of university management's priorities, which is perfectly understandable in the circumstances. I also imagine that a lot of the people officially on strike/on picket lines were writing and replying to lots of university e-mails anyway about restructuring of teaching/assessment, and I really cannot blame them, disruptions are massive and everyone wants to be as helpful to colleagues and students as they can.

A quick reminder that UCU have not revealed Grady’s salary package ...

twitter.com/goonerprof/status/1238498828854218752?s=21

Have you seen this? Finally, weeks after being directed to do so by HEC, a very vague and unspecific statement condemning anti Semitic abuse is published. Too little too late and Jo Grady has made her own views very clear by tweeting support for people harassing Selina Todd, Louise Moody etc.

It’s also worth remembering that although the UCU left took a hammering, there are now more of Grady’s cheerleaders on there, including Jo Edge, who makes Grady look like a dream by comparison. Sadly therefore I can’t even see a future HEC ordering that the union should even release a statement like this, as this one did.

I wonder what will happen to the ballot now. It’s certainly not the right time for it, if there ever was a right time. Also, coronavirus will place more financial pressure on precarious workers, who will already be trying to recover from 22 days of lost pay. Not sure how they could weather another round of strikes for at least another 18 months or so.

Also, this is the sort of level at which some academics understand the dispute:

twitter.com/ruthholliday1/status/1238446870030098434?s=21

I don’t think she’s joking which is scary. Do these people think you can just snap your fingers and ‘start a defined benefit pension scheme’?

Another social science academic. Sigh.

Yes, I’ve seen the statement. I think it’s positive that Grady was forced to make it.

Maybe it's just me but doesn't it sound a bit frivolous to be thinking of a further ballot when there's a pandemic going on?
I don't want to fall into the "but there's people worse off" trap but I'm hearing of more and more friends and acquaintances who have lost all or most of their coming engagements and face a few to several months with no income, while those of us with permanent jobs face no such prospects. I think it would be a better use of UCU's time during the next few months if they focused on making sure that temporary/hourly paid staff are not simply sacked with no compensation now that teaching has been cancelled or moved online in many universities.

Maybe it's just me but doesn't it sound a bit frivolous to be thinking of a further ballot when there's a pandemic going on?

Just a tad. If the general public needed any more reason to think that academics are self-indulgent and out-of-touch, a further ballot would be a good one indeed.