When do you think the strikes will be?

[JasminaPashmina]

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

Before Christmas by chance?

I agree too. I’m not sure whether Jo McNeill has any background in teaching or lecturing but she seems to have zero empathy for students and how this is all affecting them.
I hope she and Jo Grady and other UCU idiots are held to account for their actions once the pandemic is over

arid yes I saw that. She’s such an idiot.

Now that the country is in lockdown, who knows what will happen. On twitter Jo Grady still finds time for political point-scoring, praising the no-platforming of Amber Rudd at Oxford again. A few days ago, Grady was boasting about shopping at Leicester market (infection control?), now she is castigating the government for not doing enough about infection control. This is such a rapidly evolving situation and in truth it’s very hard to know what to do. I wish she would stop with her sage words of wisdom.

“For those that, for whatever reason, find today difficult, please be kind to yourself and amongst all this uncertainly please do something nice for yourself if you can.”

If Grady were a little bit less kind to herself, and interrogated some of her own convictions more critically, maybe she’d be a better Gen Sec. ... being uncritical of your own beliefs is not kindness. For a reason I find hard to understand, many academics are still chasing lols and likes in this current moment. Who knows whether they will still do this in three weeks’ time.

I think Jo Grady and the UCU leadership will have to focus their energies on fighting hard to save jobs for months or possibly years to come. I do hope they are successful at it.

Local branch is devastated to be told they will not be paid for the time they withdrew their labour, even though things are tough for them now. I am devastated to hear I will not be getting three weeks of salary as a bonus because I am having a tough time, not that it occurred to me to ask.

It is quite strange how they think all the deductions should be completely waived even though most universities are facing an impending financial crisis. Lots of them are also talking about how hard they’re working now while also spending 10 hours a day on Twitter telling everyone what they had for breakfast. It doesn’t really look like it to be honest.

I do not know how they have the gall to ask, to be honest. I have not seen an email from my local branch about this, so hopefully they are not being so daft.

spending 10 hours a day on Twitter telling everyone what they had for breakfast.

Or starting podcasts about the feminist aspects of coronavirus.

I guess it’s the same mentality as the ones who think that their very generous DB pensions are ‘poverty-pensions’ and whine about the hardship of ‘making do’ on more than 50k a year. People who think and reason like this are also likely to think it monstrously unfair that they don’t get paid when being on strike.

I honestly think that some of these people really don't understand that we have actual jobs where we do stuff in return for remuneration.

I think if universities decide to waive strike deductions (which some of them have), then that's a great gesture and I wish more universities took that route. Still, I think everyone should know what the rules are if you go on strike, to demand payment is just so incredibly entitled.

I think if universities decide to waive strike deductions (which some of them have), then that's a great gesture and I wish more universities took that route.

How about universities using the strike deductions to help students in hardship for Covid related reasons or low paid (non-academic) staff? I find it very hard to be sympathetic for people on relatively high salaries who continued to take strike action even as the crisis escalated. While they were dancing around on picket lines, many of their colleagues were working flat out to plan for the shutdown and move to remote teaching.

Yes, you really cannot demand that they do. The places that have waived them did it due to cooperation from the UCU branch and agreement to stand down the strike early. Places that refused to do that despite a crisis unfolding before their eyes cannot legitimately expect their employers to waive deductions with no quid pro quo. The ucu itself has shown little leadership and as late as 16 March was still insisting that ASOS should go ahead despite institutions closing left right and centre.

I am also more concerned about precariously employed staff than they permanent ones. I believe that the UCU strike fund has a pretty healthy balance and I would urge the GS to increase the level of payments to compensate those who followed her wrong and stupid advice to strike for 22 days and now find themselves in hardship as a result.

Wow, they actually are thinking of doing more strikes. These are people who can work from home on full pay while NHS workers risk their lives on a daily basis to look after those who have been hit by this horrible disease. Too right you will get slated by the press and hopefully by your colleagues. These people should hang their heads in shame.

Who said this? Shome shtatement indeed ...

These people are truly on another planet. While we have the luxury of being paid to work safely at home, (and yes I realise that some university workers are on short term contracts and worried for their next pay check will come from) a whole panoply of people, from medics, to pharmacists, to supermarket cashiers, to food packers, are out there risking exposure to disease. Whoever wrote that tweet should be ashamed of themselves.

The account is @BristolDolt but it’s a private account. One of their followers texted the screenshots to me. In the bio, they describe themselves as a UCU militant.
Seeing academics’ behaviour during the quarantine and some of the outright entitlement and exaggeration is making me want to leave the profession. Some of them are making out that recording a couple of lectures at home is some gargantuan feat that warrants them being paid extra by their institutions. There’s plenty of available software for audio and video recording so I don’t know if I am missing a trick but it’s not taking me 10 times the work like it seems to do others. Or maybe it’s because they are dealing with a backlog from the strike but that’s because they went on strike, not because they have to do online lectures. All I l know is that I have friends who have lost their income and friends who work in the NHS without protective equipment and are risking their lives for others. Meanwhile I am currently able to do all of my job from the safety of my home on full pay. I am also aware that senior management teams at universities actually are working round the clock to deal with this. Lecturers and SLs and anyone else without management responsibilities are not.

I think you may be right about the strike backlog, Pota. Quite a few colleagues were very reluctant to go back to work, too. But it has certainly been a very tough and overwhelming two weeks (since face-to-face teaching ended at most U.K. unis).

The thing they forget is that not everyone went on strike. At some point soon we will have the participation rates. And then they can think again.

I almost wish UCU balloted for more strikes. Then some complacent colleagues might finally wake up and realise what has become of their union.

One of my DD’s lecturers, having been on strike for the duration, did one online lecture then declared it to be a waste of time and gave up. All remaining coursework abandoned. All my own colleagues have been working hard to get all our courses running online, sorting out adjustments to coursework deadlines and planning for exams. None of us were on strike and frankly the signs of exhaustion are showing. We’re also dealing with distressed students, some very distressed.

There’s also a sense that the requirement for online teaching is being made by management as punishment and that they should just abandon the need for assessment. I have many students who would be really disappointed at that as they want to demonstrate their knowledge and would like the opportunity to improve on existing grades. I also know that those in management positions are working under far more pressured conditions than what I am whereas from the way the UCU lot are going on, you’d think they’ve been asked to work in a mine or something.
I think that if there is no ballot before June, there will be unrest among the militant UCU contingent so it will be interesting to see which way the leadership decides to go.

Oh and people are still talking about how badly paid they are as SLs and readers and how they’re being taken advantage of. I think that the more economic upheaval from this virus, the less patience people will have for those sorts of arguments.