My heart is not in this latest university strike....

[JadeDay]

There are lots of reasons, everything from the fact I'm still picking up the fall out of work from the last strike, to just not having the physical and mental the energy to strike this time around. My institution are striking on the inequalities issue, an issue I highly support, but do not feel striking is the way to solve it. My students are tired and struggling, and the only people we seem to punish are ourselves and them. The political discussion in my department is just toxic on this, agressively turning on those who don't/won't strike whilst chanting a narrative about all coming together. I've witnessed the worst bullying I have ever seen all in light of this action which is supposed to promote inclusion and equality! Whilst I agree with the cause I don't want to align myself with the hardliner narrative of 'you're either with us or against us.' I love my job, I love my students, I support the ideals of the action, but the way it is playing out.... well as the title says, my heart just isn't in it.

I agree. I'm very very sad about it all.

Me too, and I am most likely not going to do it and leave UCU...

I think the same, I will probably not participate, take a battering at work for it, and leave UCU.

Comrades (if I may), you are not alone! I’m also not going to join in this time, UCU has become toxic and authoritarian, enabling bullies who have just been waiting for this moment. Some people will treat me with contempt but that says more about them than it does about me.

Quite a few academics I know treat the strike as a bit of unpaid research time anyway, they turn up on the first day for a few twitter selfies and then it’s back to writing that next article attacking the neoliberal university. Radical!

I left UCU after the last lot. I'm going against what I believe in with this, but nothing is going to make my institution improve real pay and conditions. Casualisation is the structure now.
If I strike I would be doing so to benefit those with secure posts and pensions, who, frankly, have never shown much concern for the casuals.

I'm in professional services and my heart isn't in this strike either. I will probably take the line that I don't want to cross the picket lines (and therefore take strike action), but I won't be on them like I was in 2018. But I have strong reservations about our leadership and the wisdom of linking the 4 fights in one strike ation.

This info via twitter may be useful

twitter.com/mikeotsuka/status/1229320802169970688?s=21

Should have said ...the info is intended to help people vote appropriately in the upcoming NEC elections

I think I'm going to strike on the 1st day & the last. I literally cannot afford to lose14 days' pay, and I'm pretty well paid.

I also think this strike is the new Exec in the UCU (incl. Jo Grady) flexing their so-called muscles and behaving like undergraduate SWP members.

It's bonkers timing, and the "Four Fights" are so diffuse & contradictory that I think it'll have eff all effect.

Yep. Totally agree. Strike action should be a last resort and used in a targeted way. Also, public opinion really matters in the "four fights" and it will be lost if we keep going out.

Hey, you should join the other long strike thread on here. There’s lots of us, all fed up with the UCU! Many of us have left.

The only part of the strike I have sympathy for now is the casualised and precarious staff. I know strike action won’t help them though and they’ll be sacrificing pay for secure people’s pensions.

I am fed up of people who I know earn around £60,000 (top of SL/Ass Prof scale and Readers) tweeting about how their wages haven’t kept up with inflation and this is why they’re striking because pay is so bad they deserve more. I just want to tell them to shut the fuck up to be honest. How do they think the money for the casualised staff will materialise when it’s being spent on increasing their already very comfortable salaries. Dicks. They don’t care.

Thank you Pota, for voicing my own feelings so well.

They not only don't care, they constantly add to the workload of casualised staff in order to advance their own positions. I will not strike for their pay and pensions.

FaFoutis, totally. Most of them have advanced their careers by relying on teaching buyout and short term research assistants. As if they want to end casualisation. It’s all about their pensions and if they get what they want with pensions, there will be less money left for precarious staff. I feel so sorry for those who are taken in by their glib assurances and lose nearly a month of pay this academic year ☹️

Most of us drones know their game. The shiny-eyed new PhDs are striking because they haven't realised that the pole is deliberately greasy, but the rest of us at my institution (it's a big one) have left the union and are permanently cynical.

Is there a real option for academics other than UCU (I come at this as a secondary teacher where there are multiple unions)
Husband is an academic. Was on rolling temp contracts for many years and taken advantage of. Has been in a permanent post for 18 months now and although he really feels this needs to be fought for, it's a lot of money to be losing when they're seems to not be a real purpose to the strijes

egg there are two other main unions, Unite and Unison but they tend to be more for support or non-academic staff. A few of us have joined GMB which is a general union not aimed at the academic sector. Although they’re not sector-specific they seem more straightforward than all the infighting and bullying within UCU. I’m so pleased to be out of UCU - such a relief.
I am pleased your husband has got a permanent post. I agree that the current round of strikes is pointless. It’s doomed to fail due to the unspecific nature of the demands and the timing (re the pension, as there’s a valuation due later this year). So this won’t be the end of it. It may be more than 22 days pay lost, which is a lot of money.

Thanks POTA. It's something we've been chatting about but I don't think he's looked at other options as he feels given his last he really should support these strikes. But I'm about to go on maternity leave so we could be in for a big hit

Hi egg - I confided in some colleagues and told them I was not going to observe the strike this time and have found more understanding than I thought I would. This time, it’s really pointless, and I’m still fuming over Jo Grady’s ‘luxury spa’ tweet. Pota, how do you know the UCU general secretary gets 100K a year?

The last general secretary was on £138,000, so I imagine Grady will be on similar.

It's difficult because the housing market is so broken in the UK - a £60k salary won't get you very far in London, but in other places it would buy a gorgeous home.

She’s definitely on 6 figures. They were recruiting for an assistant to the GS a while back where the stated salary was 56k. I believe the post comes with car/travel allowance too and no doubt other benefits. She gets more than most profs do and presumably gets paid her full salary during strike action.

It's a lot more difficult to buy a house when you are on poorly paid short term contracts Mood. At my institution the majority of us are.

Yeah FaFoutis, I'm a contract researcher and have been very short term for the last several years so I hear you on that. But my point was referring to the posts above - that a £60k salary is not especially fat cat and is dwarfed by VCs crazy renumeration packages which are an embarassment.

To clarify, the people who I was referring to who were tweeting about their low salary that hadn’t kept pace with inflation are not on short-term contracts. One is at Leeds and one at Birmingham, neither exactly famed for huge house prices.

There’s also the deluded belief that salaries in the private sector DO keep pace with inflation. That’s not true and very few private sector workers have a DB pension where over a quarter of their salary is paid in each year. That’s why it will be hard for the general public to get on board with the pay and pensions part.

Fixed term contracts are a problem but they partly exist due to the academic structure based on securing external funding. If someone is in a research only post working on an externally funded project, how can a case be made for them to be permanent? And the fixed term teaching roles often exist because permanent staff secure funding and ask to be bought out of teaching and admin but then want to return to their role once the funded project has finished. So it’s not always driven by mean bosses who want to save money. If academics want genuine change, which i suspect the permanent ones don’t really, then that would need a huge restructure of the whole system which is unlikely to happen through strike action.