UCU again

[CatandtheFiddle]

Has anyone seen the moves they're making to suggest another round of strikes?

Activists in my branch seem up for it. I maybe should send them links to some of the really VICIOUS posts about academics here in MN. Or the petition with over 300,000 signatures about refunding fees for 2019-20?

Led by donkeys, in all sorts of ways ...

[consideringachange]

Yes I'm just the sort of person (mid-career, good salary, both children now at school so much lower childcare costs than a couple of years ago) who would happily have contributed extra. Two years ago I was a union rep for my department but I left UCU last year too.

[dwnldft]

What fraction of staff have resigned from UCU in the last year? I am aware of quite a few who have - not for academic freedom issues (don't come into play so much in STEM disciplines), but because they don't agree with the strikes and the overall strategy.

[Pota2]

Yup, they’ve prioritised appeasing the student ‘activists’ who can’t contribute financially at the expense of those more established paying higher rates. That’s now massively backfired because so many of them have sought to claim in full from the fund. If the UCU hadn’t taken such an anti-women and anti-academic freedom stance, I’d still be a member and they’d be getting my subs.

[GCAcademic]

Perhaps if UCU hadn’t turned itself into such a hostile union for female members to the point that many of us earning enough to pay higher rate subs have been forced to resign and join other unions, their financial position would be better? I’m not the only person in my small department who has left because of UCU’s active denigration of the principles of academic freedom. Offering free or very cheap membership to PhD students, modern apprentices, etc, who have no stake in academic freedom issues, and letting them set the agenda was the start of this rot, imo. It’s no longer fit for purpose as a union for academics.

[Pota2]

It’s negligence at best, outright dishonesty at worst. The GS kept telling people that the strike fund was in a healthy state and she is the one who called on the membership to vote for strike action, explaining that it was necessary. I can only imagine the outrage that would ensue if someone other than Jo Grady had done this. They would be baying for that person’s blood as they (including Grady and chums) did when they turned on Sally Hunt after she had run an actually successful strike that led to a definite gain for the union. Grady’s strike cannot be described any other way than as a failure. The offer on the table now is worse than what would have been achieved if settlement had been reached before the strike started. This has nothing to do with Covid and everything to do with the fact that the strike was uncoordinated and unrealistic. In order to get as many people out as possible the UCU made wild promises about being able to pay from the strike fund without doing even the most basic of sums. They now have less than a month to find a million quid or they can’t pay the people they promised. Utterly incompetent.

As for Jo McNeill, she lives on a different planet. I admire her tenacity but she is unrealistic in the extreme as are the rest of UCU Left. In my view the GS and the HEC should resign immediately over this because it raises serious concerns. If it was anyone else as GS, people would be saying the same but I guess they don’t want to admit how badly they got it wrong by voting for someone with no experience and no substance. You live and learn I guess.

Oh and the way Grady’s buddies on the incoming NEC have reacted to this (as well as how they behave generally) makes me think that things are not going to get better at all. The problem isn’t going to go away by removing the UCUL majority because the rest of the leadership is just as clown-like, they just aren’t as blatant about it all the time.

[aridapricot]

I was always slightly baffled at how when someone pointed out on Twitter that maybe 22 strike days weren't affordable to many people, the reply was always: "Fighting fund! Duh!". At the same time, not sure if it's only me, but I always got the sense that those of us who are in FT, permanent positions should not only not claim from the fund but actually donate to it if we can (on top of losing our wages) - this is of course not official policy, as it would be discriminatory, but certainly it's the vibe I got from many UCU types on social media and IRL. When people were directed to the fighting fund, I always thought at the back of my mind: "But surely the fighting fund isn't a unlimited pot of money, and it can run out at some point". Now it seems UCU officers didn't consider this.

[anotheranonacademic]

Ah, I've only been reading the emails from local branch. I have enough to catch up with in email already - at least my local branch is doing very sensible things, like discussing with senior admin impact of covid on workload and precarious staff.

[Bingobango69]

I'm of a mind with thos thread, which I think is bang on: twitter.com/JamesBSumner/status/1277875128358092801?s=19

[Bingobango69]

Shouldn't this be a resignation matter for those still on NEC who voted for this in February?

[Daca]

I think that's what it says - maybe even worse:

The levy was kept confidential until now because in February the union was in the middle of two national disputes with higher education employers, and we were balloting or preparing to ballot in other major disputes in further education in Wales and England. While this was the case, the levy was industrially sensitive information ...

UCU knew in February that the Fighting Fund was running low, so they voted to trigger the levy but they did not tell those who were still voting on strike action! Isn't that straight up lying to your members?

As for sensitive information, the employers certainly know how that the union has run out of cash - very smart strategy, I must say! I honestly do not understand why Grady et al. did not call off the last week of strike action in March due to covid. That would have been politically wise and face-saving. If they are paying out strike pay at the rate of £100,000 per week, then that's £1.6 million since the beginning of lockdown in March.

And JoMcNeill thinks that savings from not holding meetings will make a dent ...

[Bingobango69]

And rereading the email in the cold light of morning - is this saying we ran strike action without knowing if the union could afford it or not?

[Bingobango69]

Climbdown incoming: www.ucu.org.uk/article/10858/Levy-of-members-announcement-and-further-information

Looks a more progressive levy might be on the way, but the TLDR of this seems to be that the a progressive levy would take a while to set up, and the need for a cash injection ASAP is pressing.

[Pota2]

I think that the fund is basically in the red and has to be topped up ASAP. They increased the amount possible to claim this time around and a lot of the people on strike were precarious and low paid workers who would qualify to claim.
Vicky Blake, the president, has responded, unlike the GS. She says that she now thinks that the advice given to the NEC was wrong. They were told that it had to be a flat rate levy. She is calling another NEC meeting to try to sort it out. The GS still hasn’t said anything despite saying in her manifesto that she aimed to offer a huge improvement on how the union communicated with its members.

[ghislaine]

I assume a large cash injection is needed rather than a gradual increase over months?

[Daca]

Why don’t they just increase union fees? That could be done progressively.

[aridapricot]

Yes @anotheracademic £15 will be taken from your account without you having to do anything, as one £10 and one £5 payment. You should have received an e-mail about this from Jo Grady last week.
You make a good point re fraud. One of the main issues people are having with this levy is that it's not progressive (so someone who is in fact unemployed when the levy comes in might be paying the same as a professor earning £80,000), and apparently the reason why a progressive levy was not implemented is that the cost of doing so would be too high. However, I can imagine how if hundreds or thousands of people report this charge as fraud and the UCU has to go back and forth with them and with the banks, it will also put considerable strain on their administrative resources.

[anotheranonacademic]

Wow, I totally haven't been paying attention. I honestly can't remember if it was this year or last - maybe it was the late 2019 strikes? (Where there strikes then?) - that I found out on MN about other unions. But I didn't quit and join any as I just don't have the bandwidth, and I still feel I might need some kind of union support due to my disability.

What does this mean? Will I just randomly find a £15 charge in my account? Or do we have to actively pay somehow? If the former, I wonder how many UCU members that are paying more attention to the pandemic than the UCU may be alerting their banks to what they think is some kind of fraud!

[Daca]

I’m just so glad I left. Does anybody know when the next GS election is?

[Pota2]

Yes the UCU Left are equally to blame for the mess we’re in. They are the ones who wanted maximum strike action even though it was painfully obvious that it would yield nothing. They weren’t giving a thought to finances when they sanctioned that. The GS is also guilty of that though as before the strikes she boasted of how healthy the strike fund was. It’s obvious that she’s out of her depth managing an organisation of this size and income. She must have recently realised they were all in the shit and exercised the levy that, to be fair, many who voted for it in Feb didn’t think would be exercised, at least not until other methods had been tried. She didn’t inform NEC of her intentions to do so. It doesn’t really matter who voted for it in February. The point is that the way it’s been done is terrible and the total radio silence from the GS when there are academics losing their jobs in droves is dreadful.
The GS’s mates, none of whom were at the levy meeting are now making up their own versions of what happened and who is to blame. None of it Jo’s fault of course, all a conspiracy against her. Some of them saying they never thought the strike was a good idea and that it was only due to UCU Left that it happened which is bullshit given the GS’s campaign. Some of them are showing how utterly unsuitable they are to sit on this committee given their liberalism with the truth and general unprofessional behaviour.

[moimichme]

Seems very odd, even corrupt, to me, that the 4 Fights are still going to continue vs. I dunno, pivoting slightly (?!?) to focus on the response to the pandemic, which is a rather pressing issue! Are they unsure what to do, so leaving the branches to do the real work?? I'm so disappointed (but not surprised) in Jo (and the UCU Left as well) trying to run the union in their own image rather than even ask or consider what focus is desired by or what matters to the membership. But what can we do?

[Pota2]

I guess that’s what happens when you call a huge meaningless strike that’s so uncoordinated in its aims that you can never win and there’s not enough money in the pot to pay the people you promised you would pay. You then need to forcibly take the money off the members who have already lost money participating in your hare-brained plans. Not great.

I also love how they’re all blaming each other now. But the attitude of people like Jo Edge and Leon Rocha who are newly elected on NEC is quite staggering. Total blame goes on UCU Left, even going so far as to say that the strike ‘they’ called was misguided. Maybe they have forgotten that the whole campaign was led by the GS who happens to be their mate. She’s the one who told everyone to vote for strike action, coordinated the 4Fights, conflating pensions with precarity and she’s the one who was the leader through the strikes and did a poor job of it with awful communication, especially at the end. Blaming those who went before will only be an option for so long before they have to own their own responsibility.

Even if Grady was not the one who tabled the levy motion (although several people have said that she was), she is the one who decided to exercise it which she did without informing other members until the last minute, writing a dismissive email and then point blank refusing to engage with any of the many members who are very upset by it. Absolutely terrible leadership skills imo. At least other senior members have engaged and tried to explain their reasoning.

[saltedcaramelhotchoc]

The levy has outraged me too, as a principle. In fact UCU have been dire this year. And they still appear to be dire now that we are faced with increasing teaching loads, Saturday teaching, etc.

[Pota2]

Cat no she’s not a part of the UCU Left although she presents herself as being quite militantly left wing in other senses. The people who are her friends/campaigned for her including HEC members like Jo Edge and Leon Rocha have formed a new faction known as Grady4GS. It’s the same people who set up USS Briefs.

I left relatively soon after she became GS, after Dec rounds of strikes. I knew she would be awful and it was frustrating hearing everyone say ‘no, she’s great’ even though she had no experience whatsoever of leading a union or a large scale strike action. I think people are starting to see the reality now and I am definitely going to be telling them ‘I told you so’. It was all obvious before she was elected, including her horrible online bullying of female academics she disagreed with. I am just pissed off that I took part in the first lot of strikes and lost a weeks pay AND ended up with higher pension contributions and lower pay rise thanks to her and her campaign. I am not bitter at all....

[CatandtheFiddle]

I'm pleased I never voted for Jo Grady. I thought Sally Hunt was an excellent General Secretary - pragmatic, experienced & shrewd.

[CatandtheFiddle]

I thought Jo Grady was of the UCIU Left?