How are we all managing?

[ItalianHat]

It's the end of a 2nd week of teaching for me. Online is working OK - the students are saying they're already very tired though! I think it's about switching from the complete lack of structure of lockdown (for them - I was pretty busy!) back to timetables and starting seminars at 9am and so on.

And today's hollow laugh was an email from our IT managers which included the statement that: "IT staff are working into the evenings and at weekends to overcome the backlog of requests"

Tiny violins, please ...

It's of a level of clodhoppery that rivals an email sent to us from the teaching administrative staff manager in the June exams period, which told us that academic staff would have to do some time-consuming admin task, because professional staff "did not have space in their workloads."

I mean, I know everyone's working over & above, but why is it the academic staff who have to applaud everybody else (and do parts of their work for them), when we routinely work evenings & weekends.

Grrrrr.

But other than that - it's nice working with the students again, although online can be frustrating at times. However, I don't think it'd be any more frustrating than masked & at 2m distance, trying to run a seminar with desks & seats set out in socially-distanced rows.

[ComoTheFirst]

Your comment was pretty vile about your much lower paid colleagues. The idea that admin staff don't work extra hours is completely wrong. I feel sorry for your students being taught by someone with attitudes like yours. Not all academics work at weekends by the way.

[AcademiaEatingItself]

I don't see where she said they were lower paid?

Not all admin staff are lower paid than all teaching academics. That assumption itself is patronising towards admin staff.

[ItalianHat]

My vent was about the flat-footed management messages, not my admin colleagues. I know they work hard - I don't need to be reminded of this, or to be given the message that I need to take on their work because - apparently - I have space in my workload, where my admin colleagues don't. Messages like that - from senior management - don't foster collegiality between admin and academic staff. We need each other. My priority is y students - I do my research (one-third of my contracted employment) on the weekends - I have commitments to others - I do a lot of facilitation of others' careers, and for my discipline as a whole (unaccounted for in my official workload). It'd be nice to have a workload that could be done in 5 days, but I feel a responsiblity to helping ECRs and colleagues nationally.

I'm out of this conversation - nasty snarky sub-Tweeting and stirring up of hostility at a time when we are all working under stress (as you might see from the rest of the thread).

[TheEndisCummings]

Hi @ComoThe First, welcome to the thread. Now you have made your first snarky post, are you hanging around, or were you here just to stir stuff up??

[Chemenger]

I think the problem is that academics experience is that the buck always stops with us. Our time is somehow infinitely elastic and we are expected to take on any admin, IT, student support etc tasks that the specialists are too busy to do. Nobody is saying that those non-academic colleagues are slacking or that the genuinely don't have time to do things, but this almost always seems to be solved by academics taking on those overspill tasks. Management always take the easy way out of just saying academics will do things. Partly as a result of this I'm working at least 40 hours a week, usually more, on my 28 hour per week contract and literally nobody cares.

[MindyStClaire]

I'm an academic with industry experience and an admin role in the exams process. In our department it's very obvious which academics have industry experience. They're more supportive of professional services staff (we're very lucky in our group as our PS staff are truly excellent) and less likely to need their hands held. We had to fill in one extra form per module at the last board, took me less than half an hour for each of my modules but the drama created, my word you'd swear it needed to be filled in in blood.

Anyway, I'm on maternity this year, and very glad of it.

[GCAcademic]

I’m teaching f2f. Loads of my students are self-isolating, which means I’m having to run additional online seminars. This is causing some tension in my department as it means those doing f2f now have double the teaching load compared to those teaching online only, alongside the stress of being in the classroom while infections are rising rapidly. One of the colleagues who is working from home is now badgering us all about preparations for the next REF (yes, that’s right, not next year’s, the one after that). I actually cried today, and I am not a crier and have been doing this job for 18 years.

[Poppingnostopping]

GCAcademic I hear you, I've been upset as well this week and I'm also an experienced lecturer who normally really loves lecturing!

[ComoTheFirst]

The "snark " was ItalianHat's 'tiny violins' not mine. I said what I thought.

[ComoTheFirst]

Hi @MindyStClaire yes I see this all the time too. Academics who've never had a substantive job outside education tend to think they're hard done by if they have to do some trivial administrative task. Oh, the stories I could tell you!

[ComoTheFirst]

No, this isn't what you said. You were scornful and mocking about the fact that others in different roles than yours might also be working above and beyond... eg:

QUOTE:
"today's hollow laugh was an email from our IT managers which included the statement that: "IT staff are working into the evenings and at weekends to overcome the backlog of requests

Tiny violins, please ..."

[AcademiaEatingItself]

I don't understand why you think that is so awful?

A manager sent an email saying their staff were working evenings and weekends.

The OP is also required to work evenings and weekends.

You sound as if you think the issue here is that the OP thinks she is better paid/due more than the IT manager's staff, but many of us are not paid more than IT staff - many of us are in fact paid much less. It is a myth that academics earn masses. Lots of us are actually paid by the hour, and that doesn't cover prep time.

Even if the OP is paid the same as, or more than, the IT support staff, I would still feel uncomfortable to be told I should put up with an increased workload because someone else's boss was trying to make me feel guilty because that boss's subordinates were working flat out.

[ComoTheFirst]

"Tiny violins " sounds pretty awful to me. Its scornful and dismissive of people who aren't academics.

[AcademiaEatingItself]

No, it isn't.

It's resisting the idea that any of us should be pushed into working overtime because we're being asked to feel sorry for someone else's staff.

I do not see how you can justify a manager expecting subordinate people (academics or not - the distinction isn't meaningful here, unless you don't understand that academics aren't invariably paid more than IT staff) to be exploited because they feel sorry for each other.

I feel plenty sorry for exploited staff whether they're academics or IT staff, but I agree with a previous poster who (rightly) points out that this sort of rhetoric is all about setting us against each other while managers get to pretend they have no responsibilities to ensure a safe and healthy work environment.

[TheEndisCummings]

Yup, divide and rule. Sure you’re not working for management’, @CosmoTheFirst?

[MissMarplesGlove]

Our time is somehow infinitely elastic and we are expected to take on any admin, IT, student support etc

This.

I think it's often because we appear to be "invisible" for some parts of the working week (ie in a library, an archive, a lab, at home writing) doing research that part of our job which we are paid for a lot of other university staff think we're not actually working. It's always research time which is considered 'elastic' - while at the same time we are regularly denied promotion, threatened with closure etc etc if we don't get in external funding, or bring in REF big bucks funding.

And our workload models hugely underestimate the time that marking & prep take.

[Bellesavage]

I don't know any research active academics who don't work most evening and weekends all the time. Not just in reaction to covid, or in busy weeks, but ALL the time. So while I appreciate ps staff are under immense pressure it is galling to get even more admin tasks passed our way and chirpy emails from management about how hard others are working.

[ComoTheFirst]

Nonsense. The 'tiny violins' remark is the divide and rule tactic on show here. And sorry but academics are paid more than admin staff. In my Uni a senior admin person gets paid the same as a Junior Lecturer starting salary. Most admin people get much less than that.

[ComoTheFirst]

If the job is so bad @Bellesavage why do you do it? Are you really expecting sympathy in a world where loads of our fellow citizens are being paid minimum wage in the supermarkets, or cleaning your office?

[Rameneater]

Jess Meacham IMO just looks like she's using this as a way to snark herself under the guise of condemning snark from others. As you've said yourself, Jess, it's not constructive. Don't kid yourself your version is morally superior either. You've just spread the negativity further and publicly said you find some of your colleagues insufferable.

[AcademiaEatingItself]

@ComoTheFirst

Nonsense. The 'tiny violins' remark is the divide and rule tactic on show here. And sorry but academics are paid more than admin staff. In my Uni a senior admin person gets paid the same as a Junior Lecturer starting salary. Most admin people get much less than that.

How can you possibly not know that a huge number of academics are not junior lecturers, but precarious staff? Much university teaching is done by postdocs and PhD students who are sometimes paid by the hour and rarely earn the equivalent of a junior lecturer's starting salary.

An IT manager (not their staff, as I've already pointed out) may well be out-earning an academic.

[ComoTheFirst]

No. An IT 'manager' gets a salary in line with the starting salary of a Junior Lecturer (who has no management responsilbities). 'Precarious'? You mean part time/ temp employment. Welcome to the world. And ask any office temp about 'Precarity'.

[ComoTheFirst]

@AcademiaEatingItself 🔼

[lionheart]

Did the office temp spend 3 years on an UG degree, a year on a Masters, four years on a Phd, all the while chasing publications and delivering conference papers and training to teach at the highest level?

And then get a series of hourly paid or temporary contracts? Or not?

[ComoTheFirst]

Ah. So because someone has had a rubbish education they don't 'deserve' secure work? Nice.