What will 2021-22 look like with Covid and now pensions dispute?

[SLAGofepicproportions]

Just that really. What are you perceptions of what the new academic will look like given the Covid is still lurking around, and now given the pensions news from yesterday?

I think the next academic year will be a chaos of switching teaching between in-person, online and hybrid at the drop of a hat; staff complaining about coming to campus and even refusing; periods where tonnes of staff/students are WFH because of winter bugs; and on top of that I think there'll be strike action over pensions.

Last year was hard because it was all new to us. It was disruptive at the start but we mostly settled into it and knew what we were doing by the end (albeit with hugely increased workloads etc.)

This coming year I think will be harder because of uncertainty, management constantly changing their mind, people pushing their own particular Covid agendas; and union people still banging the 'Four Fights' drum. I'm knackered just thinking about it.

Am I being pessimistic? Will everything be great? What do you think?

Am I being pessimistic? Will everything be great? What do you think?

Somewhere between the two, I suspect.

I don't expect to be teaching online unless there is another national lockdown (we delivered f2f until the lockdown last November), and I don't think there will be one. The management will continue to do what they do best, and make our jobs more difficult. Ours got us to programme everything 100% face-to-face and then at the last minute told students we would teach them online if they decided not to come to campus.

I've only just seen the news about the pension and I do agree with you that there will be strikes as the changes are so horrendous. And, yes, the vocal UCU idiots will muddy the whole process with their four fights stuff and the whole thing will be as pointless as it was last time.

I think this year has the potential to be even worse than last year, for various reasons. Expect lots of short notice switching to online teaching when staff come down with covid or anything else - out place has told us not to come in if we exhibit any symptoms, which may be the usual lurgies.

Anyway, it seems that university managers don't really want us back in the classroom at all given the proposed USS changes. At least we'll be out on the fresh air.

Hi Bingo,
I'm new a new lecturer and I've e read about the cut in pensions (estimated as a third for a typical lecturer) how does that translate to university management not wanting us back on campus? Thanks in advance

Hello - by that I meant that the university employers know full well that the cut in pension benefits is going to provoke major strike action, but are going to do it anyway after the push for F2F this coming year.

Apologies, my bitternessay not have translated on the page. And, of course, congratulations on your new appointment!

That makes sense thanks for explaining!
Hope you (and everyone) has a decent start to the year and we all get to Christmas with our seams in tact

I think there will be a lot of chaos and uncertainty, for all the reasons you mentioned. And it will be worse than last year because people are fed up, there is no more goodwill left really.

I think strikes would be an epic mistake, after everything students have been through it would be so hard on them, and I don't think there would be any public support for them. They will have zero impact and just piss people off. The unions need to find more clever ways to pressure universities.

UCU seem to be in their own little bubble though - they appear incapable of reading the room. The last lot of strikes had zero impact and pissed people off. I would not be at all surprised if there are more strikes, UCU seem to have made them their sine qua non.

Yeah I think the four fights thing really dilutes the impact of any strike action. It’s totally vague and lacks concrete demands. As does the complete inability to accept that maybe there needs to be a compromise on pensions where staff pay in slightly more in return for retaining benefits. To say that employers should shoulder the entire burden seems unrealistic and the economic effect will probably have knock-on effects like making casualisation even worse.
Strikes during Covid, especially if there are semi-lockdowns will have little impact. Even on a fully open campus, more than 20 days of strike action had no discernible impact in 2019/20. Also, so many have lost any goodwill towards the union because the timing of those strikes was atrocious and simply seemed to amount to the GS wanting to show off (and then the HEC getting out of control by scheduling umpteen strike days and the GS being unable to control them). It’s a shambles. I don’t want my pension cut but I don’t feel that its future is in any way safer in the hands of UCU.

@ghislaine

UCU seem to be in their own little bubble though - they appear incapable of reading the room. The last lot of strikes had zero impact and pissed people off. I would not be at all surprised if there are more strikes, UCU seem to have made them their sine qua non.

Yes and they will need to tell people that they won’t be able to claim from the strike fund unless they are casualised or very low paid. Last time, they told everyone to claim and then ran out of money and had to force a levy from all members without consultation. I didn’t claim last time because I am on a permanent contract and it doesn’t feel right to use the strike fund. I lost hundreds in pay for nothing and I am still deeply fucked off about it and in post-Covid times, I can’t imagine loads of people want to lose more pay.

My dept has a significant group of hardcore left UCU members so strike action will affect me even if it doesn't achieve anything for them other than a sense of righteousness and a collection of photos for their twitter feed.

I agree UCU are not reading the room very well right now

They keep saying the students will support strikes, I mean what planet are they on

This year will be difficult, our department will really need a lot of teamwork and cooperation, if there are strikes it will be so divisive and just make everything impossible

We are doing hybrid anyway, which will be awful as rhe tech isn't there to support it, but at least that means disruption will be minimal if we need to pivot.

Strikes will be coming, but will be a waste of time.

Can universities open up recordings from last year if strikes go ahead? I wouldn't put it past my department.

We are already using lecture recordings from last year. Seminars are 'blended' if needed and I suppose we can move them online quickly. The problem in my dept is the inequalities for students that would arise from strikes - some will have a full array of classes, some nothing, and some in between. A recipe for discontent in my experience.

I agree UCU are not reading the room very well right now

I agree.

But the latest UniversitiesUK suggestion on pensions is a total shit show. Academics wrk long hours on salaries which are comparatively low, given our expertise, qualifications, and length of time (and income foregone, not to mention work/life balance foregone) in getting those qualifications.

We sacrifice salary now (compare our salaries to equally well-qualified civil servants or backbench MPS) for a decent stable pension.

But I really do not want to strike - I would have to leave the union.

Thanks for everyone's insights

I agree that UCU isn't reading the room at all. I left UCU a while back over their approach to the sex/gender/trans issue, and I've watched them become more and more insane since then. It reminds me of college student politics, lots of shouting, lots of righteous indignation, lots of admirable moral stances but ultimately very little substance.

There was a UCU meeting on Friday where I work. Apparently the branch at my University is pushing for no F2F teaching in term 1, F2F teaching was described in this meeting as 'potential corporate manslaughter'
There was also talk of acquiring a list of non-union people (from where, who knows) at the University and arranging one-to-one meetings with them to talk them into joining the union. What madness is this?

Wow that's terrible OP

I was on a series of precarious contracts for years before finally being made permanent this year. UCU talked the talk about this issue but did fuck all about it in practice, my university branch were completely unhelpful.

So if they pressure me into joining the union and striking over their gold-plated pensions which I never had access to, I'll be telling them where to stick it

Wow, OP, that is chilling about trying to target non-Union members and bully them into joining. What the hell is this weird cult-like behaviour? It sounds like the Stasi. I know things weren’t that great under Sally Hunt but anything is better than this nonsense.
The pension decision is terrible and something needs to be done but the past few years have shown that strikes achieve nothing, especially when hardly anyone is on campus. Also, we need some adults doing the negotiating.

Also, we need some adults doing the negotiating.

Yes. Adults with realistic negotiation goals, and decent understanding of actuarial science. (Most of the adults have left my local UCU and it's now run by very early career academics, who come mostly from a handful of disciplines.)

I think allowing PhD students to join for no subscription was well intentioned but has had unintended consequences. This is part of why there has been a shift to moral stances and vague goals ("four fights") cf tangible actions and negotiations.

I think allowing PhD students to join for no subscription was well intentioned but has had unintended consequences.

I completely agree with this. Allowing students to join has fatally compromised the union; it no longer works for academics.

@GCAcademic

I think allowing PhD students to join for no subscription was well intentioned but has had unintended consequences.

I completely agree with this. Allowing students to join has fatally compromised the union; it no longer works for academics.

I agree too. The interests of phd students and academics don’t necessarily align - academics profit from the precarity of PhD students. It doesn’t serve either party well to conflate the two. I also think that this is the reason why UCU had to resort to a levy. Membership seemed to be soaring but a lot of that was free membership by phd students while older staff were leaving, feeling that UCU no longer represented them. That meant that the strike fund was at a low and the high number of ECRs striking all put in full claims from the fund. The people currently on the HEC (the Grady4GS lot) appear immature, inflexible, vindictive and bullying if their social media profiles are anything to go by so it doesn’t fill me with hope for the future. I’m just praying that they’re marginally more sensible than UCU Left but who knows?

If the problem is the PhD students, then why is almost everything about pensions, which has no relevance to PhD students?

(not arguing, genuinely asking)

It isn’t all about pensions, though. The whole “four fights” thing totally diluted the pensions issue and prevented a focused push-back against the proposed changes. The same thing will happen again, virtually guaranteed.

But they only seem to actually do anything when it's pensions. Everything else is hot air. Or maybe that's just my uni!

@dreamingbohemian

But they only seem to actually do anything when it's pensions. Everything else is hot air. Or maybe that's just my uni!

Pensions is the reason why most permanently employed members have voted for strike action in the past. I doubt most of them would have gone on strike to end precarity. 4 fights has noble intentions but is way way too vague and allows employers to make meaningless promises. It absolutely should not be coupled with pensions because it waters the whole thing down and means there is no incentive for employers to make an offer on pensions because UCU would still be striking on 4 Fights. Sadly most universities take on far too many PhD students even though there is little chance of most of them getting a job in academia. Academics are judged on number of completions for promotion - while this may have been a small number for a soc sci academic in the past, there are now mid career academics with dozens of completions (most without a future in academia). Phd students and graduates desperately seeking a permanent post are used as cheap labour to allow the universities to cram undergraduates in. Marketisation sucks.

I doubt most of them would have gone on strike to end precarity.

It's also very hard to define what the actual goal is. Across the world it is the norm for STEM academics to do a couple of post-docs before they get permanent positions. This is not new. The model for science research is based on PIs having junior academics in their labs, with a few getting permanent academic posts and labs of their own, and the rest moving on from academia (or in a few cases continuing to move from project to project as a researcher). Postdocs are fairly decent posts in the sense of guaranteed 2-3+ year contracts, focussed on research. Researchers can plan judging for themselves how likely they are to get permanent posts & having enough warning to find posts outside academia at the end of their contracts.

The really problematic precarious posts are very short-term contracts, based on fractional FTE or zero hours, focussed on teaching with no time to develop research and become competitive for permanent posts. Planning is difficult due to all the uncertainties. (However in my opinion those who take such posts should do so with open eyes: the chances of getting lectureships from such situations are small so people need to decide if they are willing to take their chances.)

UCU does not seem to distinguish between these scenarios - counting all of them in its percentages of precarious workers.

My local union is dominated by young humanities/social sciences researchers who don't really seem to understand that the situation in STEM differs from their disciplines. Very few people in STEM would strike to get rid of all precarious workers, including postdocs, as the whole model for research would collapse. They might well be more supportive of more focussed statements e.g. minimum contract lengths and fractions of FTE for temporary teaching staff.