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?

I didn't realise they were counting STEM postdocs as precarious, that's crazy

Even in the humanities/social sciences, I wouldn't really say a three-year research fellowship with a decent salary was precarious. I'm thinking more about the term-time-only teaching fellows who get hired for a couple years then ditched before continuous service.

@dreamingbohemian

I didn't realise they were counting STEM postdocs as precarious, that's crazy

Even in the humanities/social sciences, I wouldn't really say a three-year research fellowship with a decent salary was precarious. I'm thinking more about the term-time-only teaching fellows who get hired for a couple years then ditched before continuous service.

Yes I also think of hourly paid or short term teaching fellows. But I’ve heard someone with a prestigious Leverhulme early career fellowship describe themselves as precarious because it’s fixed term. It’s not in any way feasible (if you want the best person for the job) to employ all STEM or other postdocs on permanent contracts. Also, many of the right-on UCU people that I know have secured or applied for funding for projects where they, guess what, have requested and been allocated either a PhD student or a short term postdoc/research fellow. Or they have bought themselves out of teaching, knowing it will be filled by a precarious teaching fellow. So they can’t be that anti-precarity then.

I was curious enough to look at my institution’s committee. It’s dominated by ECRs and PhD students.

And that's why they had to (and will have to) go with the "four fights". Because you are not going to meet the 50% threshold for a strike by asking ECFs and PhD students to strike over pensions.

So the UCU ballot will begin on 18th Oct. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Yes it will be interesting. If the threshold is passed, I reckon most will vote for strike action. However, those not wanting strike are likely to abstain from voting as this is more effective for avoiding the threshold being crossed.
I wish they had proper concrete plans about things like marking strikes and open day boycotts rather than the tried and tested picket-lines (which are totally ineffective most of the time). Must say I am dreading all this.