Leaving UCU and crossing picket lines

[BlackLambAndGreyFalcon]

I think the way that UCU has treated Kathleen Stock is completely abhorrent and I am going to resign as I no longer want to pay any more money to their organisation.

Leaving at this time would mean that I wouldn't take part in the upcoming strike ballot and in the likely event of any industrial action would therefore have to cross picket lines. How do others feel about this issue? I would feel very uncomfortable walking past colleagues on the picket lines and as a USS member I would benefit from any positive outcome which may occur (whether or not such a positive outcome does occur is another issue entirely) without taking part in the action.

I have no interest in joining another union. I only joined UCU back in 2016 because I was concerned about the cuts to the pension scheme. UCU is the only union recognised to negotiate about USS with the employers.

It’s likely there will be a re-ballot for branches who were between 40-50%
Obviously it’s up to the individual branches whether they do this.

Yes, I think ours will have a reballot. But I think it’s wrong of UCU to proclaim this a huge victory and push ahead with the action. Clearly the results show quite lukewarm support for the strike and members who do strike will lose a lot of money with few prospects of success.
I’ll wait and see how the 4 fights thing goes but that’s so hopelessly vague and the majority of permanently employed academics only pay lip service to being concerned about the precarity issue and wouldn’t strike over it. Maybe I will be proved wrong but I think it’s unlikely.

My institution (I did quit UCU, but I'm still on the email lists) didn't make the 50% threshold, but was above 40% so I suspect we'll be reballoted.

I sincerely hope they consider taking only ASOS in the first instance. A marking boycott causes havoc for universities and would put pressure on them. Lots of places have January exam boards and refusing to attend these or prepare the marks is likely to have an effect. A bunch of people with witty placards standing by the university gates while teaching more or less carries on as normal will not do the trick. We don’t work in a sector where withdrawal of labour hits our employers. They already have the student fees, they can weather the odd student complaint. By us striking they save a tidy sum on salaries, that’s all.

My former branch had well over 50% turnout and was resoundingly in favour of strike action. So the social scientists will be working unpaid from home on their research again, the library will be on skeleton staffing, arts and social science departments will save a fortune on hourly paid tutors and the science campus will have half a dozen pickets at one gate and the vast majority of teaching as normal. Effect on the university- zero other than cost savings. Effect on the students - very little for science, more disruption for humanities after two years of chaos.

My institution also didn’t meet the turnout requirement. I imagine it will be reballoted but I can’t foresee what might change now to encourage people to vote.

If anything if I was against strike and now knew the majority supported it, I’d be much more inclined to abstain rather than put another no vote in and have to go out.

@GCAndProud

If anything if I was against strike and now knew the majority supported it, I’d be much more inclined to abstain rather than put another no vote in and have to go out.

Exactly. What happens if they rerun in the places with low turnout and it drops further so the overall turnout drops below 50%?

It’s not an aggregated ballot so each branch has to meet the turnout threshold in order for that branch to go on strike.

I wasn't in the UCU last time (still not in the UCU). There was a very small picket line locally last time and I just walked past. I'm in the TPS scheme so not affected by the pension issues last time. I'm not a scab if I'm not in the union and I'm certainly not joining UCU and I don't feel the need to strike over an issue which doesn't affect me (I assume it's pensions). I mean I'm quite happy with my pay and pensions and even my workload is kind of OK.

Four fights result: 70% of those who voted voted in favour of strike action and 85% for ASOS. Turnout was 51% and 52 of 144 branches (plus QUB and Ulster) crossed the 50% threshold.

JG wants to hold an aggregated reballot for the four fights.

She also wants 2 days of strike action this term (one for pensions and one for pay and conditions) followed by ASOS. Currently this means that 33 universities would have 2 days of strikes and 25 would have 1 day.

Is this strategy - run the ballot disaggregated, use as a poll, and re-run aggregated, legit? What was to stop her from running aggregated first time around?

Hmmmmm…. Well I heard her say it was an unprecedented success but how is only one third of all unis having a strike mandate a success? I guess she was scared that they wouldn’t hit 50% if they’d run an aggregated ballot to begin with. As we haven’t hit threshold I’m guessing we wouldn’t be joining in the 2 days of strikes this semester. I also suspect that some of the hardcore leftists in the leadership are going to push for going out on strike as early as possible.

What a mess. I’m not that up for losing even more money after the load I lost last year. If they want to do ASOS I’m happy with that but why can’t they see that strikes do not work?

I was very sceptic of the last round of strike action before Covid. Apart from a vague sense that the UCU, however haphazardly, was ultimately doing the right thing, it was the fear of being the only person in my department not on strike and crossing picket lines that led me to reluctantly join in.

I left the UCU in October 2020. Contributing factors were: the treatment of gender-critical members; the absolute lack of strategy and complete denial regarding the recent strikes (and particularly the embarrassing moment where they had to impose a levy to replenish the strike fund); Grady's comments about "not fetishizing" f2f teaching at a time where I was seeing many of my students suffer because of the lack of human contact.

I've thought many times, how would I feel the first time UCU called a strike and I, as a non-member, was crossing picket lines. The answer is, I couldn't care less. I am so done with the UCU and if this makes me a scab or a traitor so be it.

I remember your posts from last time round, aridapricot. I am pleased that you got out of their clutches.

It all seems a bit of a shambles now. The factions are at war. UCU Left want to begin hardcore strike action straight away and the GC and UCU Commons want an aggregated reballot in the New Year. I don't think either approach will be particularly successful. Anyone who is against strike would surely abstain from voting on a reballot because they now know what the lie of the land is. They just about scraped over 50% on a disaggregated ballot, although some of them are now screaming 'I told you we should have done aggregated', even though history shows that it's quite unlikely you would cross the threshold on that.

I think many would happily cross a picket line. Heck, even ardent UCU members talk about how they can't afford to strike the whole time so cross pickets themselves (seemingly not understanding how much they undermine their own actions). I would bet that a fair few won't even declare that they are striking to management (given that so many WFH these days). That's what happened last time - something pitiful like 7% of staff actually declared that they were on strike, meaning that 93% worked through it. No wonder it had such little effect.

Is the thinking that an aggregated four fights ballot would bring more institutions into the striking group? I suppose that’s possible IF voting patterns hold. But if ‘no’ voters abstain and the threshold is not met, wouldn’t that strategy backfire as then only the institutions that passed the threshold on pensions could go on strike?

Yes, I think that is the reasoning. You’re right though that it is a big risk to take. They were barely over the 50% line on four fights and if they don’t make it then no other branches can strike other than those who already had a mandate. Also, in branches where turnout was low, it signals that few people would strike even if they could, which would undermine the whole action.

I don’t understand why they were so insistent on having the strike begin in November. By the time it starts, lots of places have done most of the teaching and are winding down for Christmas.

GCAndProud : you are so right re working from home. I was reading this tweet today and thinking how true it is: twitter.com/DrLeeJones/status/1457765230293962754

In my department, most of the full-time/permanent staff are teaching online (leaving the in-person one to teaching assistants). Even if for those teaching in person, management is quite relaxed about it - you can move your teaching online at short notice and no one makes a fuss.

I can imagine many colleagues simply moving their teaching online to avoid crossing picket lines. With others, I fear it will be worse - they will go on strike and lose their pay, but they will make recordings from last year available so that students don't miss out. Last time round, the modus operandi from my oh so union-active colleagues was to try and minimize the impact on students, by making slides available, changing assignment questions to self-reflective stuff like "reflect on your experience of studying Basketweaving this semester"... I cannot for the life of me what this kind of "strike" is supposed to achieve.

@aridapricot

GCAndProud : you are so right re working from home. I was reading this tweet today and thinking how true it is: twitter.com/DrLeeJones/status/1457765230293962754

In my department, most of the full-time/permanent staff are teaching online (leaving the in-person one to teaching assistants). Even if for those teaching in person, management is quite relaxed about it - you can move your teaching online at short notice and no one makes a fuss.

I can imagine many colleagues simply moving their teaching online to avoid crossing picket lines. With others, I fear it will be worse - they will go on strike and lose their pay, but they will make recordings from last year available so that students don't miss out. Last time round, the modus operandi from my oh so union-active colleagues was to try and minimize the impact on students, by making slides available, changing assignment questions to self-reflective stuff like "reflect on your experience of studying Basketweaving this semester"... I cannot for the life of me what this kind of "strike" is supposed to achieve.

So true! I also remember them trying last time to put strikes on different days of the week so as not to penalise students too much. Um, duh, what’s the point of striking if you try to minimise the impact.

In my dept, it’s a ghost town most of the time and people only come in for teaching. Nobody would know who was on strike and many live quite far away and wouldn’t come to a picket. As with your place, putting teaching online is easy. There’s also whole modules from last year where every lecture and seminar is recorded so even if people did strike, those materials would just be released.

The UCU’s stance about not going back to campus and their insistence that online recorded sessions are just as good (if not better) as F2F was a huge own-goal. Other than teaching, most of our work is stuff that isn’t necessarily time-critical, so anything we don’t do on strike will be there when we return. And now teaching has been added to that category because of the recordings that UCU assured us are of a top quality.

Things like refusing to upload publications on repository sites (or not publishing full stop) would probably add pressure to employers but can you see any academic willing to do that and damage their career in the process? No way in hell.

"The UCU’s stance about not going back to campus and their insistence that online recorded sessions are just as good (if not better) as F2F was a huge own-goal. Other than teaching, most of our work is stuff that isn’t necessarily time-critical, so anything we don’t do on strike will be there when we return. And now teaching has been added to that category because of the recordings that UCU assured us are of a top quality. "

This is so excellently put. The "non-time-critical" nature of a lot of what we do is one of the obstacles we've always had to successfully adopting the classic strike model. If train workers are on strike and you need to be in a certain place at a particular time, then the strike makes that impossible and so you are directly hurt. This doesn't apply to us - marking can take longer than usual in a strike, but it will eventually be done; with the REF cycle being 6-7 years, even 20+ days is something that can be recouped later on; grant applications can be prioritized in the days leading up to the strike so that the deadline is met, etc. Synchronous teaching (i.e. most teaching, up until covid) was the only area where a strike could still have impact, and now this is gone.

I am really torn. My branch had a good turnout and voted yes and I've had a lot of employment support from them (and all on the side of women's rights- flexible working hassles and anti-women student issues).
But I see little point in this strike. I will cross my fingers it's on my day off.

@worstofbothworlds that’s good that you have had support from them. There are some really good branch reps - it’s the leadership plus many members of HEC that are the biggest problem.
I think they will announce the number of initial strike days this week along with plans for reballot. Interestingly, nearly all posts on Twitter have roundly rejected Jo Grady’s aggregated reballot suggestion. It’s only really her UCU Commons mates that are defending it. Will be interesting to see what is decided.

I’ve been thinking about this too.

Surely a better method would be to mobilise everyone to suspend paying their pension for a year? We can opt out on an annual basis so if we all did that at once in protest, they’d be totally stuffed!
As it is, I have set up my own private pension and may opt out of
The university one for a few years as I just can’t afford to lose 9-12% of my income. I know that it isn’t as good as I don’t get the uplift from the university, but the difference is my personal pension costs £80 per month versus the £300 I lose from my pay!
Can we join another teaching union or university union like Unison? All I want is protection in case I ever get a complaint against me.

Also, how do we withdraw from union? I’m done but I don’t how to actually cancel my membership!

Yes, you can join Unison and several members of academic staff at my place actually have because they were fed up with UCU. It’s cheaper and they don’t seem to be run by total 🤡 🤡.

You can cancel your membership online at my.ucu.org.uk. Or just cancel your direct debit and they will no doubt take the hint!
The pension boycott sounds interesting and I can see how opting out of USS is tempting. What sort of pension income is your private one forecasting? Trinity College Cambridge has already opted out of USS and I think other places are also considering alternative pensions. The scheme will collapse if more places pull out I reckon.

The factions in UCU and their in-fighting are so childish and it seems that the UCU Commons people on HEC have blocked loads of other people who are also on HEC on Twitter who don’t agree with them. It really is pathetic and is being played out right in front of the employers’ eyes which isn’t great either.