Anyone else not striking?

[goingpearshaped]

I am not in UCU so not striking. Anyone else? I can sense the divide already between those striking and those not in our dept, I really hate this. Agh, what a mess all round.

In my department only one person is out of 62 staff members. We are science though

I'm not. Also not in UCU. Those I work most closely with have links elsewhere and we all did a bit of a dance yesterday trying not to ask directly, but figured out no one striking so my bit of teaching not affected. I suspect several others will though.

I’m a member - but only by the skin of my teeth (as they are so anti-woman and useless at the national level).

But mine is one of the universities which didn’t reach the threshold. Thank goodness as I think this strike is tactless and badly timed. There are more impactful things we could do and I’m concerned about the impact on students.

There’s really disturbing press stuff suggesting that many parents and students blame academic staff for all the difficulties and privations suffered by students during COVID. It’s totally ridiculous but I don’t think it’s productive to inflame current resentments no matter how unreasonable they are.

DH isn’t. He never does. He thinks the USS is crap and would prefer a regular pension with employer contributions at this point instead of being forced to pay into something that he doesn’t even think will be solvent by the time he retires.

Virtually nobody strikes in my engineering department. I’ve left the union, my branch is particularly unfriendly to women.

I'm not, but feel quite guilty about it as my VC is one of the 6 hardliners who have threatened staff on ASOS with 100% pay deductions for not rescheduling teaching sessions lost due to strike action (in other words expecting staff to work for free).

I'm PS so wouldn't normally be expected to strike, but I was quite visible on the pickets in the 2018 strike. Most of the academic staff in my dept will be striking.

Forgot to say that the reason I'm not striking is because I resigned from UCU because of their abhorrent treatment of Kathleen Stock!

Thank you a million times for not striking. I have university aged DC and one of them is at breaking point after all the covid crap from his uni.

Our pensions and our salaries and our conditions and our workloads are however, becoming unmanageable. Most younger academics I know are over 40 before they are secure enough to take on a mortgage for example. And this is for extremely highly qualified and really highly competent people.

So there are very good reasons for industrial action. But striking won’t hit the right people, we need to be cleverer.

Thanks. I agree it is ill timed (also feel very blamed for lots of uni stuff when I have never worked harder). I think the media are very anti uni staff, I wish they could have seen the 3am starts to get teaching and home schooling done.

I do agree re workloads though and my other thread says just how disillusioned I am with academia. It's pretty much 24/7 now and teaching plus reseach pressures are immense. The pension situation and management has been utter shit though.

I don't know how many people are striking in our dept but a number will. The guilt inducing emails are coming in.

I'm not striking. Not a member of UCU because of their abhorrent politics, nor wouldn't anyway because, as others have said, immoral towards our students, and ridiculous tactically anyway.

I’m not in UCU so won’t be on strike. I agree the strategic value of the strike is questionable. What have the last two rounds of striking achieved?

Looking forward though to a quieter few weeks as email traffic should be reduced considerably.

Not striking as left UCU years ago when I really needed their help after being discriminated against for taking maternity leave and they said they couldn’t help. I’m probably the only one not striking in my dept. Nobody knows I’m not a member of the union.

I am a member and feel like I have to strike as a result. I am at a post-92 that hit the threshold after the reballot. I feel so so resentful about it. First, I don’t know why I am still a member because I loathe the anti-woman direction the UCU has taken. It’s beyond awful. The insidious influence of that ghastly UCU Commons faction is also a concern. I haven’t got round to cancelling my membership yet though…

I work in a very unionised department. Some of my colleagues are naive and idealistic to the extreme and think that this will make a difference. I asked them how and just got some vague ‘well we’ve got to do something’ response. At the same time, they are all busy justifying every single extra thing like research and extra-curricular stuff as part of their contract, so ASOS means doing precisely what they were doing before 🤦‍♀️
In my view, these strikes amount to nothing more than giving a big salary donation to our employer but maybe I have missed something.

I am trying to buy a house at the moment. Every penny counts. I’m so pissed off about losing about £700 net in pay for these 5 days. I am only teaching on 2 of them so I am tempted to actually work on the rest of them to mitigate the impact but am worried it will get back to my colleagues. The strike fund would allow me to claim a maximum of £100 to make up for it. I can’t afford that when I’m pushing myself to the maximum with mortgages.

Believe me, I care deeply about the problems in academia but I can say categorically that this won’t work (mainly because 4F is so vague and has few stated objectives). In 2020, members struck for 22 days for nothing. Literally nothing. I’d be so interested to hear why people think that this time it will work and make the difference. All that seems to have happened is that people have sacrificed pay.

God, this is such a nightmare.

Not striking either, in a very unionized department. I'm only teaching on 5 of the 10 days, and (if my calculations re timing of pickets are correct) only have to cross a picket line on 2 of those days. I am tempted to move my teaching online/do pre-recorded lectures (you can do it easily at my place without really having to notify anyone, except the students of course) but I find it cowardly.

I relate a lot to your comment @Violetsarepurple1. I think for many of my colleagues (and many other of the most visible UCU members), being in a union has an intrinsic value, no matter how useless it actually is. Given the history of the trade union movement, I can actually sympathize with this position, but I feel there is quite a lot of incomprehension and even mockery towards those who join the union with a more business-like attitude, i.e. if I'm going to pay monthly subscriptions and lose money in strikes, then I'd like something to show for it.
In April 2020, after the disastrous rounds of strikes, I wrote a very politely worded e-mail to the union, asking if they could articulate what they felt had been achieved by the strikes, and how it compared to what their aims initially were. I got no response. Alex Douglas who is a lecturer at St Andrews was very active on twitter and on his blog in the 2019-2020 strikes, and basically his position was one of "if we're going to strike, I'd like to hear what we're trying to achieve and how realistic it is that we'll achieve it" - he got a lot of grief from UCU activists, as if it is completely wrong to ask what your considerable sacrifices are meant to get you.

@aridapricot

Not striking either, in a very unionized department. I'm only teaching on 5 of the 10 days, and (if my calculations re timing of pickets are correct) only have to cross a picket line on 2 of those days. I am tempted to move my teaching online/do pre-recorded lectures (you can do it easily at my place without really having to notify anyone, except the students of course) but I find it cowardly.

I relate a lot to your comment @Violetsarepurple1. I think for many of my colleagues (and many other of the most visible UCU members), being in a union has an intrinsic value, no matter how useless it actually is. Given the history of the trade union movement, I can actually sympathize with this position, but I feel there is quite a lot of incomprehension and even mockery towards those who join the union with a more business-like attitude, i.e. if I'm going to pay monthly subscriptions and lose money in strikes, then I'd like something to show for it.
In April 2020, after the disastrous rounds of strikes, I wrote a very politely worded e-mail to the union, asking if they could articulate what they felt had been achieved by the strikes, and how it compared to what their aims initially were. I got no response. Alex Douglas who is a lecturer at St Andrews was very active on twitter and on his blog in the 2019-2020 strikes, and basically his position was one of "if we're going to strike, I'd like to hear what we're trying to achieve and how realistic it is that we'll achieve it" - he got a lot of grief from UCU activists, as if it is completely wrong to ask what your considerable sacrifices are meant to get you.

Yes, I totally agree with that, including the sneering from more idealistic colleagues. When I say that I am worried about being able to afford it, I just get 'claim from the strike fund' in response. How will that mitigate when there is a £600 gap between what I can claim and what I will lose? Or I get 'well I can't afford it either and I'm still striking'. Really? You'd miss out on something like buying a house for this strike that blatantly won't work? Or, as is the case with others I know, you'd not pay the rent/mortgage/nursery fees/debt repayments/care home fees for parents? No way would I do that and I must say that I don't understand the mentality of those who claim they would become homeless in the name of UCU.

I remember Alex Douglas! I totally agreed with him at the time but was too much of a wimp to actually do something about it. But he is totally right of course. History has showed that we gain nothing from taking this repeated action, even if it is for a good cause. All we do is sacrifice pay and make the employers richer. Objectively, everyone who was on strike in 2019/20 is poorer than if they had not taken that action.

I have decided that I will still strike on my teaching days, as I am a member and feel like I must. But I will be working on the other days (and I know for a fact that some members of our branch don't strike on all the days). And when this round of action is over, I will bite the bullet and resign my membership. £25 a month for this crap beggars belief.

I am glad I am not the only one who feels like this because it is difficult when you are in a department full of pro-union people.

I'm immensely grateful to those not striking. Two of my DC have had their university courses disrupted by Covid. I work in a school and we've been face to face with all DC in for the last year, pretty much, so I'm a bit baffled by continued online teaching.

Anyway, thank you again.

What I've found most difficult @Violetsarepurple1 is how in my department it is assumed that everyone will be in the union, and in fact the couple of e-mails that have went round assume that everyone will be striking. In fact I haven't told anyone that I am not in the union anymore; I keep telling myself that the occasion hasn't presented itself for me to say so, but the reality is, I am not brave enough. Although, if I was asked directly I would tell the truth because I don't like to lie.

(And my department is one where most people are still predominantly teaching online, and working from home on most days. I and other two are the only academics to be in the building regularly. I completely hate it and I think it is not going to do us any favours as a department going forward - but now I am kind of grateful for it because it diminishes the risk of awkward conversations about strikes by the photocopier).

I'm not striking and I left the union at the end of last year over their stance on women.

I am lucky that covid means my department is like a morgue at the moment, no one will notice if I'm in or out, and the room in teaching in is also in a different building. I will hide my staff pass as I cross the picket!

What I'm getting really annoyed by is colleagues rescheduling meetings (online ones) for non strike days. This makes no sense to me as the same amount of work gets done anyway. Either cancel the meeting if you are determined to take a stand, or do the meeting and assume that strike is related to teaching not other projects. But don't expect me to squeeze in your meetings next week just because you wanted to clear a day.

Not in UCU, not striking. Probably about 50/50 in my place (business school). Maybe less this time.

I'm not striking. I really need to leave the union, I guess. I'm wracked with guilt but I have a fatigue-based disability and I can completely not do what other union members do to keep things going around strikes (e.g., work all weekend, like my email shows lots of union members did...). I didn't strike last year either. I joined the union in hopes that it would be a support in my disability, but all it has done has made things difficult because of it! I do find it amusing, though, when people put an autoreply or signature line on their email saying they're only checking emails 9-6pm and not on weekends because of ASOS, when I already do this just to manage my daily health. I hate the assumption that academics will work all hours (because I can't) and that we can keep our research and other commitments going during a strike by working late/weekends around it (because I can't either). And that fact that everybody does that seems to defeat the purpose of the strike, anyway.

I didn't join UCU when I was starting out because, as so many upthread have pointed out, striking doesn't really work for academics. Strike action doesn't achieve anything and, as Violetsarepurple1 said, it's essentially a salary donation to our (massive) employers. I used to be in social sciences, which seemed to be roughly 50% unionised (most in Politics) but now I'm in health sciences, so staff are relying on their professional bodies (nursing, psychology, OT etc) rather than an academic union, I think.

Looking at the history of the TU movement, I want to join - but I won't join the UCU. Their anti-women approach, and treatment of Kathleen Stock is just the icing on that particular cake.

Yes the whole "post-strike catch up" culture can be so damaging for individuals, as well as rendering the strike mostly useless...
I remember when I was a junior lecturer, we had 1 day of strike which coincided with an Open Day. Which is something that can cause some damage to the university. Then we started to get e-mails from parents and prospective students that the Open Day was cancelled and could they please come in another day or speak to someone on the phone. As I was convenor of our UG degree at that point, my boss forwarded those requests to me. I knew he was very committed to UCU (and I was at that point), so I asked, so doesn't this render the strike (and our lost wages) useless? He said that it was my choice to honor these requests or not but if I didn't it would be our loss because we would have fewer applicants, and anyway it was not the parents' or candidates' fault that we had a strike and so they shouldn't be unduly penalized.
A strike's goal is normally to cause trouble for the employer - but in most cases the damage is indirect; you cause trouble to the users/customers, and they complain or are dissatisfied, etc. I don't understand this attitude of wanting to show you're "tough" and are prepared to cause disruption, but then you go out of your way (and ask others to go out of their way) to mitigate the disruption that your strike action has caused.

I'm not a UCU member, and so not striking. I am only teaching on one of the strike days. I've moved that teaching online.

I have several issues with UCU:

• Stance on female academics talking about women's rights
• Nebulous aims for recent action
• Allowing PhD students in the Union and for free
• No clarity on what several rounds of strike action have achieved

I also find UCU very unprofessional. The whole organisation is reminiscent of impotently angry student politics which is embarrassing and undermines their arguments.

I am in a very pro-union department. The UCU branch secretary is in my Department. Like others, most people in my department join the union as a matter of course, rather than critically reflecting on its purpose, aims and value.

I find the conduct of the UCU strikes really cringy. To me it smacks of well-paid, pompous, middle-class professionals in pretty decent jobs playacting real working-class struggles. If you looked at the Twitter pages of people in my department, you could easily believe it was the 1980s miners' strikes and they're digging in for months of pickets and weeks where large families will lose all household income. I find it really distasteful.

I'm sympathetic to some of UCU's arguments but I think they are significantly overblown, and fail to recognise that academia is pretty cushy compared to other sectors/industries.