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.

Just quietly leaving this article here for your perusal.

Jesus H Christ, what a load of garbage. From a legal academic as well. I saw another legal academic on Twitter say today that university should not be about debating opposing views. Law as a subject is literally about that - we have an adversarial judicial system. These people are not fit for purpose quite frankly and I’m actually pleased that their idiotic bullying will be reined in (as much as I don’t like government interfering in universities).
I am pleased that at least there is some push-back in the comments.
Oh and I saw the owner of this critical legal blog lament the other day that he doesn’t get enough feminist submissions to his blog. I wonder why 🤔

What a poorly reasoned piece. That is all I have to say about that.

ps Bacevic is a social theorist, not a lawyer. Not that legal academics are immune from exhibiting poor reasoning skills, either.

Ah, thanks for the correction, I thought she was a lawyer. But, yes, as you say, incredibly poor reasoning there. It’s nonsense like this and the aggressive way in which it is policed that makes me think I don’t have a future in academia. Evidently I lack the ability to make it all make sense and I wonder how much longer I can put up with it.

I have it on good authority that the author of the article is the EDI director in their department 😐

God help us

I've just seen Jo Grady's latest tweet and thought of you, GCandproud!

Oh my god! I just saw it. She’s beyond belief. It’s such a joke. You’d think she’d be keeping a low profile after fucking up a massive dispute but no.

It’s incomprehensible. Ten days of strikes on the horizon with presumably more calls on the strike fund and she wants to arrange a fundraiser for a completely unrelated organisation, just because…?

What the hell is a 'pits and perverts style fundraiser'???

i dread to think… Although I think the term is from the miners’ strikes, where the gay community supported the miners. Hell knows what the middle-class UCU iteration would be though but it will probably involve glitter and lots of chanting.
I also like that she says that the LGBT community has been supportive but she only wants to donate to orgs that support only trans/nb people. Happily the no votes are winning at the moment.
The nerve of her. She has just contributed to her members losing thousands in salary to support her incredibly poorly organised industrial action that has resulted in nothing, she herself draws a six figure salary and now she wants to hold a party to raise money for a charity that promotes the sterilisation of children. Wonderful - that will really help her plan to grow and come back strong in 2023 or whatever it was.

Morning all!

I just saw Jo Grady's tweet and came straight here because I knew you'd be discussing it. I genuinely laughed out loud when I saw that tweet. The behaviour of the UCU hive mind is absolutely beyond parody.

It’s either a diversionary tactic or a very late entry for the Dance Your PhD competition.

I rarely comment on here.... but I'm so glad I left the UCU.

😂 at “dance your PhD”
yeah, the thought of £25 a month going to those muppets is painful.

I love the reply by Dr Hannah Quirk. Once again, Grady, like a lot of the leadership of UCU, shows that she fails to understand that sometimes, unfortunately, things can be a zero sum game (exemplified most clearly in the belief that "if the managers wanted" everyone could be on a permanent contract and have a pay rise, which is the bais for the strike). So she thinks that people have unlimited funds around and donating to both the LBTQ fundraiser and the fighting fund is a no brainer for everyone?

Yes I also love Hannah’s reply. It’s outrageous that she thinks it’s a good idea to troll her membership like this after what they have been through. And what’s the guessing that the strike fund will run dry again pretty soon?

Anyone else panicking that the marking boycott is going to indirectly increase their own marking load? I know it shouldn't but realistically ... it is, isn't it?

We didn’t hit the threshold so it won’t hit us but I really feel for non-striking staff at places that did. It will probably mean more work but on the other hand I reckon participation figures will go down as people can’t afford it and everyone realised that it’s now hopeless.

I agree with @GCAndProud that it will only be a small number of people participating so the work to be spread around won't be as huge as might be expected.

In term of spreading around the marking, I think it depends on the individual department and the individual academics to be honest. I can't see my department being too heavy-handed with getting non-boycotters to mark other people's work. But other departments will try and compel people.

I, personally, will refuse to take on extra marking. But other colleagues mightn't be as confident or militant to do so.

I'm lucky in that our marking is due very soon, well before any decision re strike days is made - I suppose there could be some disruption in terms of people refusing to attend exam boards.
I think that if I was asked to mark other people's work I would try to stay firm, but eventually I'd give in, mostly because it would cause significant disruption to the students not being able to graduate in the summer.
In my opinion, several of my colleagues who have been on strike and been very vocal about it ("stick it to the man!", etc.) have benefitted enormously from the work of us "scabs" who have left to pick up the pieces when students couldn't obtain an extension, get crucial questions about assessment asked, etc. In the end, one of my colleagues and I picked up a lot of this work, merely out of sympathy for the students (I tried to stay firm, but wasn't able to). So my striking colleagues benefitted from keeping their image as the "tough" guy who religiously sticks to not even checking his e-mail (yes it was always a he) on strike days, while at the same time knowing that my other colleague and I (both a she) were there to avert the worst disasters, meaning that they wouldn't attract the anger of students for risking late penalties or performing poorly in assignments.

Does anyone know the planned end date for the marking boycott, if it goes ahead? Trying to figure out how much it'd affect my institution...

I'm also curious to know when UCU will announce the strike dates. Presumably the marking boycott would last for the duration of the mandate?

We've started our marking and I'm hoping that it'll all be completed by the time the marking boycott takes effect, as I do not want to have to spend my summer sorting this out.

Marking boycott starts Monday 23rd May so probably too late to have much impact in many institutions?

I certainly hope so. Like aridapricot, I'm fed up with mopping up the mess left by years of strikes. It's not as if I get any free-rider benefits!!