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.

Interesting analysis of the benefits of indefinite strike action from two union zealots. They don’t really address the financial implications for striking faculty, though. In reality, academics will strike for as long as they can afford it and then return to work. Some will not strike. £70,000 collected from the general public will not even begin to cover lost wages. Universities could also stop making pension contributions and withdraw other benefits. And there is the question of how students will react to an indefinite strike - cannot imagine they will support this.

£70,000 collected from the general public will not even begin to cover lost wages.

I noticed exactly the same thing. They name that figure as it to prove there's a high chance that the strike losses will be covered by the public but it's unlikely to make a difference unless it's a tiny tiny branch. My branch has about 1500 members, £70,000 is less than £50 per member.

£50 per day doesn’t cover my outgoings by any stretch. My net salary is more than 2.5 times that amount and I’m not flush with cash. This argument always falls on deaf ears with the UCU types whom I assume have partners or parents who financially support them. For people who are the sole earner or who have childcare expenses, claiming from the strike fund leaves us in potential financial hardship.

The public doesn’t support striking university workers. And why should they when you have nurses and ambulance drivers striking? Why would you donate your hard earned cash to UCU where it will probably be spent on paying Jo Grady’s salary or manufacturing pink ‘merch’?

Speaking of Grady, I sense lots of people getting pissed off with her now, save for her gang of cronies, aka UCU Commons, who will defend whatever she does, no matter how ridiculous. But others are realising that she will not win them anything in these strikes (I guess it’s only taken 3 years for them to realise, but still). She’s now proposing 2 days here, 3 days there, just like the failed strategy for the past few years that has led to nothing. Genius. UCU Commons are talking about “massive action in the summer”. And knowing UCU, it will be in the summer, ie weeks after all exams have been marked and teaching has stopped 🤦‍♀️

I don't get it. What on earth is their reasoning about doing it during the summertime? It mostly won't affect anyone except for PG students and staff losing out on pay. Whilst saving the universities a lot of money, I suppose. It's so pointless! Argh.

Money issues aside, I found the case for an indefinite strike quite persuasive. It certainly brings in more uncertainty, unlike Jo Grady's plan, where she has helpfully already indicated all the potential strike days so that VCs can plan in advance, and has more potential to be more disruptive. People could choose their strike days to minimise the financial impact. I would imagine also that it appeals to a lot of people who are frustrated at repeatedly being Grady's foot soldiers for no material gain. Why not take back control of your action? You are going to lose money either way. I also thought that the case for an MAB starting in Jan was good too - by April when the mandate expires summative assessment has been completed and the exams set and only need administering by administrative staff. Markers can be brought in or marks delayed. Students can progress without marks or regulations suspended to allow them to graduate. But if there is no summative assessment or exams set, then VCs cannot solve it by bringing in others to mark or just sitting it out.

I really was baffled by the Grady paper. More of the same. Again. Why would it work this time? It also seems to be a waste of the industrial action mandate. The main benefits seem to be co-ordination with other national strikes (actually I think this would work against academics. Who cares about us when nurses and posties are striking? Our claims are so much less compelling and sympathy-inducing. Is it just so that Grady can have more photo ops with Mick Lynch?) and the spreading out of the financial hit. Even UCU Commons seem to be a bit frustrated. Their own proposal is Grady+, with more of a wildcat feel to the strategy, esp in relation to ASOS deductions.

I think the occasional strikes are pointless, but the indefinite strike is unrealistic. They will not get enough academics on board to make it disruptive enough.

They need to come up with a strategy that goes beyond teaching strikes, this just seems really obvious now.

I think 31% of all eligible staff are UCU members. Out of those, many won’t strike. In others sectors there’s a far far higher union membership.
I agree that an indefinite strike is more likely to be effective than Grady’s plan. But there’s simply not enough money in the strike fund so I fear there will be limited disruption to unis especially given the already low membership.
a lot of the stuff about conditions won’t be solved by a strike. The huge over recruitment of phd students who want a permanent job is a major cause of problems in academia but people pretend that’s something that can be solved by “fat cat bosses” just creating permanent posts when these aren’t available and departments are being shut down.

Is it just so that Grady can have more photo ops with Mick Lynch?

It would appear so.

And yes, indefinite strike action is what they should have done when the strike fund was full and inflation at 2%. Why doesn’t Jo Grady donate some of her 130K salary to the strike fund to set an example to us all?

Apparently she does donate around £10k annually to the strike fund.

The fighting over one type of strike over another speaks to me of a lack of imagination. Speaking of which, there’s. another strike strategy from the chair of Cambridge UCU which is fairly close to Grady’s vision but interestingly he admits that UCU doesn’t have the numbers nationwide or the proportions on campuses to have the impact that the RMT do, not does the union have the funds to support a sustained period of strikes. I thought that was very honest, and in contrast to the 70 000 on the pickets that we hear from Jo Grady. I know for sure that many union members at my institution didn’t strike due to disagreement/disillusionment with the strategy and/or the goals.

I should have assumed that Grady is donating to the strike fund, anything else would be very bad PR.

But what is to be done? I really can’t see a way out of the current impasse, and though I am no longer in UCU, losing an industrial dispute comprehensively never benefits employees in any sector.

The huge over recruitment of phd students who want a permanent job is a major cause of problems in academia but people pretend that’s something that can be solved by “fat cat bosses” just creating permanent posts when these aren’t available and departments are being shut down.

I’m all for curiosity-driven research at PhD level and taking on anyone capable of completing a PhD ( but I’m in the Humanities) but we need also be very clear that most completed PhD candidates won’t get jobs, or will find it takes several years of precarious work. It was the same in my day 30 years ago. Nothing much has changed. If ever there was a “Golden Age” it was in the late 60s and 70s, but mostly for men.

The UCU idea that current precariously employed post-docs should all be given permanent posts is just ludicrous. It’s never happened in the past and if it were to be implemented there would be no new jobs anywhere for several decades. It would be disastrous. And particularly disastrous for women.

Any PhD candidate must have a Plan B. I did when I started out 30 years ago!

It’s no real surprise though that UCU has taken up their cause given its ranks have been swelled by allowing PhD students to join. I find this problematic, they are not staff in the way that academics are and sometimes their interests are in opposition to one another. Many academic careers now rely on having a constant stream of PhD students.

Did anyone listen to the UCU forum last night on Twitter? Apparently notice has been served on the employers to start the marking and assessment boycott on 23 Jan. I'm assuming that's not going to be withdrawn, regardless of the type of strike action that is settled on.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of deductions employers make for this kind of action. I'm pretty sure mine will try to deduct 100% of pay.

i think it would be harder to monitor than a strike but ultimately possible. Our deadline to submit summer exams is soon approaching so it’ll be interesting to observe how that is handled.

I agree with you that 100% deductions will be on the cards - Queen Mary got away with it, and the union’s own legal advice was that the only recourse was for individuals to bring a case in the county court!!

I'm a HoD, and have been in a meeting where the senior management said they were planning to dock 100% of pay. From my perspective, monitoring will be a nightmare. They'll be expecting HoDs to monitor marking completions and report anyone thought to be taking ASOS. It's utterly shit.

We have marking due to be completed at the end of this month . . .

I've just got an email from UCU that said the delegates meeting supported an April boycott rather than a January one by quite a margin - and that the executive will take it into account when they meet Thursday.

There's only a handful of UCU members in my dept so any boycott will inevitably mean loading more marking on already struggling colleagues.

So, If as suspected HEIs deduct 100% it would be effectively an all out strike wouldn't it?

Would you pick up a striking colleague’s workload/marking? I’m not in the ucu but always thought that I wouldn’t cover a striking colleague’s lectures and kind of assumed that would also mean not doing extra marking? 🤷‍♀️ I’m not sure what rules or protection or expectations there are surrounding this.

No, staff can't be expected to pick up the work of striking colleagues. If someone is underloaded (ha!), their line manager can ask / expect them to do this, but realistically no one is going to be in this position. I've already done the marking workload for the rest of the year so it's clear who's expected to do what, precisely because I could see the issues and recriminations if people felt they were having to take on other people's work in the event of a strike.

Would you pick up a striking colleague’s workload/marking? I’m not in the ucu but always thought that I wouldn’t cover a striking colleague’s lectures and kind of assumed that would also mean not doing extra marking? 🤷‍♀️ I’m not sure what rules or protection or expectations there are surrounding this.*

I'm on a high volume student programme (400 per cohort) so marking tends to be allocated fairly randomly across the team. It's hard to know if you're covering sickness, striking or a vacancy.

But, you make a good point - it's going to be complicated !

It’ll be difficult if for example in a module team half the team are striking so half the students get their work marked and half don’t.

So the notice for the Jan boycott was to implement the HEC November decision (which also included the decision to go in indefinite strike which Jo Grady is now trying to open up again, if I’ve understood this correctly) but it now may be overturned by the Jan HEC meeting?

I am a HoD. We have an Exam board in late January for semester 1-only courses.
Yesterday my Exams officer informed me that they will be taking part in the assessment boycott and therefore could we please reschedule our Exam board and associated meetings to make sure that everything is completed and the grades are posted before the boycott starts on 23rd January.
As HoD (and not a UCU member) this of course makes my life easier. But this person is prepared to get 100% of their pay docked (tbf I think my uni will be more lenient than that, but you never know) while going out of their way to make sure that the boycott doesn't have an impact on the students. I really struggle to see how this is meant to be effective in any way. This kind of attitude (losing pay while minimizing impact on students) is what I've seen in most of my colleagues for the past 3-4 years.

That's my understanding (though Im a very peripheral UCU member ) everything - escalation, date of boycott etc seems to be up for discussion on Thursday using the branch ballots as a guide.

When the UCU merry go round stops I'll see whether I can or want to support the action

And in some modules the subject specialist would typically mark their question so even if a postgrad or TA marked the other question, the students could complain it's not been marked by the person that set it (and the other students' work was marked by the person who set it).