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.

Does anybody know when the 18 strike days will be? I am not in the union and do not receive their emails, but apparently a single date has been announced on 1 February, with more to come in Feb/Mar (plus markign strike, etc.)

Have you all seen https://twitter.com/ucu/status/1616009168498098176

I'll try and listen in. Interested in how it goes and whether a range of views are aired. Not likely.

"We need the public to hear your stories of the rampant casualisation, insecurity and overwork you face".
Oh dear, I think this could backfire badly in the current climate. Yes it is really bad on an individual level for someone with a PhD (typically in the Humanities) to have to cobble together a living out of multiple part-time positions, spending a lot of time and money on getting around to their teaching, despairing at the decline of the sector. But still someone with a PhD will have more options elsewhere in the job market than most people, even if they end up in a job they are overqualified for.

It’s awful to say but someone who is, several years post-phd, still doing hourly paid work and scraping a living needs to give up on working in academia and get a job elsewhere, which the majority of them can undoubtedly secure. It is well known that there are far more phd graduates than positions available and if we really tackled casualisation, this would involve slashing the number of places dramatically, as well as the number of post docs. Many of those protesting wouldn’t even have been allowed to do their PhD.

It is also interesting how Jo Grady’s rhetoric of universities swimming in money and able to afford huge pay rises compared to the recent announcement of redundancies at UEA. There have also been big culls at Roehampton, Goldsmiths and Wolverhampton. My guess is that if a big pay increase (including for people on 50k plus) will just lead to more redundancies and more restrictive recruitment practices in the future.

And of course the irony of harping on about fat cat salaries but happily taking her own fat cat salary for doing very little except engaging in factionalism and making a pigs ear of another round of strikes. She’s not going to be losing 18 days pay is she?

Oh and they will come up with some stories about a self-funded phd student earning 5k a year and living in a caravan and it will be retweeted as “evidence” by someone on around 55k of how we’re all using food banks and can’t afford to heat our homes.

Universities have a certain amount of culpability in “over-selling” PhDs but given how bright you need to be in the first instance to do one it’s staggering how many seem incapable of working out for themselves that a permanent role is not guaranteed. Sad as it may be neither the sector nor the world at large needs more PhD students, particularly in the Humanities. And UCU have exploited them, swelling their ranks and fostering their sense of grievance. There are lots of genuine issues to be resolved but there’s something quite perverse, for example, in striking about a pension scheme that you’re unlikely ever to be part of. Grady has a lot to answer for - a campaign focused on pay alone would have had a much greater chance of success (particularly if it sat alongside an acknowledgement that for some institutions higher pay for the majority might lead to job losses for a minority).

One thing that annoys me with respect to the pay negotiations is that it's a national claim and the UCU refer to various university reserves and/or total national reserves but they do not acknowledge that not all universities are in the same position. So some might have very large reserves and be able to afford a large offer but others will be quite vulnerable and will struggle to make even a modest offer without making cuts elsewhere.

She's not getting an easy ride so far. Interesting.

I sort of agree that academics who can't get into a permanent position at some point should consider other options, I do often think this when I read about people living in caravans and relying on food banks while doing contract teaching. I was on precarious contracts myself for a long time but if I'd ever needed to use a food bank because of that, I don't think I would have held out.

But I disagree that it's easy for people to do this. In my field, for example, people think they will be able to go into the nonprofit sector, but it turns out lots of nonprofits in this area don't want academics, they want people who have been working in the field and have real-world experience.

And a lot of academics have nothing but academic work on their CV, so even if they're willing to do retail work or hospitality, they're not going to get hired.

I do think people realise they might not make it in academia but I don't think people do enough to give themselves a Plan B. They think a PhD will open lots of non-academic doors but it really doesn't in all fields.

I agree, dreamingbohemian. PhD supervisors need to consistently tell their students that they need to acquire a broad portfolio of transferable skills. Having said that, it's hard to acknowledge that you may not make it in academe, when you've had only success so far. This is why I like the type of PhD structure that requires time spent in policy, practice, or industry, even though these tend to be DTCs, which have their own drawbacks.

And UCU have exploited them, swelling their ranks and fostering their sense of grievance.

The whole "we do the same work as university staff" (see here: www.ucu.org.uk/media/11623/Postgraduate-researchers-as-staff-manfesto/pdf/PGRs_as_staff_manifesto_Dec22.pdf) really grates me. The general public routinely assumes that being an academic only involves a handful teaching hours a week, summers are off, no conception whatsoever of research and admin obligations, etc. Which is fine, not everyone has to know what every job entails and in the grand scheme of things our jobs are pretty cushy. But now the union is promoting the same idea. I am flabbergasted as to how some of our PhD students genuinely think that teaching a couple seminars per week (in a course that someone else has designed for them, who will also be picking up all student e-mails and complaints) and producing research that will take years of extra work to be of publishable quality is equivalent to a full-time lectureship.

Completely agree. As a line manager, I can see the consequences of this - new lecturers who are completely unprepared for, and aghast at, the workload, even though they are light-loaded. Who don't think they should be doing a fraction of the things that are just a normal part of the job, or doing anything in the summer (as if admissions, resits, planning, postgraduate business, etc are undertaken by fairies). Light-loading doesn't help with that either; it's just further delaying of reality and pushing more work onto those with a "full" (i.e. already excessive) load.

PhD supervisors need to consistently tell their students that they need to acquire a broad portfolio of transferable skills.

Well, I do this with every PhD student (I'm in the humanities). But I suspect they don't want to hear, don't hear it, or think they'll be different.

And yes, yes, to @aridapricot and@GCAcademic's comments on the invisibility of most of the work we do, and the standards to which we do it. When I hear/read about the standards of work in other professions & workplaces, I tend to think that if we worked like that, we'd all be out of jobs. The standards to which academics are held are very high.

We've had issues recently with PhDs demanding the same access as staff to development funds, staff benefits etc. They've even been demanding to attend various staff-only meetings. While I appreciate that they are in a bit of a limbo land if they teach a lot, they certainly don't know the half of what an academic role is like.

@frustratedacademic and @dreamingbohemian

I am somewhat on the other side of that coin - a mature, self-funding PhD student combining part-time doctoral research with my own ongoing career.

However I am surrounded by fully-funded students on ESRC stipends and experience my department as a complete ‘bubble’ away from the world of outside work. External employment is never mentioned, practitioner conferences are disregarded in any records of activity and ‘work’ doesn’t even feature on the official form as a possible reason for needing intermission. No other work besides being a doctoral tutor appears to exist in the university universe. There are a lot of PhD students but it is easy enough to see that very few permanent jobs arise within the department.

Surely it would be better to move away from the full-time stipend model in order to compel all PhD students to combine doctoral research with paid work?

@MaybeDoctor yes, I agree. The current model is unsustainable. What you're describing is exactly my issue with many doctoral training centres. Giving PhD students teaching experience is good in a limited way, especially if coupled to formal training, but it still leaves the impression that this is a career path (and is open to abuse, with too much responsibility given in some cases). The more positive model I've seen is with a colleague in engineering, and computer science, where each studentship involves an industrial placement, with a good chance of a job there to follow graduation. Tying it to industry means more industry-led research, so less pure research, but that's the only drawback I can see. The latter may better suit research grant-led studentships anyway.

Strike days announced:
www.ucu.org.uk/article/12759/University-strike-dates-in-February-and-March-confirmed

In what planet do ucu think we can afford to do this? Just ridiculous.

Lone parent household here. Nope.

Here we go again. It’s about seven weeks and takes us nearly to the end of term. Basically the entire term is affected. I feel sorry for my students whom I don’t think will appreciate what lies ahead.

I found that UCI statement a bit confusing. On the one hand it’s fairly militant and on the other I get the sense that not much is needed by way an offer to resolve things. That could be a very wrong reading though, I just don’t have a sense of how deeply UCU is wedded to its demands. Has there been any movement on pensions? There’s been a lot of focus on pay.

I feel sorry for the students, too. This is the covid cohort, students in their third year will have started university in 2020/2021. Not a great uni experience …

The way these dates work out, some of our finalists are going to have zero teaching for the rest of their course.

One of my DCs' teachers are on strike on the 1st so that's convenient. Other than that I'm not sure I can even commit to not crossing a digital picket line. I have too much to do!

One of my modules meets on Wednesdays. So of the 9 classes we have left, they're supposed to miss 5 of them? Fuck. That.

There's a couple more teacher strike day that coincide with a UCU strike day (I imagine those will be well populated). One of the days is teacher, UCU strike and DH day off and our other child will be in school so will be very miffed but this one is in an independent school that has more days off anyway! So the rest of us will have a nice day out.

I suspect there will be a lot of online teaching this term, due to transport and school strikes. If these coincide with UCU strikes, lecturers can avoid crossing picket lines, students get (online) instruction and Jo Grady can give lots of speeches and eat home-baked muffins made by her devotees. Brilliant.