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.

Colour me crotchety but I get fed up of these disingenuous paintings of PhD students as actual academic staff.
Have you seen this? www.ucu.org.uk/PGRs-as-staff

How interesting. “We do the same work as university staff, but we are not afforded the same recognition, rights, protections, or pay as staff, because we are considered ‘students’.”

No, you do not do the same work. You are students. You have no clue what you are talking about. If PhD students became staff, they would have to accept more intervention into their research and quite frankly, there are PhDs nobody would hire as regular staff. There is also the issue of international students - would they be able to get a work visa?

Another demand, wanting to be paid for all the hours you are working - lovely, I want that, too! Academia would not run without the many, many hours worked in excess of notional 35 hour work weeks.

I think UCU created a huge problem for itself when it admitted PGRs. So glad I left.

Completely agree @ExUCU , also left some time ago. PhD students are not the same as staff at all.

That manifesto is clueless in parts. Do they really think they should attend staff meetings and be paid for it? Some of the logic is risible - undergraduates also pay to “work”, are they also students?

Reading through some of the demands is illuminating though, there are obviously some exploitative places out there. A lot of the things they want we already provide as standard.

I’ve been wondering if it might be helpful to compare PGRs to paid interns. There are horrible internships out there but also good ones, and I think one function of PGR teaching is to give PhD students a chance to see whether this is a career they would like to embark on. Most PhD students do not end up in academia but still have great careers where skills acquired during the doctorate are valued. Some of them might not want to do the PhD in the context of paid employment.

This idea that we are all a big university community and everybody, UG, PGR, faculty, is making a valuable addition to the world’s knowledge is coming straight from the marketing department of Clueless U …

I agree PGRs should lobby for better pay and conditions, and for more support and supervision.

But they are not going to get anywhere by insisting they are the same as staff. They are not.

Yet another example of the union just being completely clueless on strategy and comms. You could get most staff on board a campaign for paying GTAs more, but I can't see many people agreeing that they're staff, should attend all staff meetings, etc.

It is a hallmark of professional activism and astroturfing that ‘winning’ is actually not what’s desired. Sad to see trade unions going that way but here we are.

It’s also the case that striking should be a last resort to win the dispute. Not a protest. In the case of UCU it’s all about the pink merch and the picket line selfies.

I think I'm going to have to leave the UCU.

I can't afford to lose almost an entire month's salary over the next 2 months (single, high mortgage payments) for something we won't get anyway. The 5% offer seemed pretty OK to me.

I also can't face not teaching my students. They've had 3 years of disruption. And I realise how much I really need to teach for my own good; I enjoy it (and I say this as a fairly senior academic with a big research programme - the stereotypes are not always true!).

And I can't face my colleagues - several of whom are really into direct action/strike action, and (naively, in my view) really think losing almost a month's salary over the next 2 months will actually work. It hasn't in the past. But I'm a coward - I don't want to fall out with close colleagues.

So, to keep my conscience clear, I think I'll have to leave the union. And find another one, or manage the last 5 years of my career without one ...

I hate this feeling. Tea & sympathy welcomed!

You have my sympathy, and I think it’s lovely that teaching means so much to you, even as a senior academic.

I know I can sound quite militantly anti-UCU but it’s no longer the union I joined many years ago. Wish you well.

Many thanks @ExUCU Are you one of the people who joined a different union? I may have to start a thread asking about experiences of other unions.

And yes, I realised this last week, when some anxious 2nd years asked about strike arrangements - I realised how much I get from teaching, even though I think a lot of the students have weird ideas about me (you know, the stereotypes often attached to older powerful women - unconsciously, they can't quite think it's right that an older woman is a professor, and knows a lot!)

Not all of us get research grants to get away from the students - I've always kept up my undergrad teaching even when deep in a funded research project.

Can’t quite believe how long this thread is by now but alternative unions that have been mentioned here are GMB and Affinity. The latter has a strong freedom of speech stance but is not in the TUC. They do seem to get results for their members but are more like an insurance policy in case you get into trouble at work.

I see that the UCEA has made what it describes as a full and final offer to the unions. Unison are consulting but from twitter it it looks like UCU has instructed members to reject it. Does anyone know two things:

(a) presumably UCEA could make another offer despite saying this is the final one; and
(b) could it be implemented even if UCU reject it? I would be happy to get 6%. Inflation + 2% is a pipe dream.

Interestingly the UCEA letter says they will then turn to the other elements of the 'four fights' claim once pay is settled.

I think UCU never actually accepted last year's pay offer, but it was implemented nonetheless.

The "full and final offer" is 5%, not 6%, I think, for most academics?

Yes, sorry, 5%. I'd still take it!

Yes, I’m fine with 5%. There’s lots of things I’m not happy about in the job, but pay is way down the list.

I would too, 5% is fine for me. We work bloody hard but I see so many others paid less than us (who also work hard of course). I do think some people forget what the real world is like sometimes. The conditions have definitely got way worse along with expectations but I also think this is the case across the board.

I too left as I could not strike a couple of strikes ago and felt the only way through. More and more I have lost it with UCU. It feels like they just like fighting sometimes.

twitter.com/KCL_UCU/status/1619694508333232128

These crazily exaggerated stories are really starting to annoy me.

Like “I am a senior lecturer with no children. I rarely go out or buy myself anything other than food and basic toiletries. And yet my pay is stagnant and I can’t save anything. 10 years of training and 10 years of experience, and I still worry about turning my heating on for an hour a day”.

Stagnant pay must mean top of the scale. So top of the SL scale at Kings would be what, around £65k??

It doesn’t seem helpful to pretend that senior lecturers are on poverty pay. It’s insulting to people living in actual poverty.

Well here on MN, where 100K a year is 'not rich', I guess a SL in London is on poverty wages 🙄

That is actually infuriating. I don't care if it's London, if you are one person with no kids, you can damn well support yourself on 60K or whatever. What do you think the rest of the country is doing??

I honestly think that there is a certain kind of privileged person who actively resents the fact that they can’t claim to be disadvantaged. But who tries to claim that anyway.

Yeah it’s so detached from reality, like they actively want to be suffering to claim some kind of moral status. Just enjoy the £65k!

Reminds me when Grady was running for office and said she couldn't afford a house, on a SL job.

Strength and tea and sympathy @EasterIsland

I left some years ago and never looked back.

I haven't joined a different union but I'd opt for Affinity if I was going to. I really like their model of being an individual insurance policy. I don't really see the need for a collective action type union in academia because we're not en-masse exploited the way workers in other sectors are. I also think academia is too diverse and diffuse for a strong collective union. So I'd opt for an individual insurance type of approach like Affinity.

Don't worry about falling out with your colleagues. You won't. If anyone ever asks why you're not in the union, why you're not striking etc., just make sure you have answers ready in your back pocket so you're not caught off-guard. Don't be tempted to justify yourself or enter a debate. Just give your reasons and then say "I'd rather not discuss it" if they persist.
Having said that, there will be lots of people not striking this time so you won't get too much flack.

My feelings exactly. We are incredibly privileged compared with a lot of other people - although probably not in relation to other professions which require the same level of talent/ability & qualifications - medicine & the law, for example.

And so the performative virtue-signalling starts again... twitter.com/HPS_Vanessa/status/1620333680551170048