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.

😆

It seems the strikes are called off for the next two weeks. All the twitter chatter seems to be about how unreasonable it would be to expect any teaching to be delivered on the days that were meant to be strikes. I somehow don’t expect university management to see it in quite the same way, not least because Monday was never a strike day.

Yes, I’m not looking forward to Monday and staff I manage whining about how they can’t possibly be expected to deliver their teaching on Tuesday. It’s always a possibility that strike action may be called off at short notice.

Oh dear, bet people have booked holidays! If we were being paid on strike days I'd have been tempted! This is a relief - money's tight.

I don't agree with the "only one true way to strike" approach. Academia isn't a production line and we're all doing very different jobs in very different contexts. For me, the main points are that I don't claim pay, and if I work independently on a strike day (as on weekends etc) that's up to me and I'm not moaning about it. The university can't rely on this labour or on my meeting deadlines etc. But we manage our own time - so I don't see the value in spending days at a time on enforced leisure.

The union doesn't guarantee job security, and those in more precarious institutions could write colleagues' redundancy notice by ignoring marketing, recruitment, new courses etc. Not everyone has support and admin staff who pick these things up. I'll work if I need to.

Solidarity is meaningless if it is just used to shout slogans and enforce group think.

Honestly not happening in my group. Everyone's delighted. Obviously people either have annual leave or they don't - it's only granted in exceptional circumstances on strike days.

I mean I know many people in the profession but your department must be extremely odd if people can't pick up their usual teaching with 72 (or even 24!) hours' notice.

I do believe you - it's odd how different universities and departments are. But were your people still being paid?

All the twitter chatter seems to be about how unreasonable it would be to expect any teaching to be delivered on the days that were meant to be strikes.

Yes, I find all of this a bit weird.
Even if you're teaching a course that you have never taught before (and hence you cannot recycle past materials) - don't people do the majority of their reading/thinking before the course even starts? Otherwise how would you be able to come up with a week-by-week outline, syllabus, assignment briefs, etc.?
I acknowledge that actually putting together specific learning activities can take a while, but if you have done the reading/thinking you can do something like bringing a relevant text/video to class and discuss it?

I think some people just enjoy a good whinge. There are always those who’ll find the cloud in every silver lining.

I think some academics made plans, perhaps worked out a complicated picket line snack-production rota, and now they are disappointed. Best laid plans … On a more serious note, there are some I feel for, those who have to deliver new lectures, because unexpectedly writing a lecture from scratch is very hard work.

To be fair, the person I’m expecting to complain the most was due to teach several hours of new material on Tuesday.

But, then, he’d also been avoiding declaring that he’d been striking, so . . .

I think people who'd be thrown into a panic like this, unless dealing with extraordinary circs / chronic illness etc, aren't the people I'd listen to on the realities of academic workloads.

It's not universal, but there is a culture among some academics of believing in your right to be paid to do the job exactly the way you want to do it. Since teaching, research, networking and student care can all take as much time as you want to give them, I find that people who shout loudest about this often distort the real and major workload issues that exist in the profession.

In that case he's been taking time off during contracted hours ago he should obviously put in some hours in lieu between now and then to get his Tuesday sessions ready.

(Good luck to you on Monday!)

Depends what she means - I presume lowest point for tech / support staff in unison since they've called off strike? Or could be lowest grade for demonstrators? Or bottom of grade F? Their comms could be a bit clearer.

I have been preparing my Monday teaching, but now panic preparing some complex stuff for Tuesday and Thursday that I know nothing about, because cuts at my place mean I was tasked with someone else's teaching. So, yeah, crap weekend. Was so looking forward to not having to. Ditto next week, when I have 3 new things.

Honestly, you're under no obligation to prepare complex new stuff if you don't have time in working hours. Are you not taking action short of a strike?

Depending when you were tasked with someone else's teaching and how normal that is to your dept, you probably shouldn't do that teaching while taking action short of strike anyway. Look at your contract. Talk to your union rep. Don't do the teaching if it's outside your normal workload. If it's not outside the normal workload but you haven't had time to prepare because of strikes, reduce your preparation to what you have time for in working hours and plan session accordingly, even if that means shortening it.

It's your call, but I would say that if you support collective bargaining by striking, you should also benefit from the rights already won through collective bargaining. That means not making up hours for time striking.

Good points. It is not sudden teaching. A better person than me might have spent less time on research and more time on teaching planning...but yes,am doing minimum and using seminar strategies that put onus back on them, with handouts, because they too probably haven't done much reading,

If it's outside your normal teaching area, you probably shouldn't be doing it while working to contact however much time you have: if you haven't seen them, guidelines here may help -

www.ucu.org.uk/working-to-contract#:~:text=Working%20to%20contract%20means%20abiding,do%20no%20more%20than%20that.

Grady is not my cup of tea at all but this is too much:
twitter.com/DrJoGrady/status/1626938075338121216

That’s not ok. Highly inflammatory, and a bit nuts.

This reminds of an article I read recently on the self-destructive energy in leftist activist spaces. They often end up descending into purity spirals which I think this is.

That’s very wrong. And so childish. Some people have no sense of reality. I think whoever did it should be readily traceable though.

For the love of ...

Just coming on to see if there is anyone else on the Teacher's Pension Scheme feeling a bit...exploited? Not for me, I didn't strike (channeled all those Simpson'a characters) but I have colleagues who were on the picket line and took the pay hit which it now seems were for the benefit of the those in the USS? I always suspected a win on that was the real end goal but really surprised to see the pay increase just forgotten about. Or am I missing something?

I think that for all its rhetoric, UCU is focused in the interests of academics in pre-92s. Everyone else anywhere else is marginalised.

I’m not in the TPS, but did wonder (well, I could imagine) how members in that scheme must be feeling to have lost pay for seemingly fuck all.

Also, while that Wikipedia edit is definitely not on, since when did Grady ever believe that

“Debate is healthy. Challenge is healthy. Criticism is healthy”?

Certainly not when she was whipping up the mob against gender critical academics or blocking people with Terfblocker.

I think that their brand of magical thinking works better in better resources universities. I don't think they prioritise pre-92s directly, but it doesn't suit them to acknowledge inequality across the sector.

USS pension - interesting. I wonder how this will affect the reballot.