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.

@aridapricot

I do not think you are over-reacting *@ThinkingAboutCrumpets*. To me it's more the principle than the actual amount of work asked of you... it's like wanting to appear "tough" on picket lines/on social media with other UCU members, yet at the same time wanting to save face with external speakers and partners, so that you can preserve your relationship with them. I no longer bat an eyelid at these things, but in past strikes I've seen "tough" colleagues (not just from my department, but more generally) demanding that everyone not only religiously observes the strike but refrains from tweeting about anything remotely related to their research because Digital Picket Line or something, and then rushing off on strike days to a conference abroad or a public engagement event with a high-profile partner. Oh but apparently they crossed off their institutional affiliation on their conference name tag so that's ok and that really damages the university.

God, I hate the term digital picket line. I've seen so many stupid petty arguments about it on twitter, with people flying off the handle about someone who's not even at a striking institution tweeting about their research. A lot of it seems to boil down to jealousy, as so much else in academia does. If you see someone you don't like doing well, you now have a chance to really stick the boot in by 'digital picket-shaming' them.

As soon as the strike is over, these academics will immediately tweet a 'catch-up' of everything they didn't publicise during the strike, so the message gets out there anyway. "I [selflessly] didn't tweet about my article during the strike because I was observing the digital picket and I didn't want to bring publicity to my research, but here it is [bringing publicity to said person's research, albeit slightly later]. Yeah, effective. The miners would have been proud.

You're so right about the conference attendance stuff too. One person I know (a prof) was on the pickets on the strike day, tweeting about how everyone is at breaking point and how senior staff have to lead by example etc, then the very next day, she examined a PhD (another poor precarious soul added to the pile), and fitted in a research seminar too. Yeah, really well done for leading by example. She has also talked of waking up at 5 am every morning to write and setting insane publishing targets. She (and people like her) IS the problem but in her head, she is fighting for justice.

The whole digital picket line is so absurd, since (at least when the term first appeared in 2019; not sure now) it's not something officially required by UCU, it is pure performativity. Stuff I've seen in this respect:
-People having a go at non-UK academics for tweeting job stuff and not respecting the digital picket line in solidarity... yeah ok I hope you all have a calendar of all strikes involving academics all over the world so that you aren't inadvertently crossing any digital picket lines.

-Someone replying "this looks really interesting, but I cannot read it now because #digitalpicketline" to tweets by non-academics including links to articles, and these weren't even academic articles... think something like the person was a lecturer in English and the link posted was a piece about Virginia Woolf in the London Review of Books... like if you are a lecturer in Politics you aren't supposed to follow UK politics for the whole of the strike... come on.

-(The worst) A librarian at my institution posting "It's Digital Archives Day today" or some similar occasion and people at my institution absolutely trashing her for failing to display "solidarity". She eventually had to take down the tweet and apologize. Some people sounded as if they had been looking for an occasion to trash some lowly support staff but had refrained to do so thus far because it wasn't progressive enough, it was absolutely nauseating.

It’s so ridiculous. Outrageous that they leapt on a member of support staff like that. As IF any of these self-important idiots observe a digital picket when Unison or Unite are on strike. Hell, Jo Grady was in favour of shutting campuses down for 2 years, which would have led to the loss of jobs for thousands of support staff.

I’ve just had a quick look again on Twitter and wow, my blood pressure levels are rising at the stupidity. One prominent ‘academic celeb’ with tens of thousands of followers is saying she’s having to catch up at the weekend on all the tweets she couldn’t do during the week. You know what, if you genuinely don’t want to draw attention to yourself or your institution in your bio, how about you shut down Twitter full stop. Delete your account. Oh, but we can’t have that because then the self-promotion couldn’t happen.

I saw that idiot tweeting to US scholars to observe the digital picket. Thankfully her arse was handed to her somewhat because she, nor any other UK academics, had given the slightest crap about an academic strike in the US.

Another idiot tweeting at Independent SAGE who had called on holding the government to account, telling them to observe the digital picket 🤦‍♀️

And someone who is not at a striking institution telling us all that crossing a digital picket is the same as crossing a real picket. Said person did not take part in past strikes (or did just one token day), justifying it by saying that withdrawing research labour doesn’t affect the institution in a way that teaching does (whatever, don’t strike but don’t you dare take the moral high ground because someone tweets something).

Other source of irritation is the countless complaints that the press call it a ‘lecturer strike’. “Oooh, but I’m not actually a lecturer. I feel ERASED”. Right, so the general public should learn all the individual job roles of UCU members so nobody is left out. Get a grip.

I moved from the HE sector to the public sector a couple of years ago (so I will not be striking, and even if I were still in HE, I think the Kathleen Stock letter would have tipped me over the edge).

I’d like to pick up on pay though. I am a specialist in research impact and commercialisation. I now work in public sector contracts, which has huge crossovers in terms of strategic aim, day to day tasks etc, being impact focused. I have almost doubled my salary in the last two years, and now have similar levels of responsibility and accountability to those I had when I left HE.

I think academics are underpaid/undervalued for their skillset, especially in STEM and especially at the professorial level. I now earn a professorial salary, and actually compared to the wider industry I’m still underpaid. The fact that the profs are undervalued trickles down to the rest of the staff and it’s a problem.

There’s a lot of blatant dishonesty around striking, as pp have said. To their employer, many academics will only declare to be on strike during days when they are supposed to be teaching. The other days, they’ll work on their research but they still won’t answer work emails even though they are technically being paid to do their job. It’s difficult for institutions to police this.

I’ll never forget the oh-so right on, successful academic on research leave who went to the picket-line on the first day of the strike, took some fetching selfies, posted them on twitter and went straight back to work. Another tick on the to-do list, another step on the career ladder. Losing money and actually making sacrifices is for suckers, right?

As it happens, I've discovered that there's a lecturers' strike in Ghana that has been going on since the beginning of the year, and promises to be going on for a while... are the Digital Picket Line crowd going to insist that no one tweets until their work until the Ghana dispute is resolved? This is also so UK-centric - apparently lecturers all over the world have to know what is going on strike-wise in the UK and refrain from tweeting in solidarity, but this doesn't apply the other way round seemingly.

I did have to laugh at the invisible picket line at Sheffield that the local MP inadvertently crossed on Friday. Jo Grady called him out on it and he issued a grovelling apology and made a donation to the strike fund.

‘Calling out’ seems to be the most prominent element of Grady’s skill set. Pity that ‘effective negotiating’, ‘diplomacy’ and ‘coalition building’ are comparatively absent.

@ghislaine

I did have to laugh at the invisible picket line at Sheffield that the local MP inadvertently crossed on Friday. Jo Grady called him out on it and he issued a grovelling apology and made a donation to the strike fund.

That was absolutely hilarious.

Jo Grady went all-in on him rather than asking herself why there was no picket line there in the first place.

It was also a strange move to pile on him because of his visit to the AMRC at Sheffield. The AMRC is almost entirely funded by private, industrial companies. It has (in the past, not sure about now) worked with companies that make arms. The AMRC is a huge, huge income stream for the University and the City.

But Jo and the UCU piled on the MP for crossing an invisible picket, rather than asking why academia is so easily bought by private industry, or what kinds of companies are investing in universities. Oh dear.

What I mean is, the MPs visit the AMRC isn't analogous to, or as simple as, him visiting a standard academic department.

The way my campus is set up, it would be impossible to picket it without lots of random non-university people having to cross the picket on their way to their (non-uni offices), the train stations, their homes, etc. So there are pickets around the main enclosed space, but there are plenty of buildings that fall outside. Last week I was in one of those buildings and was able to see the picket from there - must have been like a dozen or fifteen people tops. Much smaller than past strikes, and certainly not something that I would consider a success (in what is supposd to be one of the most active branches in the UCU).

Glad it's not just me, @ThinkingAboutCrumpets. I actually starting writing but never finished a rage-filled post about being asked to cover some admin tasks by a striking Prof on the first day of the strike, so that her event which was running the first non-strike day could go smoothly. I'm not striking because my disability means I cannot manage the increased workload required to 'catch up' in the interstices around the strike like it seems many striking academics here, at least, do. I'm certainly not doing her admin for her!! I replied much more politely, saying I was overloaded and couldn't. But geez, the request really got my back up!

I just spotted a senior prof berate a research assistant on Twitter for tweeting out a job ad in her group. She's not even benefitting, she was probably asked to do it , but no, she "should be ashamed of herself" for breaking the bloody digital picket line (don't forget the wanky hashtag to make sure all your followers notice your holier than thou bullying).

People like that sicken me. I'm sure he'd be first in line to condemn bullying by others.

That’s an abuse of power. Was she on strike? Even if she were, surely the strike is over for this week.

i m not going to join the tar and feather party - twitter is all about context and i have no clue what each of the protagonists stance ever was.

As for my own stance, it's to take todays news on the chin, and to apply for non academic jobs. I've spotted a couple on linkedin with fancy titles, channelled my mediocre white man, and applied for them. And to never ever fucking ever mark again during WEs or holidays.

I think what needs to stop is the constant push to over-perform in every area. Deliver your teaching but spend 3 hours, not 3 days writing your lecture. Don’t rehearse it - it won’t make much difference. Teach at an acceptable level but don’t strive for perfection. Don’t volunteer to do stuff in the evening and weekends or to come to events. Basically, stuff they can’t sack you for but which reduces your workload. Don’t spend ages giving marking feedback - if the Uni says you should spend 20 mins on an exam script, don’t spend any longer. Stop taking personal responsibility for the students getting an excellent educational experience. That’s for employers to ensure. Write one article a year - not 4. Attend one or two conferences rather than all of them. There is so much chronic over-performance in HE and if it continues, employers will never back down.

Part of the problem is that academia is so competitive and individualistic. That isn’t a great recipe for successful industrial action because as soon as the strike stops, people will go back to working crazy hours to get ahead and compete against their peers. Absolutely nobody is prepared to do anything that would harm their own research career and employers know that.

As for private sector jobs, I think go for it (although I doubt you’re going to find great pension provision there either and if you’ve not worked in the private sector before, you may find the grass is not greener). But I think if people do really want to get out of the HE sector, they should do that if suitable opportunities come up.

the salaries, for a start, are twice mine!

totally agree with the overperformance and perfectionism - toxic and endemic. We ve all been selected into it, to some extend and it's hard to go against the grain.

@Marasme

the salaries, for a start, are twice mine!

totally agree with the overperformance and perfectionism - toxic and endemic. We ve all been selected into it, to some extend and it's hard to go against the grain.

Then I think go for it! Surely it's a no-brainer if the conditions are really bad in academia and you could earn a much higher salary doing something else. In my own case, I know what the alternative is in the private sector and it sadly does not involve a much higher salary or superb work life balance, other than for a very select few (that I don't kid myself would include me and it's usually a choice between salary or hours). I appreciate that it's entirely different depending on what discipline you work in though.

Deliver your teaching but spend 3 hours, not 3 days writing your lecture.

There are big issues with teaching workload (for instance workload models don't give adequate credit for the time spent on pastoral care, or writing a new module from scratch). However some of the statements I see people make about how much time they spend on teaching prep seem utterly ridiculous to me. If something is 'good enough' there's nothing to be gained spending huge amounts of time trying to make it potentially slightly better. (And my definition of 'good enough' gets me excellent feedback from students and peers, and regular requests to speak at departmental 'sharing best teaching practice' sessions).

Similarly with pensions, I'd really like to know why UUK rejected UCU's recent proposals (IMHO there are some very sensible people working on the pension situation within UCU). However some of the claims that are being made on twitter about financial losses from the JNC decision yesterday appear to be based on calculations which included the inflation cap which hasn't now been implemented.

Yes, similarly I see comments on twitter about lying awake at night worrying about students. Maybe I'm a cold-hearted cow but I rarely think about my students once I've left the classroom.

Yes, I agree. I am also not sure how some of the more hyperbolic comments on Twitter about the pension cuts are helping the situation. There are profs talking about how they will retire on 9k a year now, which first of all must be due to being part time, as my SL salary pension forecast post-cuts is higher than that, and second, leaves out both the DB lump sum AND the value of the DC part of the pension. Compared to all occupational pension schemes in existence, the USS scheme is still pretty good. That’s not to say that these cuts aren’t really shit (they are) but I don’t get the point of painting an inaccurate picture of future poverty when most people only get their employer paying in 3% and they can’t afford to make any contribution themselves.

This is probably massively outing but my HOD sent round a link to the counselling service for anyone affected by the strikes/JNC decision.

In UCU, department is very unionised but overall UCU fairly friendly here. Branch chair pro free speech etc.
I had two sick days and 2 strike days (don't work Fridays) over half term (TBH it's simpler than taking AL which I need but will run out of, then taking unpaid parental leave later in the year) then am striking on the 2 days it would mean going on to campus to teach otherwise.

@ghislaine

Yes, similarly I see comments on twitter about lying awake at night worrying about students. Maybe I'm a cold-hearted cow but I rarely think about my students once I've left the classroom.

Ditto. Occasionally there are students that I think about after work but they are the ones having a really, genuinely tough time (like the student who was raped last year, the student who discovered she had a life-limiting condition in her second year, the student nursing her mum through terminal cancer etc etc). These cases are rare, very rare. The rest of the time, like @ghislaine, I don't give them a second thought - they are just adults getting on with their lives like I am.

So much of the Twitter rhetoric around these issues (spending huge amounts of time preparing teaching, worrying about students outside of hours etc.) is performance. Pure performance.
I think some people just outright lie about it.
I think other people really over-estimate the time they spend on things I think other people genuinely do spend an excessive amount of time but it absolutely doesn't show in the end result.

@GCAndProud

I think what needs to stop is the constant push to over-perform in every area. Deliver your teaching but spend 3 hours, not 3 days writing your lecture. Don’t rehearse it - it won’t make much difference. Teach at an acceptable level but don’t strive for perfection. Don’t volunteer to do stuff in the evening and weekends or to come to events. Basically, stuff they can’t sack you for but which reduces your workload. Don’t spend ages giving marking feedback - if the Uni says you should spend 20 mins on an exam script, don’t spend any longer. Stop taking personal responsibility for the students getting an excellent educational experience. That’s for employers to ensure. Write one article a year - not 4. Attend one or two conferences rather than all of them. There is so much chronic over-performance in HE and if it continues, employers will never back down.

Part of the problem is that academia is so competitive and individualistic. That isn’t a great recipe for successful industrial action because as soon as the strike stops, people will go back to working crazy hours to get ahead and compete against their peers. Absolutely nobody is prepared to do anything that would harm their own research career and employers know that.

As for private sector jobs, I think go for it (although I doubt you’re going to find great pension provision there either and if you’ve not worked in the private sector before, you may find the grass is not greener). But I think if people do really want to get out of the HE sector, they should do that if suitable opportunities come up.

Yep, yep, yep.

Our promotion criteria for the L to SL jump are a bloody joke - excellence in all areas. World-leading outputs, international networks, being at the forefront of an academic field, sustained excellence in teaching, development of excellent new teaching programmes, evidenced excellence in leadership roles.

I've made the jump, I'm SL. Now I'm over that hurdle, I'm absolutely not pushing for excellence any more. I do my work. I do it on time. I do it to an acceptable standard. I don't volunteer for anything extra. I do extra work that HoD requests to a very minimal standard.

@ghislaine

This is probably massively outing but my HOD sent round a link to the counselling service for anyone affected by the strikes/JNC decision.

Wow. I mean on balance I’d rather have a DB scheme due to the certainty but it’s so disingenuous to make out that the DC element won’t produce any growth whatsoever. It’s more of a risk because the burden of underperformance is borne by the employee but it’s quite unlikely that it will produce nothing and that profs will be living on 9k a year. Lots of people who don’t know anything about pensions will believe that (I saw someone say that he can think of no pension scheme in existence that is worse than USS). Why do they want to fearmonger and depress people even more? No wonder some of them feel they need counselling.