1. I agree with you - I don’t think UCU have handled this well.
   
2. Fighting on so many fronts at once is difficult and makes negotiation hard. I don’t think this is unreasonable.
   
3. you colleague is an idiot and a bully and this should not be happening. That said, it does seem to be common - I’m having a lot of meetings rescheduled because of the strike, which ultimately just means the strike turns into unpaid leave rather than anything meaningfully disruptive. I’m not going to go to anything rescheduled and will be clear why not, but I don’t think many will join me. One of ostensibly very union colleagues is teaching all through this week and next week because it’s an important week for her course which makes me really cross. How do people think strikes have any fucking impact?!

This strike has been a shit show. So badly managed by UCU and the comms have been atrocious.

Your colleague sounds like a twat, regardless of the strike situ. Who shouts at a junior PS person??

Reacheduling things - I’ve just tried to avoid scheduling things on strike days. Teaching is cancelled and I don’t reschedule that. Meetings I just organise for a different day. How much impact is this having? Prob very little and I’ve really lost faith in the Union and this course of action. (And, in fact, in academia more broadly, but that’s another thread).

I agree, the UCU have totally messed up this strike...18 days was too many, pausing then adding a day was just frustrating and now they want to agree a deal that's barely changed from the original offer 🤦‍♀️😡

Sorry - I wasn’t doubting that this guy (I assume it’s a man) is a twat. More just incredulous that some people think it’s ok to behave like this.

This strike is all comms, no strategy

They should take the deal, let everyone regroup and then come up with a better plan for next year

I agree - have just written to UCU after their latest announcement to say I am leaving the union. It is rubbish, they consult the membership to see if they want to pause the strike and vote on the new deal and then two thirds of the membership want to do that and then they decide to completely overule the vote that they selves put out and keep with the 18days of strike far too many anyway and ignore the vote. Absolutely useless. I have finally had enough! I certainly will not be striking this week. I have been on strike for the last three years and it has resulted in nothing as far as a I can see except for me losing salary and the union's behaviour gets worse and worse. They seem to just be in a small cabal talking to each other with no grip on reality.

If they were evening one cabal talking to each other (as opposed to two or more trying to outmanoeuvre each other) that would be something!

Otherwise, on every point, yes, yes, yes!

Last week they did a 48 hour poll to see if members wanted the opportunity to vote on the current offer and suspend strikes. 68% voted yes.

So they ignored that and are continuing with the remaining three days of strikes.

I had a very interesting chat with a colleague who is in the union about this whole shitshow. Apparently a lot of the problem is that UCU Left, who are very extreme, are very influential, and a lot of Jo Grady’s time is spent dealing with power struggles around that, which makes negotiation really hard.

The fundamental problem is that people who are representative of the majority of UCU members (and not the radical left) generally don’t have much interest in standing for office, so it tends to get taken over by small cliques of more extreme people who are the only ones who want to actually devote half their career to the thankless task of union work. You can see from the voting info how cliquey it is. It makes it very hard for sense to prevail.

Not that I think Jo Grady is doing a good job under the circumstances, but it gave me a bit of insight into how hard her job is, and how a lot of what is going on is about power play to undercut the extreme factions.

What a mess. I want to leave - I wanted to leave after UCU’s behaviour over Kathleen Stock. But ultimately if you don’t have a union, you have no power at all.

Disheartening to read this.

My uni 3rd yr offspring is caught up in this shit show.

Totally fed up.

Yes, if you look at UCU left on twitter you can see the dynamic here. But it would help if UCU standard account would start acting seriously and stop drowning communications with pictures of people's puppies and kittens posting ballots.

They too need to recognise that not all right thinking people think or vote the same way, and that adult discussions based on clear information can help with that.

I think the issue with the consultation/pause proposal is not that people want to strike while being consulted (unless you are of the UCU Left/SWP persuasion) but that there are two separate disputes, pensions and four fights. Post-92s are not in the USS pensions dispute, only the 4Fs. So to couple both disputes together deprives the membership of the opportunity of making different decisions on each dispute (and also gives post-92 members a say on the pensions dispute). I think this is what a lot of the twitter anger is about, ie the extent to which separate decisions were permissible at HEC and the BDM or only one.

A member who wants to accept the pensions deal but to reject the 4Fs offer (and so stop/continue striking) is not able to do that.

True, but UCU presumably won't be negotiating on any of the campaigns in the coming week, and nothing in the online consultation stops them from consulting now on all campaigns separately. Not pausing or consulting at all is obviously not the answer.

I assume not but then I don’t understand why there are strikes scheduled for this week anyway if they have no impact on non-existent negotiations.

I’m very confused too. Obviously not smart enough to join UCU! I can barely keep up with what’s going on.

Yep, I agree with everything you have written with bells on, and I am a full time official with a sister union. I suspect working in your sector with the staff who are not allowed” to join UCU.
I find it incredibly and increasingly difficult to work with ucu, and they have no eyes for a collaborative approach to anything.

I feel for the members.

I think they have put management in an impossible position with the four fights. You can't deliver on all four without a) loads more money (higher fees? ) and b) different strategies across different institutions and departments. Unis that are in danger of closing have different constraints than those that have too many students.
More money sounds fine but actually why should scarce resources go to HE rather than social care FE or schools
I think neoliberalism and psuedo competition has increased financial pressure and the likelihood of poor managerial decisions but us workers in the sector are not suffering because of exploitative capitalists shoring up reserves of profits. It's much more complicated than that and us as academics should face up to this and not shout like toddlers for some one else to solve the problem

Strike ballots have got through in many institutions based on the "no" votes. The no votes add to the proportion of members voting which gets the motion over the line. If academics don't agree with the UCU they need either to leave or abstain from voting.

£40k to £50k as a Lecturer/Senior lecturer; up to £60k as a Reader/associate professor, £65k plus for a professor with many on £70/£80. 7 weeks' holiday, plus bank holidays and a Christmas and Easter closure, 6 months full sick pay followed by six months at half pay, and what is still an excellent pension. Academic staff have always worked flexibly and from home whe not teaching or attending formal meetings.

I agree with the poster that branches have been over-run by fanatics and would add in poor performers looking for protection. Funny how they always expect their research time to be protected but not their teaching. Never mind, it all only affects the students.

I think they have put management in an impossible position with the four fights. You can't deliver on all four without a) loads more money (higher fees? ) and b) different strategies across different institutions and departments. Unis that are in danger of closing have different constraints than those that have too many students.

I think this is spot on, and ties in with my observation that many academics (perhaps more so or only in the Humanities?) are generally incapable of seeing trade-offs, and even will act as if trade-offs don't exist. At my place all the time it's like, "Why don't we do this really cool thing for our students' wellbeing", and when you point out that this really cool thing takes significant time and effort everyone acts surprised.

You're not alone I'm feeling like you've lost the plot! I'm in a similar position - not an academic but UCU rather than Unison by grade and... yeah, shit show!

All your points are true. I was in UCU (also PS but that was the union for my grade) but left a couple of years ago. Mainly over their incompetence with the strikes but also their attitude towards women.

I cannot understand how UCU members can stay in a union that ignores their wishes. The UCU leadership is like a bunch of people just playing at running a union. They have no idea about negotiating- my colleague who is still in the union tells me Jo Grady is an academic specialist in industrial relations so he thinks she is great. But to me it just shows what happens when you value knowledge over experience- she has no actual experience of how to actually run a strike

I cannot help but think back to some of the first threads opened in here, in autumn 2019. Some of us were still in UCU and striking, but quite sceptic about the whole strategy, and overall disappointed by the poor communication and lack of transparency. On a couple of occasions Grady and her pals found this forum took it to mock us on Twitter as "TERFS", "conservatives", etc. I cannot help but notice the irony that it was in here in Mumsnet that we first articulated the criticisms that the hehistheythems are now vociferously voicing.