UCU strikes - I feel like I've lost the plot?!

[Hardbackwriter]

This is a long rant, sorry!

I left UCU quite a while ago so am just watching from the outside. I'm also PS not academic (I was an academic but changed careers a few years ago), but I have a USS pension and in my institution the understanding is that my grade is UCU if you're a union member.

I have norovirus and so have spent all day feeling sorry for myself on my phone today and I am so just baffled by the UCU stuff. This has further deepened my confusion over it all - I sometimes feel like my idea of what a strike must be off because it seems to be at total odds with everyone around me. Some specific points:

1. to me it is incredibly obvious that you suspend strikes while you're consulting members on a deal if you're doing discontinuous action anyway. You're not going to get a new deal while you're considering this one - the ball is in your court at that point so getting people to strike is just throwing away members' salary for no possible gain. If members reject the deal then you strike again, when it could actually put some pressure on for a new deal. I therefore don't see how coupling together consultation and a pause during consultation is a scam or an attempt to dupe the membership; it's just common sense.
2. I don't understand why if you were negotiating on two fronts simultaneously and the other side put forward an offer on both you would think it's on the table to just take the half you like better but demand more on the other one and keep striking to get it? That is surely rejecting the deal. No one negotiates and then lets the other side have only the bits they like without making any of their own concessions - that's not a negotiation.
3. More fundamentally I feel like I seem to be the only person in my institution who thinks that striking is intended to cause disruption and that's fine but you have to own it. My team keep getting arsey emails about why we're not rearranging everything due to be held on strike days ('do you not know that that's a strike day?'). I'm particularly annoyed about this because a senior academic recently shouted at the most junior member of my team (you know, one of the ones on a pay band too low for anyone in UCU to be on so can be considered irrelevant) and said that she was putting academics in a difficult position deliberately by not rearranging a committee meeting. She doesn't have the power to do that anyway - it was so very full of workers' solidary of them to choose to shout at her rather than the DVC who is the committee chair! - but also, if we rearrange things on strike days aren't we undermining the strike and essentially asking people to do work for free? I think people are trying to avoid having to report that they're striking but how do they think that a strike that your employer literally doesn't know you're doing will have an impact?

Obviously I don't actually think I'm in the wrong here - but am I?! I feel like this is such common sense stuff that I can't get my head around how anyone else understands it so differently but both my work inbox and my Twitter timeline is full of very smart people who clearly do.

My understanding of this (but I could be completely wrong, there's lots of conflicting info flying around) is that notice has to be given for the MAB to happen. But notice having been given doesn't mean that it will definitely go ahead.

This blog by (UCU Commons faction member and outgoing HEC member) Ben Pope discusses (amongst other things) the issues around going ahead with the MAB.

The 30k who didn't vote:

May not strike. I'm sure less than half of union members do. They're not obliged to. So their pay wouldn't be affected.

Or

May have decided not to vote in the hope that the total votes cast would be below the 50% threshold for action. That was always more likely than a vote against strike action. May or may not strike.

Or

May have doubted the legitimacy of a vote on continued industrial action started with no offer on the table and continuing with an offer on / off / who could tell ...

I would be interested to know whether the 50% or so of members who seem to have voted for continued strike mandate went on strike in the last few months because if so, my university was far from representative ...

Anyway, well under half of academics are in UCU to start with. Allowing for PG members, I wonder if it's running even at 30%. I'd be amazed if half of those who are, strike. I doubt more than 1 in 5 people involved in marking will be involved in any boycott. What will be interesting is how universities deal with that.

May have decided not to vote in the hope that the total votes cast would be below the 50% threshold for action. That was always more likely than a vote against strike action. May or may not strike

That the reason I don't vote.

Thanks for your answers.

Me too, @titchy

the bloody SWP has had a stranglehold on the HEC for too long and they want perpetual revolution (while being paid, of course). I’m hanging on to my UCU membership by a fingernail - I think this + Kathleen Stock’s treatment may push me over the edge.

What is it about universities being such havens for Marxist activists? The SWP are always holding events on my campus. They sell the Socialist Worker on campus too. Marxian analytical frameworks are one thing but believing that the revolution of the proletariat can be achieved from the cosy confines of an elite educational institution is another. Quite frankly, I don’t think the “proles” are terribly interested in their “liberation” nor looking to the universities for their vanguard.

Or maybe it’s just frustrated play-acting.

There's a reason that they tend to be either older academics or PhD students. There aren't many jobs that would allow you to count furthering permanent revolution as one of your objectives: modern day academia doesn't either, but there are still people who came in under a very different system.

Just seen a Twitter thread where someone says universities should just all share their reserves and then they could all give their staff a 20% pay rise, someone else asks if they can legally do that as charities and... silence (of course they can't). It made me think of this thread!

It’s idiotic. And speaks to one of the challenges of leading anything at most levels of university organisation. Too many academics carry over an oppositional POV - that were trained in to be critical thinkers. But oppositional thinking with no understanding of necessary pragmatism is a disaster.

My several stints as an HoD enlightened me about the compromises one needs to make to get stuff done. And that you pick your battles and that “power” in universities is quite diffused.

There ARE things that could be different but universities pooling their reserves is never going to happen unless we go back to a fully State funded system.

And this has its pros but also its cons.

Just woken up to see this from Jo Grady, not sure I can stay in UCU much longer as it's obviously not a union that is concerned with looking after its female staff...too captured by Stonewall for that 😡 www.ucu.org.uk/article/12871/University-and-College-Union-statement-on-Equality-Act-review-and-EHRC-advice

Well, I am delighted to see that people are quite happy to tell her precisely what they think about this on twitter.

I wouldn't fund any other organisation putting out statements like that and I have to say that leaving, despite all my worries, hasn't soured my relations with colleagues any more than this debate alone might have.

I wonder what the composition of membership is like now and if and how it has changed over the years. I thought someone had made enquiries about that?

Surely a significant number of UCU membership is female...is she that out of touch with who she is representing? Yes, the Twitter fight back has been a joy to see.

Anyone know when the results of the ballot (on USS and 4 fights) will be known? I know the polls closed at 10am ...

Now out. USS 85% noted. Four fights 56% rejected. MAB it is then :(

56% is loads closer than I thought it would be - I don't envy Jo Grady, leading a MAB that nearly half the union didn't want to have is going to be tough.

Ugh. This is going to be a grim exam season. I'm not a union member, and I never will be, but if my colleagues are doing an MAB then I will join the action (albeit mark and park). I have a key examinations board role and won't undermine them.

I agree @Hardbackwriter. I wonder how effective a MAB can be in these circumstances

It will depend on participation, but you need only one person in a teaching team to participate and the whole module will be affected (assuming it's decided that it's not fair to release marks in dribs and drabs). Even if a module itself is unaffected, there will mostly be impacts on progression and graduation because of the effect on other modules.

How many will participate - and to what extent eg you could participate in relation to non-finalists only - under threat of ASOS deductions is unknown, and I see quite a few institutions setting out their positions already, but again, you don't need many people in a department to participate to have a fairly wide-ranging impact.

IME from being at an institution where there was an MAB last year, students find this much more stressful than cancellation of teaching.

@SchnitzelVonCrummsTum wouldn't you be better off joining the union if you're going to participate in an MAB? At least you would then be eligible for the hardship fund.

@ghislaine it's a good point. I like my union colleagues in the dept TBH, they're sensible and pragmatic and include diverse views. But I really don't have political views that align with the branch chair or indeed large portions of the UCU HEC and don't want to give them my money by joining!

I really am in two minds about whether to join the MAB. I don't think we have much chance of gaining more but don't want to undermine colleagues and... you never know, something good may come of this. Is anyone else in a similar boat?

@KittyBurrito same!
I think the UCU have totally ballsed up this mandate. I also feel that personally I get a decent wage and have good working conditions. I care about casualisation and my pension though…

I’m torn and on verge of leaving the union.

But surely you can’t join the action of you aren’t a Union member because you won’t have the contractual immunities that apply to ‘lawful’ industrial action.

My institution is deducting 100% of pay for those participating in the MAB. What’s the situation elsewhere?

It surprised me but actually you can join in any lawful industrial action and enjoy the same protections from retaliation. The only exception seems to be if you are in a union which voted against the action, in which case it wouldn't be allowed.

Our institution will deduct 50%

50% deduction here. Until the end of the assessment period at the beginning of July. So losing more than a month’s pay.

25% here, seems quite generous compared to others.