Marking & Assessment Boycott

[aridapricot]

So how do you think this will pan out this time? Are you taking part? How do you think things will go in your university/department?
My uni is docking 30% pay. Also in my department (where the spirit tends to be "yes we'll do whatever UCU asks us to do but we'll also go out of our way to cause any inconvenience to students") people are already talking about mitigations... 🙄I am not a UCU member and won't be taking part but I also fear that at some point I will be asked to cover colleague's marking or (even worse) redistribute it (given that I'm HoD).

I find it astonishing that she talks about how she has taught this concept to university staff and students - is that the role of the union?

This is why I left UCU, so this doesn't surprise me in the slightest, having seen how UCU, Grady included, have previously joined students in participating in witch-hunts against their own members. They should be upholding the academic freedom which is enshrined in law, not conspiring with employers and students to undermine it.

Our university wants all degree classifications finalized by 30th September. However, because of the various industrial action days called by UCU, Unison and Unite, our admin team has given us a deadline to turn the grades of next Sunday, later than that and they won't be able to process. This is fine for some of the outstanding assignments but there are about 15 substantive pieces of work that apparently no one "has time" to mark. ARGHHHHHHH

"Whilst it’s clear that gender-critical beliefs are protected, the form of expression isn’t. You might have freedom of speech, but you don’t have freedom to offend - particularly if that offence is enshrined within law, and I think that’s one of the things that we try and educate our members about quite a lot.”

She is the reason why UCU failed to make any headway with three years of strikes. Wasting her time pontificating and scolding the non believers.

What other unions are suitable alternatives?

UCU remains the only union that employers regard as a valid interlocutor when it comes to academics.

While Grady is inept and has clearly not achieved very much, she is only a symptom. UCU has had an entryism problem for a while and various groups, including SWP, queer lobby groups and others have used union structures and funds to further their own aims. Just look at the nonsense ‘training’ they put on.

Even if Grady goes, it would take root and branch change for me to rejoin.

It's my last week working in faculty regulations and casework! (Happy dance!)

Our MAB drama has been decidedly persistent and the student complaints and appeals show no signs of abating. I'm definitely a little fed up of fielding threats of suicide and litigation two to three times a day. We actually lucked out at my place (from my point of view, anyway) because the local branch agreed to mark for resits and PGT dissertation submission, but this hasn't appeased all the students who got stung in the summer.

I do have sympathy with both them and the lecturers and other academic staff who were MAB-bing, but I'm a bit tired of being treated like the bad guy by both parties. I neither enjoy chasing academics for responses on their marking status, not do I get sadistic enjoyment from withholding marks and feedback from students just for the hell of it.

I feel like a very elderly person who's saying "the youth of today have no resilience", but some of them seem unable to negotiate their way through... anything!

I'm also fed up with my PSS colleagues who seem to be unable to write or pay attention to detail. When this is basically the crux of their job. But apparently I am expecting the moon! Can you sense a touch of disenchantment here?

UCU has had an entryism problem for a while and various groups, including SWP, queer lobby groups and others have used union structures and funds to further their own aims.

This was abundantly clear when reading the election statements by the candidates earlier this year and then the AGM proposals. Another example of how ’liberal’ institutions and organisations have been a useful mechanism to promote particular objectives.

My branch has voted to collectively not participate in the strike.

The branch will not organise any pickets or promote the strike in any way. Individuals can legally still choose to strike if they want to but the branch does not support it and have said we should work as normal.

While I was not personally in favour of a rather pointless strike during what is for us a non-teaching week, I think it is concerning for the UCU that whole branches are now just going their own way and breaking with the collectivity of UCU. This is the third time in the past few months that the branch has voted to break with the national agreements and some other branches also seem to be doing similar.

I understand that the Union has many different issues to work on, but when they are trying to achieve big aims through collective action, I really question how wise it is to be putting out statements on issues the Union leadership know to be very divisive while ignoring that their collective appears to be gradually crumbling around them.

This is also quite interesting! https://twitter.com/UCU_YSJ/status/1702029935039131714

My branch is led by union hardliners who will shame anybody who doesn’t join in the action. I can’t see them not organising for the strike but I suspect the picket-line rota will be a bit empty. Colleagues will probably use tried-end-tested techniques to avoid crossing the picket line (walk around it; arrive really early on campus; be secretly grateful if a non-union colleague does their work for them).

Interesting statement from York St John, arid. Colleagues are not stupid, they know how much of a failure the MAB has been. Also interesting that they criticise UCU for issuing ‘divisive’ communications. Could that be an acknowledgment that Grady’s gender politics are toxic and alienating?

An interesting take on the MAB [[https://notesfrombelow.org/article/hope-and-strategy-after-mab notesfrombelow.org/article/hope-and-strategy-after-mab

Starts off acknowledging that MAB has failed, then moves to say all the reasons it didn't fail.
Then ends with a suggestion for 'weekend schools' for UCU organising which seems a great proposition for those with caring responsibilities, a life, or simply too much work to do at the weekend (as UCU constantly claim).

Be-fucking-jaysus.

Oh what drivel!

Grady, though not named, is now the scapegoat:

“shambolic way this dispute has been led by our union leadership”

”Our current leadership is more interested in ego-boosting via twitter than actually thinking about what is necessary.“

”We also need to concern ourself with the national structure – it must not be run by people with no or little experience of the everyday reality of local members’ struggles to organise.”

Reading between the lines:

• MAB failed
• UCU weak at national level
• post-2018 militancy and relative unity among academics is over
• universities would be well advised to use divide-and-rule tactics and co-optation to keep local branches in check - if you have more to expect from working with your employer than your national leadership, what’s your choice?

Btw, I’m just an armchair analyst myself, so if anyone thinks I’ve got it wrong, don’t be shy!

I honestly can’t get my head around how anyone can afford the deductions. The GS seems to think people can just indefinitely keep going on losing hundreds, thousands each month. I did take part, initially, then decided national had totally lost the plot.

I think one of the problems is the lack of national co-ordination and support from HQ during last year’s MAB. Local execs picked off their branches while UCU said nothing. Unsurprisingly, the same is happening now.

There’s some twitter chatter which seems to be saying that local branches can make their own decisions about participating in the national strike action. If I’ve read this correctly, how bizarre! Is this backtracking a sign that UCU HQ have admitted calling the strike off the back of a failed MAB wasn’t a great idea?

They have realised people are skint and completely fed up and aren’t prepared to lose a weeks worth of pay again.

You’d have thought they would have realised this before calling a national strike, wouldn’t you? By making it opt-in it makes UCU look even weaker to employers. Where is the incentive to negotiate with a union that can’t even convince its own members to take industrial action?

In other news, Jo Grady seems to be advancing her own career by being elected to the TUC Board.

Yes, you're correct @ghislaine that's what the email from HQ said. I assume decision reached after various branches started to pass motions against taking strike action in a fruitless attempt to give the impression that it was HQ's idea all along ...?!

What a farce.

Fingers crossed that even the hardliners at my institution decide against strike action. From what I can tell, everyone is fed up.

Quite interesting that PGR students are now revolting too - I had them down as one of Grady''s pet groups
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWGKtfuUhdRQMDvYChDqlJt8ulezkiO1qfS000fUaGPTwf7g/viewform?usp=send_form

I assume that must be related to the redundancies of the two PGR reps. I believe they're now bringing a grievance against UCU. Oh the irony! Precarious employment in action.

LOL at the description of PGR students as the vanguard of "working class activism".

Working class activism 😂😂😂 They really haven't got a clue.

We got an all staff email yesterday about the strike - do we think this means our UCU branch have opted in, under this odd new system? I can't imagine what they were thinking if so because next week isn't term time for us...

tfw UCU colleagues are back from strike... and act shocked that things weren't progressed in their absence... by colleagues who are striking with Unite or Unison 🙄