Academic article arguing we should all join UCU because it's the best way to save HE.

[DanceAppleGCMum]

NC but long-time poster.

A friend sent me this article yesterday and we had a good chat about it: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.13200

Knowing there's some very mixed views on UCU on MN, I was wondering what academic MNers made of this article?

I'm in a very pro-UCU department so a sensible, critical conversation about UCU isn't possible unfortunately.

(Edited to actually add a link)

one of the main reasons I haven't joined the union is that it feels antagonistic. it feels like they are always in a battle of 'little people' against 'management'. but in an actual university, those divisions aren't clear cut and there are good and bad people, and good and bad policies at all levels.

And that article is full of claims like the idea that academics need to "give up their commitment to bourgeois forms of knowledge" and "demand a redistribution of resources between universities" and the claim that "The educational institutions we call universities need to be abolished and re-created through wider struggles"

None of that makes me think that the union is a helpful or friendly place for academics who want to do good work within the system and make the system better in a collaborative way.

Before I retired, I was in the UCU executive committee in our branch, and we actually had a reasonably collaborative relationship with management for a long time. Many members looked at us as an insurance policy if they got into trouble, and that was it. I’d say, well if the management knows this, they are going to treat the branch with less and less regard. The more people who are in the union and active, the more the administration will work with us, and vice versa.

Our first VC was smart, and knew a good working relationship with the branch could save some administrative headaches, and it worked well. But when we got a new VC….he just thought he could ignore UCU pretty much and rule by diktat, and the faculty were not willing to protest that collectively.

I was one of two profs in my university active in UCU. Several told me they didn’t want to join or be active because it would hurt their career. But they wanted me around to get them out of a jam or give them advice.

I came to the conclusions that academics is fairly individualistic, and that maybe it is fundamentally incompatible with a union.

@parietal I agree - I found the paper very unreflexively authoritarian about what academics need to do which doesn't exactly show UCU as a welcoming, conversational, collaborative space for a range of people with a range of ideas about how academia might look.

@Patterncarmen I came to the conclusions that academics is fairly individualistic, and that maybe it is fundamentally incompatible with a union I also think its the nature of academic work, not just academics themselves. Our work is so diverse - for individual people but across the sector especially - that I'm not convinced there's actually any shared, collective element around which to organise a union or actions.

I must say I barely understood that article. So I'm having to go off other comments here about what might have been in it. I know that at my very small Uni, there isn't a big divide between 'management' and the rest - beyond the very top post which for some reason is always hired in from outside - everyone else in 'management' has been my colleague as an academic and many of my academic colleagues have at one point been 'the centre' as everyone calls it. So an 'us and them' attitude is hard to maintain. I know some lower levels of the centre were really feeling quite stuck between the academics and the top during the last strike, with both sides basically going 'hey, you're one of us, why can't you make management/academics do X'.

Was there anything in there about actually changing the University from within its management? I didn't see that, and its basically what most of the people I know in management here are trying to do. Some are also union members.

@murmuration Nope, nothing about changing the university from within management.

I guess the thinking would be that those in management (who choose to take up management positions) are heartless, corporate, capitalists who wouldn't have any interest in changing the university anyway. Plus, how to change things from within management is a difficult issue to think through and UCU people don't seem keen on that - far easier to just keep repeating nonsense about what us "ordinary" academics should do.

In my department there's a sense that normal academics shouldn't be going into management positions because those positions only exist to support the nature and growth of the university, which should be resisted. I think its a very risky idea because if academics stopped going into management positions, those positions would be filled by recruiting from outside of academia which absolutely could end up fundamentally changing the university but not in the ways that this article imagines 😬

It seems to me that if you've taken a job in academia, you have signed up to the rough idea of how universities work, as a collective of professors who teach and research and support students to learn stuff.

If, as that article says, you want to tear down the entire structure of universities and build something different, then maybe you need to start by quitting the job, stop taking money from the evil capitalist university and build something different from outside.

I wouldn’t. From what I’ve seen, the education unions are pretty useless, they like to call for strikes when there’s no point and other action would be better, and they push forward nonsense and fail to protect those who do t toe their line.

I’m old enough to remember faculty governance, and heads of schools and colleges coming from the faculty. In one university I taught in, the head of school position rotated…at some point as a member of faculty you would be head for a three-year term. It worked well….as head, you were collegial and tried to make fair decisions, because you know, that colleague would be your head of school some day.

This article is so wide of the mark. Management and senior management exist to support the delivery education and the creation of knowledge and research. The article starts with the assumption that the university is something we (as academics) are obviously against. This is an odd position, and alien to me and my colleagues. We believe in the university and in the mission of the university. That is: educating the masses and producing useful research to further societal good.

I also found the point about the failure of the MAB paving the way for senior management to implement redundancies to be absolutely ridiculous. The redundancies that universities are facing are as a result of a funding crisis, and are being made extremely reluctantly and as a last resort. These are not as revenge for the MAB, for goodness sake. The impact of the MAB was tiny, anyway. Completely pointless.

This article reads like the rantings of someone far removed from the majority of their fellow workers. I can't believe it was published in a journal - it is just a ranty opinion piece. With poor grammar. It was embarrassing to read.

Also, this part really got me: "you can't be the ideal neoliberal scholar churning out papers and grants and a militant union organiser/Palestine solidarity activist/housing campaigner."

Well no. You have a job. You are receiving pay to do work: teaching and research. You are not being paid to be a militant union organiser or housing campaigner. By all means, do these things outside of work. Does the author think that the university that so clearly hate should pay them a full time wage and then the author simply decides what to do? They fancy organising a rally that day instead of the job they are being paid to do? It's a job, like any other. Don't take the pay and then refuse to do the work you are being paid to do. How absolutely ridiculous. And infuriating.

Point taken.

The funny thing is I continued teaching, publishing and administering my grants, and I was in the branch executive and when there was a strike mandate, helped organise. I received a .1FTE for my union role and used it for those purposes. Our branch chair got .2FTE I think? It was an agreement we had with the university….the previous VC worked with us quite a lot to circumvent and solve problems. It was an agreement we had with our university.

UCU is run by by people who never moved on from student politics. They have zero strategic reasoning or critical thinking and cannot debate anything.

There is no point joining UCU unless you fancy wasting your monthly subs

@Patterncarmen Yes, we have the same arrangement re FTE.

I get the feeling from the article that the author is calling on us all to dedicate all of our time to militantly organise and to destroy and dismantle the university system. That is how the author is asking us to use our time. The author seems genuinely affronted that academics can't spend 100% of their work time not doing their (salaried) job.

This article represents a certain strand of thinking within UCU - that a union is there as a class consciousness-raising mechanism whereby the oppressed classes (ie highly-educated people in white collar roles with a high degree of autonomy earning more than average wages) will rise up, overthrow the capitalist meanies (ie other academics in senior management) and then we will all live in the sunlit uplands of the “reimagined university” where we all act as one in blissful solidarity of mind and purpose.

As others have said, this opinion piece is so blinkered to other visions of what a union is, who senior management are, and UCU’s own factionalism and general ineffectiveness, even at its core tasks. It seems unable to grasp that maybe other academics don’t actually want to be housing campaigners or to bring the university down in favour of comradely utopia.

I also think that the author suffers from a severe lack of imagination. The weapon that is going to deconstruct the university? Strikes. More strikes. More people going on strike. Surely even the most committed UCU member would agree that the last few years of strikes haven’t achieved anything.

I work with several people like this. In fact, until I saw the reference to Durham I was practically certain someone in my own institution had written it.

Well, whilst I may not agree with all of that article, clearly some changes to university structure might be a good thing—such as more faculty governance. If SMT were colleagues promoted to those levels, rather than line managers hired from outside (some who have business experience, but very little experience running a university), there would not be so much an us vs them mentality.

In practice, even our branch chair did his main job first, and was branch chair second. I juggled both my roles.

I just really learned most faculty don’t want a union except as an insurance policy…collective action was not part of the ethos of academe, so many voices suggesting alternative ways to do things weren’t heard. SMT knew that, so they just did what they wanted. Combine that with the financial crisis, international students not coming as much due to Home Office changes in visas, inflations on building projects/interest rates on university debts, and now working conditions are really poor. I am quite convinced that in not too long, most academics outside of SMT will be on precarious contracts which isn’t good for anyone except the university profit margin.

Yes, strikes don’t work if a significant proportion of people don’t strike and pick up the teaching and marking for their colleagues. But again, academics is individualistic…the type of work done, and the emphasis on individual achievement. There is also some vocational awe which can encourage overwork which is over time deleterious to the academic, but very good for the university’s bottom line.

@Patterncarmen There is no university "profit margin". You are mixing up private business that has dividends with universities, which are charities and don't have profits. They are either in surplus or deficit, and surplus can only be reinvested in the university. Who did you think was benefiting from the "profit margin"?

I left UCU last year (after more than 20 years), after yet another set of manifestos landed full of performative nonsense about gender, and I just couldn’t take it any more.

It’s an utterly rubbish union. The main issue of the last 20 years was the pension, and not only did UCU fail to do anything at all to stop USS being gutted in successive stages, they were actively incompetent about it. The recent “fights” have been as useful as a chocolate teapot. And it’s utterly obsessed with gender and identity politics and Palestine, and does absolutely nothing, bar a bit of occasional ineffective handwringing, about casualisation, working conditions, maternity and childcare issues, fixed term contracts, pay and pensions. All the things a union is supposed to be about.

I can’t believe how much money I spent on union membership over twenty bloody years for absolutely naff all. The only time I ever approached them for help with an issue about my contract, they said they had no idea about it, and why didn’t I just talk nicely to my employer?

Edited to add — oh, and also in my department the main UCU reps are awful: lots of bullying about whether you take the “right” positions on issues. Easier to just leave.

Not at all. Universities are now classified as businesses. If they run a deficit and can’t pay their debts, they can go bust or have to streamline. If they have profits, they can reinvest in the universities, they can speculate on property, etc, and a portion of that surplus goes to SMT salaries. SMT gets performance bonuses…where do you think that money comes from?

Totally your choice. If people don’t want to join, be active in your branch, strike, or participate, then don’t be surprised if the union gets weaker and weaker. Or, you can add your voice and try to help fix it. It is indeed easier not to do so, and people like ease. They don’t want to stick their necks out. As I said upthread, academics is individualistic, and collective action is a hard sell.

I’m retired, and have no skin in the game anymore, but I do think that temporary contracts will be the norm in academe. It will be a race to the bottom. I did see that there will be no zero hours contracts in the news, so that’s to the good at least.

I have a hard time having sympathy for people that complain about how bad things are, yet won’t participate to make it better. If the branch is stronger, my experience is management takes it more seriously and will work with them. if they sense most of the faculty don’t care, or are too afraid and say nowt, the SMT does what it likes. And the faculty have to live with that. Silence=consent.

What do you think the alternative to strikes is? I’m asking out of curiosity, not to start a bun fight.

But I think @pleasedonotfeedme is saying that there is no point in joining the union to make it stronger and more effective because UCU is more focused on what it sees as social justice issues than improving conditions for academics.

So, I guess there should be no union at all, right? Or, how about those of you who are unhappy with UCU’s stance on social justice, say that and offer a more moderate view.

I did that for many years, and it was difficult, and took my free time, and I did my best to help my colleagues when they faced problems with management. I took training courses in employment law, courses on how to be a rep, courses on continuing professional development, in my own time to be a good rep. Some of my colleagues appreciated that. however, my experience told me though that many of my colleagues were quite content to have their involvement be limited to paying union dues, and have no involvement otherwise. And then they complained when their views weren’t heard.

I’m still curious what the alternative is to strikes. If you have a good idea, contribute it.

I don't buy into the idea or the practice of collective action though. I'm an individualist. I have no interest in working with others - one of the big reasons I became an academic was to escape having to work in a team. Not everyone even wants to be part of the union, I'm just saying what I observe from the outside.

@Patterncarmen I think you don't understand how toxic UCU has become in some organisations. It's not just that they have a focus on gender etc it's that they actively persecute union members who don't share that view. Believe me I am a strong supporter of unions as a concept but I saw so many colleagues bullied and threatened by UCU that I left. Female colleagues who were scared to go to their office incase they were attacked; who were given rape alarms by Security because UCU local branch published their details and encouraged attacks.

University staff need a union but UCU is not it

OK. But if you have zero interest in working with others in any circumstance, then why should you care about the union or critique it?

If this is the main attitude amongst academics at universities, then don’t expect a union to succeed, and accept your lot. It is easier for SMT to pick off people individually and exploit a workforce if no one sticks together. And that is what is happening. I suppose if you are completely individualistic and see a moral wrong, then your silence condones it. Anything goes really.