University Strikes - 61 universities

[LittleLow]

More - What on earth is going on? - than AIBU

The planned strikes seem massive with four weeks of teaching time lost. Students in their final year or those writing dissertations could end up with lower marks potentially impacting on job offers.

What will happen with regard to tuition fees? How about special consideration for exams? There seems to be no help or advice for students & parents. Anyone have any information?

It is bad for them if they slip a degree classification and lose a job offer.

What makes you think that's going to happen?

As I already said above, in our dept, we'll be checking marks for courses that have teaching interrupted by strike action. If there is evidence of worse performance, marks will be adjusted appropriately.

We've done this before, you know. There are plans in place for everything.

But we're withdrawing our labour on strike days and working to rule (i.e., not rescheduling missed classes) on non-strike days. We're doing do because we're at the absolute end of our tether with how we're being treated by our employers.

I really, really hope students direct their ire at their university's vice chancellor / president.

Starry you know, a lot of academics supported the junior docs' strike a couple of years back.

I did, even though I thought some of their claims were a bit questionable and Inwas due to have major surgery at the time. But I trusted they knew what they were doing and I valued them as professionals.

Just a thought....

Yes. But as with most strikes quite a lot of people see the ‘villains’ as the people striking rather than the management who are intent on screwing them over.

No one actually wants to strike. Why would anyone want to lose the pay and cause a huge fuss?

It’s right that no one actually wants to strike. Every academic forum I am on is full of people agonising over the decision. We enjoy our jobs; we enjoy working with students; we did not want the increased commercialisation of education; we do not support getting financially shafted either. I don’t want to work in a degree-mill, and I don’t want your children to attend something so miserable either.

Any of you with student children who are concerned - tell you children to engage with their student unions. The NUS are supporting strike action, and will tell them what their best course of action is, and how to support their tutors if they wish.

No academic wants students to be negatively affected, we want senior management to pay attention. Students can help with that. I assure you that academics will be working on the side of students, but students can be powerful allies.

People do realise that the lecturers don't get paid for the days we strike? That's half a month's pay to lose. Not insignificant for most academics who, let's face it, are hardly raking it in. I'd much rather be going to work, covering the material with the students and bringing home my usual salary. I'm the main earner in our family - 14 days lost pay is going to hit us hard.

No one wants to strike. Least of all people who have committed their careers to research and education in a subject they love. Most academics do what they do because they feel it's their vocation. And senior management consistently take advantage of this commitment.

If students/ parents want to complain, please please write to the Vice Chancellor or President of their institution demanding that they lobby USS (the people who run the pension scheme) to actually negotiate with the union about this. That is what the strike is about.

ITs probably not the moment to point this out, but almost nothing gets learned in lectures anyway....students are strangely obsessed with us providing lectures when they are the absolute worst way to try and learn anything.

True Morphene. Although my 'lectures' are designed with that in mind (i.e. around learning activities, collaborative learning and student interaction far more than me standing at the front of the room talking). Helps that I teach relatively small cohorts too.

It’s been known for year their scheme is in massive deficit. Where do they expect the money to come from?

The deficit isn't actually that big, the vast majority of DB schemes have deficits and the USS deficit is much more manageable than most.

Unusually, the dispute here is over the cost of future benefits, not the deficit. To maintain current benefit levels (which yes, have been slashed, but they're still very generous compared to most private sector schemes), the universities and academics would have to increase their contributions. This is due to movements in the financial markets and somewhat out of the control of the scheme (somewhat). The universities were unwilling to pay more, understandably.

A middle ground could have been met - benefits could have been reduced so the contribution level could have stayed the same. It bewilders me that this isn't the decision that was taken.

Closing the DB scheme and moving us all to DC is a huge cut in benefits. They have estimated that the average lecturer (so not someone on a high wage) will lose £200K over their lifetime. Super fun in our house where we're both academics.

I could've sucked this up if the situation were dire and all other options had been exhausted, but they haven't been. The scheme could have stayed open with reduced benefits (likely still generous) for the same contribution rate. The pension is one of the reasons I moved from the private sector to academia. I'll have a whole 18 months accrual. Wohoo.

Intoo a 3k paycut to become a lecturer. Previous job was nhs so even that was hardly well paid. But I was prepared to take the job for a lower hourly rate because I’m passionate about teaching.

I did of course check the pension before leaving the nhs and it’s comparable. Though the pension scheme I’m in is actually the TPS pension so a different one to the one under threat.

But I can promise you if when I’d been considering the job offer I had had to take a pay cut and have a crapper pension I wouldn’t have accepted the job.

This is why any industrial action is important. Nobody wants universities to be n a position where they’re struggling to recruit academics due to shit pay and pensions. I’ve got kids going through uni, I want them to have decent lecturers.

I am striking and so are most of the staff at my (large) RG uni. Pension poverty hits women hardest so a bit more support on this thread would be nice! We have tried and tried and TRIED to negotiate but Universities UK are refusing to consider any of the compromise positions we suggested.

We DO NOT strike lightly, not least, because we will also lose half a month's pay (and DH isn't working right now so that's going to hurt). We do it because we want and deserve to be treated better. Over the last few years our pay has not increased and the sop was always 'well you get a good pension'. What bollocks.

Everyone in this country has the right to strike if their employer is exploiting them and their union holds a legally binding vote on it. The union has been amazing for years and has helped me challenge pregnancy discrimination and bullying of junior emails staff in other workplaces.

The best thing students can do to bring this to an end is educate themselves about what this is about and then email the managers daily demanding they come back to the table and negotiate. They could also demand their fees back or attend one of the many teach outs which will be held on why this is such a shitty deal, economic justice, labour relations around the world, the triple financial whammy women in the workplace face etc.

Of course we feel for our students (we wouldn't be in this job if we didn't love them). But we really need their support now - otherwise what are we teaching them? That it's ok to be lied to and screwed over by bosses who are earning a fortune whilst you smile sweetly and keep servicing everyone else unless someone gets cross or is inconvenienced? ALL OUT!

ITs probably not the moment to point this out, but almost nothing gets learned in lectures anyway....students are strangely obsessed with us providing lectures when they are the absolute worst way to try and learn anything.

A lecturer can inspire. I had one, a grumpy woman with an acid wit - she had a way with letting you know what was important - "The Glare".

It sounds like there is a compromise position with the pension so hopefully some kind of deal will be struck.

If you need the support of students then communication and advice for the exams is important. I feel sorry for those students who will be left without advice during dissertations.

You may or may not see lectures and student contact time as important but at the moment these things are an advertised part of the course.

Part of the issue is that the USS wants to change their investment strategy to the pensions equivalent of sticking your money in a low interest savings account and hoping for the best.

So many universities would rather invest in flashy vanity projects than their staff. On my campus, for example, the university only invests in the areas the students see. So they refurbished all the teaching rooms in my building, and put in double glazing (but didn’t actually do any of the things we asked to make them better teaching spaces). But the staff offices still have rubbish single glazing (my window doesn’t really shut) and are really grim. You also can’t control the temperature in them - it was about 28C in mine most of last winter (and freezing the rest of the year). They refurbished the offices and area allocated to faculty and department management obviously. It’s all very nice, as you can imagine. They still have their PAs too (whereas the admin support for teaching has been reduced to pretty much nothing).

The university is wonderful at communicating how little it values its core staff in so many ways. It’s good at superficial projects that look like they’re all about ‘improving the student experience’ but are nothing more than window dressing. They don’t want to invest where it would actually improve their education. They’d rather make the canteen look like a Starbucks and give out free hoodies because that’s easier.

What UnimaginativeUsername said.

To those people saying subjects which aren't covered won't be assessed - in my university they will!

In mine too, Saskia. Exams will be set as normal, to cover the whole of the course.

Same at my dc's university.

My department considers material to be "covered" if the slides and readings are available online. Standing up in front of a class to deliver the lecture or seminar is only one part of covering material, and not an absolutely essential one. Any material covered online will be assessed as normal.

There are a few rare cases where the material really cannot be covered without face-to-face teaching, such as a hands-on practical or lab. This is the type of material we won't be assessing and a couple of exam questions will be removed as a result.

I would think that anyone with a DB scheme should be watching what happens here very very closely.

I hope a deal is reached quickly and with minimum disruption to both staff and students and fully support the strike.

And if the full strike does go ahead I hope both students and parents are up in arms at the university management rather than the striking staff.

People don't understand that it takes a long time to qualify to become an academic.

PhD = very low income, most of our 20s [required qualification]
Post-doc or teaching = often low income, precarious work [increasingly the norm].

We're only just beginning pension contributions in our early 30s! Teachers qualifying right out of uni might have an extra 10 years to accrue contributions. Pension rates really matter to our future. The sector has already taken a big haircut, why should we take another?

@geekaMaxima couldn't have put it better myself. 👍🏻

And @GreyCloudsToday tell me about it. Academia isn't an easy route at all. Hindsight is a wonderful thing..

closet with a class size of over 300 its harder but not impossible....

Its actually somewhat easier to persuade academics than students that they could be getting a lot more out of an hour of study than sitting passively listening to someone who already understands the material far too well talk about it from an essentially alien perspective.

I’m professional services staff in USS & UCU, but at a post-92 (there’s not many of us - I brought my pension with me from 2 RGs.) I’m not able to strike, as UCU haven’t been able to call on the 20 of us at my institution, as there’s no critical mass. I am, however, hugely supportive of my colleagues who are taking the hit - and donating to the strike fund, of course.

If these changes go ahead, a lot of people will leave HE.... and there’s a lot of us who are damn good at what we do. We go out of the way to support and nurture our students. We care about them as individuals, as much as we care about the professions we steer them into. This would be a disastrous, retrograde step.

We’ve not had a pay rise above 1.7% (I think) in 6 or 7 years. Our pension contributions go up and up. Our retirement benefits are ever devaluing.

This isn’t a race to the bottom. Please support those of us who are ensuring we have nurses, doctors, teachers, etc of the future. It’s too important not to.

The vast majority of the students in my institution wholeheartedly support the striking lecturers. The Vice Chancellor and his Jag are being made really very uncomfortable, which will hopefully bring him back to the table with some sensible compromises.