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?

There’s no deduction for working to contract. Not rescheduling lectures however is a breach of contract, for example. You need to ask your union for specific advice about which duties are contractual or not.

"There’s no deduction for working to contract." Do you mean at your university, Shiver? Because emails have quite definitely gone out to academic staff at several unis. We haven't had one yet- but I'm not holding my breath.

There's a 25% deduction at my place for working to contract. Apparently "working to contract" includes "not covering for absent colleagues". This seems to imply that non-striking colleagues who refuse to cover the work of striking colleagues may be deemed to be working to contract and have pay deducted?

There’s no deduction for working to contract. Not rescheduling lectures however is a breach of contract, for example.

Are you saying that we are obliged to make our own withdrawal of labour on strike days meaningless? I doubt that.

The irritant is you put on extra contact hours in response to requests - but students don't attend them. Particularly at the end of the year, apart from the ones who are passionate. This was particularly problematic at the place I used to work at. Lecturers provide contact time with students in a variety of other ways too - email, one to one appointments, office hours etc etc. Certainly my students know if they want me I will certainly see them.

I have a question now and I'm showing my ignorance here as I'm familiar with the older Scottish system. What's the minimum salary students need to be earning for fees to be repaid? Or is it the case they start to repay as soon as they start earning full stop. With the student loans in Scotland you had to be on a certain salary before they could start taking deductions.

Not rescheduling lectures is not necessarily breach of contract. It depends on the institution, the contract you signed on hiring, and whether any changes to academic contracts since then can legitimately be applied retrospectively (especially if you received no notification).

It's a minefield, but very few (if any?) academic contracts have clauses that clearly mean you are obliged to reschedule missed teaching. University HR or management might try to bully staff into rescheduling by making vague threats (e.g., claiming that contractual obligation to fulfil all duties means having to reschedule anything missed), but they're not on secure ground. A factory worker who strikes does not have to make up missed production quotas on non-strike days because they're already busy doing their normal contracted work on those days. Same for academic staff: we're busy doing normal contracted duties on non-strike days, and rescheduled classes would be an extra (that we're declining to do as part of action short of a strike).

Meant to say - UCU should be legally challenging any institution that docks pay for working to contract. They said they would.

I hope those universities that are docking 25% (ffs! ) have a good local UCU branch.

If you are asked (reasonably) to reschedule and you don’t that will be a breach. I know some HEIs will deduct 100% pay for as long as that breach continues. As far as I know the union is suggesting that this is a scare tactic only. I don’t think it is.

I am not rescheduling. When exactly they think this will happen when you have your normal workload to deal with is anyone's guess.

How is it even reasonable?

Reasonableness is a legal concept. Asking you to reschedule on a day you are striking wouldn’t be reasonable. Asking you to reschedule within a practical timeframe is.
This action is bigger than unis have seen before, and I think the employer response will be a lot tougher too.

Given any rescheduling would happen after the strike and have to take in the full timetabling of all the other lecturing, rescheduling of lectures could only happen through central timetabling where I am.

There is no practical way this could actually been done, so I think any lectures missed will just be missed where I am.

rescheduling labs would likewise be impossible.

There’s no deduction for working to contract. there were a number of HEIs that went ahead and deducted for working to contract 3 or 4 years ago, the one I was at at the time was one of them. I am still astounded that this could be done, but apparently it’s all to do with that ‘and any other duties deemed commensurate with the post’ clause. I think it is telling that we have had a big fuss about workload modelling recently, until the data was collated and suddenly it’s gone quiet. I suspect it’s because looking at mine then the hours in the model add up to 3 hours every week more than my (part-time) contracted hours. And there’s lots not even on there.

We have had an email from our head of school saying that our institution does not consider working to contract as partial performance and will not be withholding pay. This is interesting as our principal is one of the strong proponents of the proposal.

DH moved from industry to lecturing in a STEM subject for a few years. Took a 30% pay cut even with the increment they added on supposedly to match industry. 😂

Anyway, he wasn't fussed as he loved teaching. However the University cut them back to the absolute bone. Providing no admin support whatsoever yet requiring everything in triplicate, to be sent to any number of Management's many PAs and staff. Changed the goal posts every year. Built new buildings with flashy grants but couldn't provide board markers or materials to use in the new machinery. Whole buildings sitting empty. Nearly every member of department having stress related illnesses. Culture of backstabbing. Hours with students cut massively so a course that was supposed to have say, 120 hours would have to be delivered in 90. Complain? Told to make it happen. With no time or resources, or face pay clawback.

Needless to say he left and went back to industry.

Shivermetimbers0112 Sat 10-Feb-18 18:03:48
"Reasonableness is a legal concept. Asking you to reschedule on a day you are striking wouldn’t be reasonable. Asking you to reschedule within a practical timeframe is."

I would actually love to reschedule. But with the extreme pressure on classrooms due to student intake and on central timetabling due to shortage of support staff I don't see how it can very well happen. We are not even allowed to contact timetabling directly atm. When I had to reschedule a seminar due to a clash with a project half the students were doing, I ended up having to do it in a colleague's office, which was just doable with a dozen students cramming in as best they could, but would hardly work with a lecture for maybe 100 students.

That seems to be our biggest problem atm: all the savings and cuts happen at junior level, the people who should actually be teaching and providing day to day admin, but at the same time money is being spent on creating new senior management posts and increasing the bonuses and pension deals for those already at the top. An adjacent department have just been told they need to shed 25% of their staff costs: our VC regularly features in the press as one of the country's fat cats.

I work at a striking uni. In 2 minds. I really don't want to disadvantage our students ( health professionals) but hate the way we are being treated. Staff to student ratio is 4 times it was when I started. Most of the extras are foreign students whose English is poor but their governments are paying a fortune for them to come to a "good" uni. But it takes at least twice as long to teach/supervise/Mark their work. Unis are happy to take their money on the back of our reputation but will then go apeshit if our NSS scores are poor. Im so completely disillusioned by the whole thing TBH.

@saltandvinegarcrisps1 I feel like we are all at the mercy of the NSS.

I have written to the VC of my uni to ask for a refund of fees proportionate to the number of contact hours lost. The reply came not from the VC but someone delegated to deal with it, and was just a lot of meaningless words and phrases, doing their best for the students, taking active steps (unspecified), hoped that the academic staff would think better of taking action Blah, Blah, Blah!

I have written back pointing out that I have not received a reply to the actual question which I asked, namely what financial compensation will be paid to the students for failure to provide the contacts hours specified as part of the course. If I engage a lawyer, a plumber or an electrician, the contract will normally provide for payment by the hour and, if the work wasn't done, I would expect a commensurate refund.

I don't see the position as being different with university courses, for which students are paying large sums and accruing huge debts. It will be another reason for them to seriously consider not going to university, compounded by the fact that a lot of the talent will have left academia anyway.

My lecturers are lovely and it's clear that they feel terrible at having to take this action, but also feel that they need to do so in order to show solidarity. It is horrible when people become so demoralised, and the knock on effects this will have upon the students.

If I engage a lawyer, a plumber or an electrician, the contract will normally provide for payment by the hour and, if the work wasn't done, I would expect a commensurate refund.

That's a bad analogy for higher education. Lawyers, plumbers and electricians are doing a specifically contracted piece of work. Without their labour, the work cannot be done. You just wait around.

A better analogy for university is gym membership. You pay to get access to facilities, equipment, pool, personal fitness programmes, assistance from trainers, etc. Then you do as much or as little work as you want with the tools you are given. You won't achieve your goal of getting fit unless you work, of course, but how much you do, and how much you engage with the trainers, is up to you.

So then the trainers at your gym go on strike for a few days. The gym stays open, and you still have the fitness programme they designed for you, plus access to all the equipment, facilities, etc.

Would the gym refund the portion of your annual membership fees that relate to the hours you might have spent with a trainer? No idea but I'd be surprised. It would also be a pretty minute portion of your membership fees.

Sorry Maxima, but I can't agree.

Joining a gym is a leisure activity and I agree that it's up to the individual what they do, an hour on the cross trainer or relaxing in the sauna. If people set goals, that's fine, but nothing really hinges on it. Even then, if I had booked a personal training session and it was cancelled, I would expect a refund.

With university fees, these are to provide a specific taught course, with defined components, within a specified time frame, leading to a qualification which may be essential for future employment prospects. It also costs a lot more than a gym membership. Contact hours are a vital part of the course. Or do you think an understanding of quantum physics comes into the same category as learning to use a rowing machine?

The library and on line learning resources should augment and support the core teaching, but cannot be a substitute for quality academic leadership.The other facilities are peripheral. Which is why I support the strike, but believe students should be entitled to compensation.

Infact the gym I used tob e a member of had to send about 10 emails of apology last month when the hot water stopped working and you can bet your bottom dollar that plenty of people have been demanding refunds as some of the services are not available. Whether they will get them in law is a different matter - I would imagine it depends on the thing not available - eg my two children at university still have the use of the halls they sleep in and the food and the study room at halls and university library so it is not what lawyers call a "total failure of consideration" - it is partial so possibly a small refund but I would have to read the contract terms between student and university ( and yes for my job I sometimes have had to to check issues like intellectual property rights ownership) but I can't bothered as it's Sunday so I am working all day to pay half what I earn to the state.

Isabella. I think your analysis is correct.

In my case, I do not occupy student accommodation (which I thought was paid for separately) and use few of the facilities. Because of how the strike days fall, I stand to lose just over 30% of my scheduled contact hours for this term, which I believe represents a significant failure of consideration for the fee paid.