Do people remember the scene in The Office where the temp talks about jumping the queue at a theme park and says 'why should I wait?' Tim replies: 'Why should you. Why should you'.
I sense a little bit of that attitude here among the unsympathetic: why should you care when your own conditions are poor? Or, why should you care when we could have made better life choices in the first place?
For a start, the private sector isn't a fair comparison. Most universities are here for the very long-term and can plan for the very long-term - rather than fearing being competed out of existence by a new start-up. Those who chose to work in them hoped to benefit from these long time-horizons, rather than being marked to market.
I recognise that there's a wider problem with pensions provision (which is why people tend to invest in property, which generates its own inequality issues). If you don't have the option of a reasonable pension in your sector then why should anyone else have one?
However, academics don't get private sector type benefits commensurate with skills and ability - such as higher pay, for a start, which helps with accessing a better mortgage; bonuses during good years; or subsidised benefits like private health care.
My partner and I recently moved institutions because of redundancies in our old institution. We now both pay a fortune in commuting, overnight accommodation and additional childcare to make it work, so our standard of living is not great. I'm 41 and generally paid as many Ks as my years. This may seem good compared with 'most of British society' - but I'm highly-skilled and work hard and long hours, and wouldn't have expected that so long as I'm paid more than the average I should be grateful. My pension is predicted to fall from £18k to £11k; I won't be able to keep myself on that.
During my early 30s, when on temporary contracts, when I thought I probably should move sector because it was so ghastly, I kept reminding myself that I just had to hold on and that my patience and hard work would eventually be rewarded - and that in this regard I was more long-term in my thinking than many of my friends in the private sector.
Now, some years later, while I have some job security and some good conditions, I find much of my work fulfilling but nevertheless think I made the wrong career choice. I did have other options.
I'm very sorry for students who are stressed. We are human beings and tend to like our students. At my institution, they have had very many reassuring messages from staff at every level, and impact on them will be minimised. But I don't feel wholly responsible for their anxiety. There is a wider anxiety problem among young people that the university sector cannot solve by itself, and academic staff are not mental health professionals. For those concerned for their DC, I also need to think about my child and her future, both now (we cannot afford activities or holidays, for example) and when I'm elderly and need care.
I'm slightly surprised that this argument is expressed in such moral terms at all. Union-protected jobs tend to have better conditions than a race to the bottom would imply. It is not about the glorious struggle but using reasonable and democratic means to secure reasonable conditions.
Without union effort and many academics' voluntary efforts the unrealistic estimates of the 'deficit' would simply be taken at face value, as fact. I'm not a big fan of the UCU in general, but this action is precisely what unionisation is for. Things can be better - this is not the best of all possible worlds. This is a sector which has done quite well over the past couple of decades and is internationally-competitive.
Of course swathes of the private sector and private sector employees have had it worse. Of course it is hard and life is unfair and I'm aware that many of the traditional professions (e.g. medicine, law) have been stripped of their conditions. But it doesn't reflect some sort of natural order of things to which lazy entitled lecturers are willfully blind and which we must just bow and accept. Indeed, this is why the Criminal Bar Association struck a couple of years ago, and junior doctors too.