To think if you're on strike you shouldn't get paid?

[ClaraLaraLaLa]

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/02/uk-universities-threaten-punish-striking-staff-cancelled-lectures

I'm strongly in favour of the right to strike etc, I have participated in strikes myself before, for which I was docked a day's pay, as I expected.

Surely part of the point of going on strike it to show that you feel so strongly about the issue that you are prepared to forgo a day's pay in order to make your point?

That is all based on the premise that such a request is reasonable. I don’t consider it to be. Lost labour is lost labour.

I've been on strike for some of the UCU strike days, I don't expect to be paid for those days. However, some universities penalise staff who work to contract, so don't work extra hours for example (as most academics do most weeks, guess what I'm doing right now ...). This is, in my view, outrageous - why should pay be docked if somebody actually works contracted hours?

Which is why I used the word reasonable - of course it’s open to challenge.

I'm not particularly on the side of the lecturers or anything, but I do support their right to strike and making up the work that they've missed totally negates the point of striking.

So this is ridiculous.

If student have concerns, they should take it up with management whose job it is to solve the problem.

Shivermetimbers0112 Sat 03-Mar-18 12:41:19
There’s nothing at all new about pay deductions for partial performance.

The problem is not with partial performance: the problem is that working to contract is considered partial performance.

As for me, my students will get all the information they need to pass exams, and as we had before-hand-notice of the strike I have made very sure that the exam questions are phrased in such a way as to make them possible to answer building on the teaching done on non-striking days. Also, that I spend all non-strike days prioritising putting work up for students above anything else.

I am proud of my students and want them to succeed. But I do wonder how many of realise that their success comes at the cost of my working a full week on a salary that is not enough to live on because the workload does not allow me to take on outside work? And that my best hope, even before any changes to the pensions scheme, is a sudden heart attack in the lecture hall, because my pension is, quite frankly, going to be shit.

Shivermetimbers0112 Sat 03-Mar-18 12:44:48
Soupy.
"But if you are reasonably requested to reschedule a class, or more likely make your teaching material available, and you refuse then that is partial performance. Your contract includes, as they all do, an implied term that you will comply with reasonable instructions."

Nobody has explained what you are going to do with that week's teaching while you are reasonably rescheduling last week's?

Nor how it is going to be logistically possible to reschedule lectures when we've barely got the room to teach the ones that already are scheduled.

When I managed to reschedule a seminar with 15 students, the Head of Programmes contacted me to find out how I had pulled off this miracle and if it was a secret I could share. I had to explain that I had done it by cramming the whole group into a colleague's office (sitting on tables and floor). Now explain how someone is going to do that with a lecture group of 100+? But if we don't, then that will be seen as us "refusing" and we will get penalised.

Cory that's shocking.
I don't understand what people don't understand on this thread. Academic striked and so didn't get paid.
They are now expected to make up the work thirty didn't do? If you believe that's reasonable fine, but then they need thir pay reinstated for those days.
You can't dock pay for work they are doing because of work they didn't do and therefore weren't paid for

We don’t actually schedule our own classes. As if we’d have the power to do that within the current system. No, the university magnanimously allows us to put in timetabling requests, which appear to be completely pointless. Instead we are allocated class schedules that very often do not meet the teaching needs of the module and there’s very little we can do about it. Sometimes timetabling will just miss off a week of lectures entirely because they haven’t got enough large rooms. Or they’ll allocated you four seminar rooms if the belief that you can clone yourself so as to teach the same class simultaneously in 4 places. Or they’ll timetable you to teach two different classes at the same time.

My faculty does a public naming and shaming thing via email for anyone who dares to put in a timetable amendment request (even if your request is to actually have something resembling what you asked for in the first place).

So yes, we’re being totally unreasonable to but just reschedule the classes.

Everything Unimaginative said about timetabling: that's how it works for us too. And now we will have pay docked for not doing something we are not allowed to do and do not have the capacity to do in the first place.

Except we have been told we are not allowed to put in requests unless it is to point out that a module has not been timetabled at all (happened to me last semester) or that a module that has been timetabled doesn't exist.

So colleagues who travel across the country to teach 5 hours on a part-time contract can have those 5 hours timetabled on 5 separate days and are not allowed to complain. But now we are suddenly supposed to have the power to reschedule entire weeks of teaching.

So to break it down, typical part-time day in the academic world looks like this:

a) 3.5 hours of contracted time

b) 3.5 hours of non-contracted time which has to be done because I can't actually go in and deliver lectures if I haven't spent time preparing them, reading the latest books in the field, sourced and uploaded lectures slides etc

I get paid to perform a. If I do not also perform b, my employer will dock my pay for a.

To this we now add:

c) rescheduling lectures that were scheduled for strike days. This one is not actually in my gift, because I am not allowed to schedule anything and the university has not got the facilities for this to be scheduled. But if I do not perform c, my pay for a will be docked.

Are people familiar with the expression "set up to fail"?

Fundamentally though you're having your pay docked now for the work you didnt do on the strike day... For which you weren't paid.
Right?

that for a start Stealth

so double deduction there

but also warned that any "working to contract" at all will count as "partial performance" for which I will be liable to further deductions

cory, I read your post and just wanted to send solidarity and sympathy.

I'm currently in a very, very part-time role that doesn't make me eligible to strike. My students have all been very supportive of my colleagues and have being doing things like sharing work with each other and having discussion groups. I'm really proud of them. But, I've been teaching them for a couple of years and have always been completely up front about how academia works these days, so they actually understand it. I think that makes a big difference.

Idiot question alert.
Isn't this illegal

YABU. Making it difficult to strike has got us into this mess of zero hours contracts, fake self employment etc. If workers can't stand up for their rights, it's not like bosses are going to either. I don't know much about working in academia but there's a lot of low paid precarious employment there, so in principle we should be supportive of striking university workers.

Stealth, there is a lot of the current casualization of higher education that is legally dodgy. This is precisely why the strike is not just about the pensions, though that is the trigger.

But as you can imagine, the individual academic on 15.000 a year is not in a good position to take up the legal challenge. My VC gets paid 24 times as much as I do. He can afford to last longer than I can. That's why we have to deal with as a group.

I have tried to raise questions relating to staff cuts and student satisfaction in the relevant forum and been told to stop talking.

Waves at LRD- hope you're ok and thanks for solidarity. Hopefully something good will come of all this for all of us.

I'm fine, thanks, just very sad for you and colleagues in your situation. Ironically, being paid a pittance to do very little while I'm looking after my baby means I'm insulated from all of this. But I do realise how ridiculous and frustrating it is.

At the same time, very heart-warming to be out there on the picket line and realise that I'm not alone, that my shit working conditions is not because of personal failure but something so common in this world that they don't even raise an eyebrow when I mention them to colleagues.

To realise that I have wonderful colleagues that I never knew about, funny colleagues, clever colleagues, colleagues who are passionate about their work.

To realise that students understand and care: the speech from the student rep on my first day of picketing actually had me in tears.

To realise that the reason we have all stuck with this increasingly shitty treatment for years without a murmur is actually because we do care, care about our subjects, care about our students, would love to care about our universities if they gave us even a little of that affection back.

There have been teach-outs in a local book shop, joined by both students and staff, there have been multiple gifts of food and drink, there have been so many good conversations.

but also warned that any "working to contract" at all will count as "partial performance" for which I will be liable to further deductions

They can't legally do that.

NotDavid, that is why we are on strike.

I’m in USS and UCU, but not at a university where I can take action (post 92), so feel stuck in the middle in this one.... I am hugely supportive of colleagues across the sector taking this industrial action on all our behalf - and have been donating to the UCU strike fund for support.

I am horrified by this approach by certain VCs who are taking this stance. It just serves to highlight how much unpaid overtime work all (professional services, technical, library, etc.) colleagues in HEIs undertake every single week. I am due to have an interview for a at St Andrews next week. I have withdrawn from the process, with my reasons being clearly stated that this is because of the VC’s stance on this. I’ve also written directly. It will probably make my name mud, but this is too important - and outright bullying.

To those of you continuing to be out on picket lines during snowmageddon - you have my support, and enormous respect.

my partners uni is about to strike for the next two weeks no lectures but he will put them on blackboard from home and inform his students, but labs cant be put online so he will have to reschedule the labs that are not going ahead and yes he will get no pay for the three days a week that they will be on strike, he hasnt chosen this route the unions have

If you’re on strike you should be fucking sacked!

Absolutely fucking disgraceful. Hitler's Germany would have suited you no end