10 days left of university due to strikes!

[Cranmer]

DD is in her 3rd and final year of university. She has just told me that she has a total of 10 days left of university due to the lecturers' strikes.

Her lecturers/class teachers are taking action in Week 4,5,6,7 and 10, and these are on her heavy 'uni' days. (Her final term is for exams only.)

This is not the university experience she expected for 27K. What with covid wiping out most of the 1st year, it has been so rubbish for the class of 2020-23.

@Shivermetimbers0112 I would be very surprised if that pay scale was correct. I’m a senior lecturer, not in the UCU and not striking.

so yes I’m band 8 but our band 8 looks nothing like that. Band 8 is something like 39-50k where I am. Obviously the band 7 lecturer pay scale is less, something like 32-40k. I work well over 60 hours a week. Since mid Nov I’ve done 140 hours over my contracted hours, so an extra 3.5 weeks of work in 2.5 months. I do not make minimum wage if I was to work out my hourly rate.

it is not all about pay, it’s about workloads as well.

but yes, the pay is an issue. I lecture in an allied health care profession. We struggle to recruit lecturers in our school because the physios, paramedics, nurses, midwives will not leave the nhs because it’s a big drop in pay to be a lecturer! Which isn’t right. It shouldn’t be like that. If your dc was a student on such a course wouldn’t you prefer that the university had plenty of applicants for jobs and could pick someone of a high calibre. I took a big pay drop when I left the nhs from a band 6 nhs job.

Same for disciplines like architecture and engineering. My 3rd year architecture student Dd is getting taught by non architects as the university can’t recruit. And she is getting
paid to teach drawing classes to the first years! Now I’m not a fee paying parent (she will pay her own fees) but if I was I’d be more worried about that than some strike days. Is that the level of education you want for your kids?

This isn’t just an issue where I work, it’s nationwide. Course with massive staff shortages because people don’t want the jobs. I accept it may well be different for courses like history or art but for any course where in industry you earn more than 35-40k people just will not come and lecture. And if we do manage to convince someone they often leave quite quickly when they see what it’s like. Staff turnover is high.

Here are our pay scales. Band 7 is a lecturer, band 8 senior lecturer

We are so short staffed I’m unable to take leave. I was still working at 10pm last night and was sending emails again at 6am as soon as I woke up. Anyway, back to it.

The spinal point is the thing to use for
compare between institutions, it’s national. But different institutions give it their own name eg Band 8. At ours that’s a G grade.

But someone on spinal point 43 gets paid the same everywhere whatever it’s called (although there’s a London weighting too).

At our university only a small amount of teaching is impacted by the strikes - less than 20% of the staff are striking.

Lecturers will usually have spent 3-4 years on a phd at a stipend of £17.5k (no pension). It used to be the expectation that once having done that, the salary would be reasonable. (This is after having paid for an undergrad and often a masters). In some disciplines people are postdocs for many years which is anything from £32-40k. In these sectors competition for jobs is so fierce that ppl are only just getting their first permanent jobs at age mid-30s (those are the lucky ones).

Lecturers have also lost around 20% of pay in real terms and the workload is immense in most places. As well as that, the pension scheme was cut around 30% using a very cynical valuation in the covid chaos. Like other sectors lecturers are seeing their pay and conditions unravelling and are very cross about it. They have been striking for years but not made any headway which is incredibly dispiriting hence the strike escalation.

It is low pay for the expertise involved.

I’ve been trying to recruit user researchers. Do you know how many people with extremely limited methodological understanding (far less than a PhD qualified academic has) think that 3-4 who state their minimum
salary expectation is £100k+? The ones claiming £70k is the minimum they’d accept start sounding almost reasonable - even though they just follow processes and can’t answer questions about the differences between participant and non-participant observation. Or explain methods at anything at a level of detail if ‘I did usability testing’.

Now look back at what universities pay senior academics… very experienced people with leadership responsibilities and internationally recognised expertise…

Relative to what people with a masters in HCI and the ability to use survey monkey are paid, it’s not the fortune people want to paint it as.

That should be ‘with 3-4 years of experience’ of doing very straightforward, by the numbers, research’

The U.K. has ceased to be a first world country, it is now so similar to how lots of developing countries are

nothing works, massive inflation, crappy healthcare, crappy education, crappy public transport , country paralysed by strikes, politicians only in it for themselves and to award mates contracts, corruption, rising food prices… (it’s not 10%, more like 30)

it’s not hyperbole, but the U.K. is leaving the developed world rapidly

I think Uni students should get their money back!

I studied 2019-22. I worked out between covid closure (NOT distance learning. That was on top) and strikes, I missed a full years worth of taught hours.

It's shit. My sympathy to your DD.

I agree it's rubbish for students. It's a big reason why I'm not striking, very few people in my department are.

I've worked in 4 universities (non-academic roles - who, by the way, are also striking if in UCU - it's not just lecturers) and what @OntarioBagnet describes is pretty standard.

Research is relegated to weekends and spare time. Student numbers go up and up (and if they don't, courses are cut at the drop of a hat).

The strike is not just about pay, although that's part of it.

Pension is a large part of it. If any of your children go into academia or related work the pension will have been eroded hugely.

The strikes are also about equality and precarious work contracts and work load which is a huge problem for all of us.

All staff I've ever talked to care about the students education but we are also humans who want a reasonable standard of living and a secure old age.

We're not just machines available to teach / look after your children.

A lot of staff will have made alternative arrangements for their students (sometimes under the radar so they can still be seen to be striking). E.g. making recordings available, fitting in extra lectures, making themselves available on non-strike days.

My job involves 1-1 sessions with students. I am cramming in as many as physically possible on non-strike days to try to mitigate the situation.
I shouldn't do that, but I have no desire to make their life more difficult than it will be.

But I am striking and proud to be doing so. I'm doing it for future generations as much as myself.

Solidarity to all UCU strikers & those from
other areas who are striking (train drivers today ✊).

@OntarioBagnet sorry I should have really said money provider not fee payer. She has a loan for the fees.

I do feel for uni lecturers etc - but it does just feel like the wrong people are being punished in this instance.

There's been so much disruption for this cohort anyway

I get that. And I’m fairly sure none of the strikers want students to be disrupted. But sadly for the strike to be effective it has to affect the students. They’re actually the ones with the power and the more unhappy they are the more likely the universities are to listen.

and the students are constantly currently being affected now by the staffing issues. They just might not realise it. But it’s almost like short term pain for long term gain I guess.

we can’t carry on employing third year students to teach first years because we can’t recruit

The vast majority of University staff are not taking action. Yes there are issues but it remains a privileged environment with good pay and conditions. UCU inflate their numbers by offering free membership to PhD students most of whom will not get within a sniff of a permanent role (and should be smart enough to recognise the realities). Then complain about a pension scheme that most will never be part of. And yes, the scheme has been reformed. It’s still good. If you want to return to an era when pensions weren’t regulated and could vanish at the drop of a hat, keep demonising the trustees etc, but be careful what you wish for.
Of all the professions and other workers striking the UCU have the weakest case, and probably the least public support. Their hyperbole actually makes it difficult to have a sensible dialogue about the genuine issues, eg workloads, which can only be properly addressed at the local level, not through some archaic national agreement.