Hello all. Well, I spent yesterday on the picket line, handing out leaflets and chatting to colleagues for hours. In fact, it was very revealing. It seems everyone is having problems with the boss, and we agreed Something Needs To Be Done, so watch this space. The general consensus is that she doesn't really know what she is doing, and she's not got much in the way of support either, and that us middle managers are shouldering too much of the burden of the work whilst others are apparently coasting along on past glories.
Auld, I am not sure what line managers in academe do. I would imagine they are supposed to encourage people to do good research and teaching whilst kicking the lazier members of faculty gently up the arse, and generally making sure the paperwork is properly done. However the reality is that we have someone in charge who has a terrible reputation for being lazy herself, and ducked out of her research responsibilities for a whole decade, for example going on study leave (which is a privilege and a big drain on the department) and not producing a single research paper as a result. So basically she seems to have taken it as holiday. (Eventually they converted her to a teaching-only contract).
Meanwhile those of us with teaching and research contracts are expected to behave as if we have no research to do in terms of the sheer amount of duties we are allocated, and yet we get summoned every month to account for our apparent lack of research, so a Catch-22 situation. Luckily I was able to pull one excellent paper out of the bag from my last job, as my boss put me on research-only duties for three months, and then we took bloody ages to send it off to a journal, so I have some research credibility, and I've written a good book review that goes into a journal any time now, but the other stuff really needs addressing.