#ucu strike

[margravelucian]

The University and Colleges Union is on strike this week and next to lean on four major disputes that are currently wrecking higher education, and have personally made my life hell for the last year - low pay and pay disparity, untenable working conditions and workload, pensions and their ongoing bastardry, and the ongoing stupidity of casualisation.  Higher education should be accessible to all - and that means more than just admissions. It means creating a working environment that is actually possible to function in as a student and as a staff member.  This means real pay, a real end to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism, real access to permanent contracts, a real end to exploitation, and a real future.

Real personal talk - I was made redundant from my job in higher education last week after a four month consultation period which was so poorly handled that it’s driven me to a mental breakdown.  I am better this week than last, but the last four months have been very nearly unmanageable.  The rationale behind my redundancy was that research “self-administrates” and that any tasks that come up can just be offloaded to PhD students for free. This is exploitation. This is devaluing the skilled professional service that I have delivered for the last six years, the research I have enabled and supported, the relationships I have nurtured, everything. It is a betrayal.  I am striking while I am only just employed enough to do so because it is only in collective action that hope means anything.  It has been deeply healing and empowering to be on the picket with others who have the same pain as I do, and it was an honour and a privilege to be able to do some on-street illustrations of my fellow strikers.

I guess on the major plus side of being funemployed, it will give me more time and emotional space to devote to my one true love, my art!

SHOP / KO-FI / PATREON / INSTAGRAM

[ad1thi]

full offence but if you’ve got faculty in the UCU Strike and you aren’t supporting them,,you’re a twat 😋

[cathkaesque]

Officials of the education union UCU have downed tools and walked out - from their own annual congress.

Paid officials from the UCU union today walked out of their Congress at the Manchester Central in a dispute with their own members.

Two motions, 10 and 11, were due to be debated stating no confidence in and censuring the General Secretary (GS) of the Union, Sally Hunt, for their handling of the bitter pensions dispute earlier this year.

That dispute saw fourteen days of strikes in February and March by academics and support staff at 64 institutions across the UK.

Motion 10 called for “the resignation of Sally Hunt as General Secretary with immediate effect”, while Motion 11 resolved:

i. to censure the GS for relaying branch positions at the 28 March meeting whose accuracy, in the absence of a vote, or provision of a detailed list of positions, could not be verified.

ii. to ensure that in future branch representatives’ positions are recorded in a clear and verifiable manner. [This is Sheffield UCU’s motion, so I guess this whole thing is kind of our fault]

However, before the motions could be discussed, a letter was circulated by Unite, another union which represents UCU’s paid officials.

The letter stated “Our members believe that if Congress debates these motions, it will breach agreements between UCU and Unite which protect employees’ dignity at work and right to due process.”

The General Secretary is an elected post with salary and benefits in the region of over £125,000, according to the THE.

Unite’s letter ended with an ultimatum: “We want to be clear with you that if these motions are debated, Unite will need to hold immediate emergency meetings to consider our response to this attack on our rights.”

After delegates voted 144 to 123 to debate the motions, UCU officials suspended Congress proceedings, walked out and formed a picket line outside.

Delegates in the hall reported on Twitter that around 10 people joined the pickets, while over 100 delegates remained in the hall and produced a collective statement asserting their right to discuss concerns with their own union.

I don’t know whether anyone else is following the UCU congress drama resulting from members trying to hold the general secretary to account for trying to sell out the dispute because it is fuckin wild. The union bureaucracy has gone on wildcat strike over calls for a review of union democracy of all things. Wild

[spectatorsandco]

A Manifesto on Emotional Labour

A Manifesto on Emotional Labour

I’ve thought about quitting my PhD a thousand times over. Trying to relay to people the mental burden it puts you under, the restful nights it steals from you, the weight of expectation that dogs your every move – none of it is an easy feat and speaking out about these pressures is something I still find difficult to do. Much of my hesitation lies in the fact that a lot of the work we do is in…

View On WordPress

[embraceit]

Strike day 4// snow day 1. Support the Striking Lecturers!

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

Most up-to-date edition of the University Worker rank-and-file strike bulletin.

[girlaboutcampus]

How the strikes have shown me what my education has been missing.

image credit: Akira O’Connor (@akiraoc on twitter) 

My alarm clock sprung to life, as it does every day, at 9a.m., filling my room with the dulcet sounds of Ariana Grande’s ‘Break Your Heart Right Back.’ What? I like to keep things upbeat in the morning. I roll over to hit SNOOZE, as I do every day, but am for some reason struck by a pang of guilt. Of course, I had said I would join in on a march around town in support of my striking lecturers, who stand to lose thousands every year as a result of reforms to the USS pension scheme. My hand moves from ‘SNOOZE’ to ‘STOP’ as if I’m possessed by some socialist ouija ghost and I force myself to get up, throw on my gym gear and jog into town, where I spot the red flags of the university’s socialist society disappearing around a corner in the distance. I pick up my pace to catch them up. 

Initially, there was an understandable backlash against the strikes from fee-paying students, who quickly set about calculating the loss they might be making through missed contact hours. I, as a home student, have the privilege of free tuition, but I could sympathise with disgruntled friends, especially rUK friends, who in making the decision to travel to Scotland for their educations had taken on an additional £9000 debt due to our four-year degree programme. I’ve seen and been taken in by the changing attitudes towards our educations as a service to be bought from the universities, increasingly businesses in their own right. I’ve come to realise these past few weeks that it is this commodification of our degrees that has been driving a wedge between lecturers and students since fee increases in 2012 and it’s affecting all of us, tuition fees or no tuition fees. 

Marching around the town on Thursday morning, we were met with beaming grins from striking staff, who expressed tremendous gratitude for tea, biscuits and moral support. Many took to Twitter, surprised and thrilled to see that students had come out to support them, despite losses to class time. Staff and student solidarity has led to busier pickets and lecturers have organised a ‘teach-out’- a series of off-campus lectures for students and the public to go along. Action-by-action, the wedge between students and staff created by fees has seemed to vanish, revealing something that has been missing from our educations.

I spoke to many first-year students at the start of the year who asked me what my biggest piece of advice was for making the most of their time at university. My instant unhesitating response was start getting to know your lecturers now. I didn’t manage to break down the teacher-student barrier until my final year and I realise now how daft that was. After all, at some point, they were undergraduate students too, studying for the exact same degree- you would probably be friends with them if you’d been at university at the same time. Every graduating student can tell you that the best seminars include coffee, biscuits and enthusiastic discussion between academic and students. What I didn’t realise until recently is that getting to know your lecturers doesn’t just benefit you, it’s mutually beneficial.

After contacting my striking lecturers to vocalise my support, I was surprised to find just how much they appreciated student solidarity. Their emails are full of apologies for missed classes and genuine regret that they won’t have the opportunity to teach their favourite material. Whilst at no point did I think my lecturers begrudged teaching, I think I thought that many of them saw it as just part of their job that went alongside their more interesting research work. At no point did I dream that they enjoyed it as much as I now realise they do. My mistake- I’m grateful to have it rectified. I hope that someday soon we can close the rifts opened up by rising tuition fees and enjoy more fulfilling degrees as a result. 

If you want to know more about how you can support striking staff at your university, here’s a handy twitter thread from Amelia Horgan detailing what you can do to help as a student. 

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[annathegreenwitch]

My desk did the thing... It's the most ironic thing my subconscious has ever created. Just keep your stuff piling up on the desk. The chaotic mess will eventually make sense.