Back to reality + ASOS

After eight days of strike action, UCU members and supporters were back to work today. It was a day of mixed feelings.

 Firstly, we are still high on yesterday's joint action with IWGB, culminating in a march and rally:

(From @LionelOpenshaw)

Sometimes you just need to get your chant on!

Our hearts are also still glowing from all the support we saw from our students during the strike. You joined us at Strike School, you donated food and hot drinks to picketers, and you came to chat with us on the picket lines. We can't thank you enough!

We're also heartened that the universities are making some (barely perceptible) moves towards listening to us. They have agreed to talk about some of the issues, and we hope that these talks will be fruitful.

The bad news is that no measurable progress has been made towards ending casualisation, pay inequality, unsustainable workloads, and falling pay, and UUK seems to be moving ahead with their plans to increase our pension costs, with the likely result of putting the whole scheme at risk.

This means that our fight is not over. Now that the strike action is over, UCU are asking their members to engage in ASOS - no, not that ASOS! We mean Action Short of a Strike. A large component of ASOS is working to rule, also known as working to contract. This means following our contracts to the letter, but not undertaking any additional duties that fall outside our contracts. This might include not working for more hours than we are being paid for (the average lecturer works around 20 unpaid hours a week), not attending meetings where our attendance is voluntary, and not covering for colleagues who are absent or were on strike. UCU's guidance on what ASOS means for university staff can be found here. (It's worth pointing out that the questions discussed at that link give an indication of how vague and ill-defined many of our contracts are.)

During ASOS, we will continue to teach, research, complete marking, set assignments, and answer emails. But all of these tasks might take a bit longer, because we will only be doing them while we're being paid for them. Some universities, including UCL, have threatened to withhold 100% of pay for staff taking part in ASOS, which is a tacit acknowledgment that it is impossible for us to do our jobs to a satisfactory standard in the time we're being paid for.

It is also possible that further strike action will take place this academic year. This has not been decided on, and it very much depends on the actions of the employers in response to the issues we have raised. We will keep you updated here with any details as they emerge.

We will continue updating the blog from time to time, but less frequently than we did during the strike. If you have any issues you would like us to cover - any questions you'd like us to answer, any themes you'd like us to discuss, or any stories you'd like to share - please email them to us, or leave a comment.

See you in class!

Case study: Outsourcing (IWGB)

We asked strikers to tell us their personal experiences of the themes of the strike. Below, we share the story of one of our colleagues in IWGB, which represents the cleaners, security guards and porters at UCL. You can read about their dispute with UCL management in this post, and by using the tag 'iwgb'. UCU members stand together with our colleagues in IWGB - come to our joint rally today at 10:30 am on Gower Street!

I feel marginalised, disregarded, mistreated and unimportant

Sadly, my experiences of outsourcing at UCL are negative to say the least. I’ve been working at UCL for 5 and a half years and have never received occupational sick pay, no parental leave and receive low pay. I feel marginalised, disregarded, mistreated and unimportant by the management of this university. The fact that they can’t treat me equally with the same rights and respect as directly employed staff (and refuse to truly acknowledge my appalling working conditions) shows just how unworthy they think I am. When I’m late for a few minutes my pay is deducted, however when they have no break relief officers I’m expected to be patient. It has happened on several occasions when I was late for 2 or 3 minutes to work and they deducted from my pay at the end of the month. And it has happened several times when no break relief officer came for my lunch break and I worked a full 12-hour shift without a single break. However, I was told to understand and be patient when I complained! When my wife gave birth in late 2017, I needed to take 2 weeks off to help with the new-born and the time when I most needed money, that’s when I received my lowest pay. I was paid an amount that was really, laughable. £240 for two weeks!! Yet, despite such awful conditions, UCL, which is one of the richest universities around and a global institution continues to happily tolerate this type of treatment, to which I refer as ‘cooperate slavery.’

UCU + IWGB

Why are we posting so early today? Because we're just so excited! Today, UCU and IWGB are striking together, with the aim of ending outsourcing, casualisation and inequality at UCL. You can read more about IWGB's campaign using the tag 'iwgb' and at the IWGB website.

We're also up with the lark as a reminder of the hours that many colleagues in IWGB have to keep. Have you ever seen cleaners working at Chandler House? If not, that's because they're in before the building opens and after the building closes, and usually not when students are around. On the other hand, you probably don't see too many different faces on the front desk. That's because our front desk staff work long shifts with few breaks. UCL couldn't exist without these workers, and they're fighting to have that fact recognised.

It's also the last day of UCU's current strike action, so we're excited to get back to our normal lives tomorrow. We've had a wonderful time on the pickets (really!), but we're looking forward to getting back to doing what we love - research, teaching and supporting the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

And so, to go out with a bang, IWGB and UCU are holding a joint rally today at 10:30 am at the Gower Street entrance. Bring your drums, your placards, and your dancing shoes, and join us in calling for real change at UCL and across the country. Stand together with your lecturers, security guards, cleaners and others to ask Provost Michael Arthur to start listening. The university united will never be defeated!

ANNOUNCEMENT
Weds 4Dec - Demo: Pay, Equality, Pensions, & End Outsourcing
Meet: UCL Main Gates, Gower Street, 10.30am
March to UUK offices@UCL_UCU & @iwgbucl Both on strike: ALL OUT!

JOIN US! LET'S MAKE LAST STRIKE DAY REALLY BIG ! pic.twitter.com/OxWDqAeAtV

— UCL-UCU (@UCL_UCU) December 2, 2019

Why support the strike? A student's view

We asked you to send us your stories of why you support the strike. Below we hear from one student who has seen the cost of their studies increase, while their value decreases. Remember: our working conditions are your learning conditions, so the changes we are fighting for will help students and staff alike.

Secure staff mean secure students

Early last year, in the final stretch of a BA, I came to campus early one morning to be confronted by a picket line across the main doors of my former university. Universities and Colleges Union members from across the country had voted for 14 days of strike action, to protest proposed changes to their pension by an upper management who, they felt, were aiming to shift the burden of pay from employer to employee. 

If this sounds familiar, it’s simply because it is. Fast forward a year and a half. I’m an MA student at UCL now, as well as a paid up member of UCU myself having taken a position at my former university, and there is a grim sense of deja vu about how the last few months have played out. Industrial action has been taking place in UK universities for almost two years now. And the infuriating thing is that in 2018, it worked. In April last year, Universities UK (who represent our universities) agreed to withdraw all the proposed changes, and an indepedent panel review was set up to bring the unions on board and construct a pension scheme which would satisfy all involved. But over the last year, those changes have been chipped away, bit by bit, until the dispute was back where it started. And now there are further concerns on the picket - the racial and gender inequality which has been totally unaddressed, an increasing reliance on fractional and casual work, the insane workloads.

So the question is : why should students care? It’s not our pensions, right? Well, at one point in history, universities were closer in shape to guilds. They were controlled by colleges, bodies of academics - both students and teachers and many who were both - who spent their time sharing knowledge. But that legacy has come perilously close to evaporating. Take my case. I’m a mature student; when I started school University tuition was free. When I first attended further education in 2010, it cost me £3,000 per year. The past four years have cost me £10,000 pounds each. My student debt is almost six figures once maintenance loans are factored in. Clearly, there is a hierarchy established here : as a student, I am less a member of a college now, and much more a consumer of a product. And yet, over these past years, the value of that tuition has plummeted. My previous faculty was a thriving research hub when I arrived. It has now been essentially dismantled, as it was not ‘profitable’. Less than half the staff who used to teach me remain at that university; they have left for greener pastures, for places where they can concentrate on their work rather than defending their existence. And all this has meant a total lack of morale on the part of remaining staff. I voted to strike this year. But anti-strike laws, which in Britain demand that unions reach a very high threshold of voting, have barred my workplace from taking part. People are just tired, fed up of fighting.

From my perspective, this is equal measures baffling and terrifying. On three fronts. Firstly, as a student, where is my money going? Where have they put the tens of thousands of pounds which I handed over? Secondly, as a fledgling academic, why would I want to sign up to a profession which so many seem to be fed up with? I want to work in academia because i love the subject; but if I have no time for the subject, then what is the point? And as an employee, why in hell would I want to sign up if my employers will refuse to see any value in my presence, and in fact will actively lie to meabout any kind of deeper engagement with my wellbeing?

This is why students should support the strike. Because our attendance is being slowly siphoned away from knowledge-sharing. Because the pensions and pay disputes are not distant unconcerning things. They are symptomatic of a wider lack of care in ‘the academy’ as to the value of its actual role (i.e., education and research). Our money is trickling more and more into obtuse procedural management; into shiny coffee tables and ‘open plan student mess rooms’; in short, it seems to be going into advertising. Universities in the United Kingdom are investing in politics and advertising at the cost of the product they exist to produce. They claim to address inequality and unfair pay, but do nothing of substance to address it. They are becoming far more minded with attracting profit than in producing the learning, the debate, the insight which made them world famous in the past. And at the end of the day, that means that not only are universities aiming to shift the burden of cost onto staff - they are aiming to shift it onto students as well. 

There’s only one day left of this industrial action. If you can, join the picket. But beyond this week : email the provost one more time, talk to fellow students about how these things affect us in a very direct way. Secure staff mean secure students.

What I would be doing if I weren't striking II

This is the second part in our series on how academic staff spend their time. Throughout the strike, we'll report from the frontline of unsustainable workloads. Have you ever wondered what a lecturer, a postdoc, a teaching fellow does outside of the classroom? Read on to find out...

The goal is to try and encourage equal representation on postgraduate programmes

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the teaching and research/supervision related work we are all engaged in. So I thought I would tell you about two other University-based projects I was working on over the week prior to the strike to give you a broader perspective on our roles:

I am a member of the PALS Career Development, Equality and Diversity (CDED) committee.  We meet termly and we are currently completing an Athena SWAN Award application (PALS currently has a silver and we’re looking to renew it).  I am responsible for the postgraduate teaching (PGT) section which involves data analysis and actions to improve gender equality.  PALS has 21 PGT programmes and on average these are made up of 80% females and 20% males. A few programmes diverge from this with either a more balanced representation of males and females or even lower percentages of males, but largely the programmes hover around this proportion. The goal is to try and encourage equal representation (yes, a difficult task – ideas welcome!). In addressing an action for the current submission, I have been interfacing with PGT programme directors and divisional management in proposing more inclusive PGT marketing materials across the division.  Currently PALS has 25 male videos and 13 female videos (locating these videos across the websites was a task on its own).  These efforts resulted in the commission of 34 “Meet the Researcher” videos to be made and linked to each of the PGT programme websites with an equal representation of male and female videos.  I am now at the stage of interfacing with the videographer and programme representatives to ensure a smooth completion of the project.

Another task I have been working on is establishing a BSc Experimental Linguistics strand on the BA international programme.  Many students have felt torn between choosing the BA Ling with the year abroad and the BSc with more training in experimental methods.  A BSc strand on the International Programme would more collectively satisfy some students’ needs. After the BA teaching committee informally discussed and approved the proposal going ahead, I completed a formal application. This involves interfacing with the external examiner, Study Abroad Team, and teaching support staff for input.  The next step will be putting it through to the faculty for approval.

I’m looking forward to getting back to these projects among others soon!

The university we want to work at

One thing we've been struck by over the last week is just how much fun we're having on the picket line. Sure, it's cold and wet. Yes, it's difficult when students (and occasionally staff) walk by without acknowledging us. But for the last week we have experienced the kind of university we want to work at.

We've spent our week engaging with students one-on-one, hearing about their personal experiences, their interests, their plans for the future. We've had hours to chat with colleagues about something other than how stressed and busy we all are. We've taught at our Strike School, not because we have to but because we're genuinely passionate about our research and we enjoy sharing that passion with others. What's more, we haven't had to worry about the endless admin that's now associated with teaching - taking registers on behalf of the UKBA, preparing assessments over a year in advance, worrying about how our teaching evaluations will affect future job applications... We've been listening to colleagues give talks on subjects that they're equally passionate about, and listening to our students discuss these topics intelligently and with genuine academic curiosity. We've forged new bonds with colleagues and students across the university, and experienced true collegiality, support and solidarity with the whole academic community.

This is why we decided to go into academia! So thank you all for helping to create this unique space, this vision of what universities should be, if only for these eight days. With your support, we're hoping to turn the tides of commercialisation in academia. Keep supporting the strike, keep emailing the Provost, and help make real progress in our fight for change.

Students and staff enjoy Lily Kahn's talk on the Linguistic Landscape of Greenlandic

What have unions ever done for us?

Some people who cross the picket line and choose to work during a strike do so because they don't support unions. That is, of course, their right: this is an issue that people dedicate a lot of thought to, especially when they are faced with the prospect of crossing a picket line staffed by their colleagues. It's a difficult choice to make, and no one does so lightly.

But it got us to thinking: why do we support the idea of unions? Why should anyone?

Firstly, unions fight for all workers. The rights and benefits that they win apply to everyone in the workplace, not just union members. Striking staff members are striking not just for themselves, but also for people who can't afford to strike (perhaps due to a casualised contract) and those who choose not to for other reasons.

Unions are also the only way for workers to bargain collectively with their employer. Without a union, employers would have to meet with each worker separately to try to understand how that worker feels about their job. Aside from the fact that such a situation is untenable in an institution like UCL (it has 13,360 employees!), this makes workers' concerns a lot easier to ignore, and leaves workers without much leverage to change conditions they don't like.

What kind of conditions are we talking about? Well here is a (non-exhaustive) list of some of the rights that unions have won for their workers over the years:

• weekends
• an end to child labour
• the ability to hold employers to their contracts, meaning a more equal relationship between worker and employer
• a safe workplace (that's not likely to injure you or make you sick)
• being able to negotiate as a group with the employer (known as 'collective bargaining')
• a minimum wage (in 1998 in the UK!!!)
• equal pay for equal work (e.g. for men and women doing the same job - in 1970 in the UK!)
• limits to working time, including the 40-hour work week
• paid time for holidays, including recent increases to annual leave entitlements
• lower pay inequality across the income spectrum, including in non-unionised workplaces
• employment protection rules, including rules about hiring and firing workers fairly 

If you've ever had a job (and if you didn't have a job as a child!), you've almost certainly benefitted from these rights, so go out and thank your closest union member. 

Whether you're a student or a staff member at UCL, you stand to gain from sustainable workloads at universities, an end to casualisation, an end to gender/race/disability pay gaps, an end to real-terms pay cuts, and protecting the USS pension scheme, and we're fighting for you. We're losing at least eight days of pay to make universities better places to work for everyone. So please, do what you can to support our strike: choose not to cross the picket line, write to the provost, donate to the fighting funds if you can. And come talk to us, about unions or anything else, at Strike School!

Week 2 of Strike School

We are pleased to announce the schedule for Week 2 of Strike School. We had fantastic turn-out last week, and heard some very interesting talks covering the theme of Language and Oppression from a number of angles. This week looks just as exciting, with two talks and a joint trip to the British Museum. All events start at 12:30. We look forward to seeing you there!

• Monday: 12:30 pm in the basement of the Harrison, Lily Kahn will present a talk on The Linguistic Landscape of Greenlandic.
• Tuesday: 12:30 pm in the basement of the Harrison, Sonya Yampolskaya will present a talk on The Suppression of Hebrew in the USSR.
• Wednesday: 12:30 pm, meet outside the Montague Place entrance to the British Museum for an LGBTQ object trail. The trail will take about an hour to complete and will be followed by discussion in the cafe.

Why I choose not to strike

Today we hear from someone who has made the difficult choice not to strike. Everyone who chooses not to strike has a different story, and many will have thought very hard about this decision. (For others, the choice is easy - they can't afford to strike.) This story has its roots in the history of industrial disputes in the UK, and gives an insight into how that history still affects us today.

They needed police escorts to get to work

It is a difficult decision to strike but it is equally difficult to choose to cross a picket line. Many of the issues raised in the current strike concern me greatly, but for personal reasons, I choose to continue to teach.  

I grew up in a then mining community in the East Midlands. My area is a small one - the Leicestershire & South Derbyshire coalfield, which is centred on Ashby de la Zouch, the small town which I'm from. Mining, both coal and clay, goes back to the 15th century and generations of my family, like many, made their living from it. 

In the early 20th century when my Great Grandfather Harold started work, pay and conditions were poor. Harold was a local legend - a footballer - but football didn't pay as much then so a trial and an offer from Fulham didn't come to anything as London doesn't have mines. By May 1926, the miners were on strike, along with workers from other Unions. The General Strike lasted from 3rd-12th May, but miners remained out until November before having to return to work to feed themselves and their families. However, many remained unemployed into the 1930s and those like Harold who still had jobs, were forced to accept longer hours & lower wages. 

Along with other families on the Crescent in Moira, my great grandparents lived in extreme poverty as a result; Harold and Hannah sold everything they could so that they could eat. Harold's football medals went, as did the Meccano set they had scrimped and saved to buy for my Grandad, Christopher, and his brother, Peter. They scavenged for coal on the slag heaps to be able to heat their small home. Though he passed the 11 plus, my Grandad didn't stay on at school; Hannah & Harold couldn't afford to buy the uniform. They almost certainly needed him to work to support the family. He left school at 14 and worked as a carpenter & carpet fitter. He had a talent for engineering: that Meccano set and education could have gone a long way. 

Fast forward to my childhood and the 1980s, when yet more strikes affected the mines. South Derbyshire miners voted to work but were targeted by fly-pickets. They needed police escorts to get to work. The strike's legacy was divided communities and arguably, continuing social inequality; many former mining communities are amongst the poorest in the UK. 

So I cross the picket line. My story isn't unique - there will be many who have stories like mine and who instead choose to strike. I respect that decision, but for me, for these particular issues, withdrawing teaching is something I choose not to do. I'd like to be more politically active - I'm a member of the Liberal Democrats but at the moment don't have time to actively campaign - so instead I take individual action where I can to support meaningful political dialogue and access to education, particularly in the Arts. 

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You can find out more about the fly pickets at Rawdon Colliery, Moira, and what it was like to cross the picket line: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-miners-strike-in-south-derbyshire-1984-online

Bias in teaching evaluations

This weekend's reading list focuses on an issue we've all had experience with, students and teachers alike.

It's getting towards the end of term, and you know what that means: student feedback forms for all of your lectures. But there's a few things you might not know about these teaching evaluations.

Firstly, the government intends to use your feedback on teaching (specifically in the form of the National Student Survey, or NSS) to allow universities to charge you higher tuition fees, through something called the Teaching Excellence Framework or TEF. Some people (including the British Medical Association) think this alone is a good enough reason to boycott the NSS, but we'll leave that up to you.

Secondly, your lecturers and TAs actually read the anonymous feedback you give, and take it to heart. This can be a very nice feeling, like when a student notices something we've worked hard to improve or appreciates the extra effort we've gone to, or a very bad feeling, like when a student makes negative comments about our appearance, our personality or our intelligence. In fact, almost every one of the countless articles online that advise lecturers on how to deal with student feedback has advice along the lines of 'don't take it personally'. We cherish every positive comment we get, often for years, but the negative ones can sting pretty badly.

Finally, and most importantly, it has been established that teaching evaluations are subject to all kinds of bias. Women and people of colour consistently receive worse feedback than their white, male colleagues. (Very little research is done on bias in teaching evaluations against non-heterosexual people, people with disabilities, and non-gender conforming people.) Because teaching evaluations are often used in decisions about who to hire or who to promote, bias in teaching evaluations can lead to fewer women and people of colour progressing in their careers.

That's why this topic relevant to this blog: bias in teaching evaluations contributes to pay inequalities and more time spent on zero-hours and casualised contracts for the victims of that bias. This in turn leads to lower pensions for women and people of colour, since the introduction of career-average pensions.

To be clear, we don't want to do away with teaching evaluations completely: they are a very useful tool for us to improve our teaching and evaluate changes we've made in our modules (this is especially true when we use them during the term, when there is still time to make changes). Additionally, hearing students' perspectives can let us see things in a new light, giving us fresh ideas and highlighting areas for improvement. We really welcome constructive feedback!

But we reject to their use as a tool for university administrators to evaluate and decide on the worth of teaching staff individually and departments as a whole. We think they are another brick in the wall of corporatization in higher education. And we certainly reject the idea of linking good feedback to higher tuition fees.

So what can you do to help? You can keep all this in mind the next time a teaching evaluation comes your way. You can query members UCL's Senior Management Team on what they're doing to address these issues. You can contact your local parliamentary candidates about what they intend to do about the TEF. And you can continue to support our strike to fight back against casualisation, pay inequality, and damage to our pensions.

You can read more about bias in teaching evaluations, and why it's bad for both students and teachers, at the following links.

• Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters
• Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students.
• Student Evaluations and Gendered Expectations: What We Can't Count Can Hurt Us
• Student Evaluations: Feared, Loathed, and Not Going Anywhere
• Student Evaluations, Grade Inflation, and Declining Student Effort
• Student Evaluations of Teaching are Not Valid 

Protest songs from around the world

It's Friday! To give our picketers a bit of inspiration (and inspired in turn by the great teach out at the Institute of Education), we're happy to present a series of protest songs and songs about social justice from around the world. Can you spot the theme?

Barricades (Yiddish)

The Victory of the Cloak-makers (Yiddish)

Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit (Greenlandic national anthem)

Still Here (Welsh)

And instead of a protest song in Kîîtharaka (a free pint to the first person to post one!) we offer a song in Quebec French, the focus of some discussion at Strike School:

Half-Mast (Quebec French)

We can't promise we'll have them memorised by Monday, but we'll be very impressed if you do. Think we've missed one? Add it in the comments below, or tweet us at @CHonStrike!

Case study: The new norm in academia

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone who has been stuck on short-term contracts for a decade. Contracts for post-docs can range from six months to a maximum of about three years, and every new contract may mean moving to a new city or even a new country. As you can imagine, this insecurity has a big impact on life decisions like buying a house or having a child, and can put huge pressures on relationships.

I am still not sure I’ll stay in academia

For a good while I thought my career path was rather unusual, and I was always (apologetically) highlighting this when describing my experience and career progress. It was only fairly recently that I started to realise that, actually, my path is the new norm for early career researchers. If I had known this from the beginning, I am not sure I’d still be in academia. I am still not sure I’ll stay.

I am one these new “career-postdocs”, ie. working on externally funded projects year after year (it’s 10 years this year since my PhD!). If I'm lucky, my contract will be for 3 years but sometimes I have had contracts for 6 months or less and tied over ends and beginnings of different projects with zero-hours teaching contracts. I have a partner who has a permanent position so I was never in a situation where I had serious concerns how to pay the next rent but there definitely have been times when this worry was not far off. The realities are now that:

1. there are very few early stage permanent positions available (e.g., lectureships); 
2. if there are some available, they often require moving to a new city, which 10-years-post-PhD can be an issue for many of us regarding family arrangements;
   
   and the most depressing part:


3. working conditions in higher education in the UK are getting so bad (see the other blog posts and the reasons for our strike) that, after witnessing my friends and colleagues making this step, I am now seriously doubting if it is all worth it. It’s not exactly a great feeling having studied for years, worked (both research and unpaid teaching) for fixed-term contracts, and then to end up in an open plan office (in a “call centre”-type environment) constantly having to justify your “value for money”. 

This is why I am striking today and standing out in the cold with my colleagues. We did not sign up for this and this situation needs to change. Universities should not be money-making business ventures - they should be working for students and staff.

What I would be doing if I weren't striking

This is the first part in our series on how academic staff spend their time. Throughout the strike, we'll report from the frontline of unsustainable workloads. Have you ever wondered what a lecturer, a postdoc, a teaching fellow does outside of the classroom? Read on to find out...

The list of what I haven't done feels longer

Having gone to bed last night at some point after 1 am (I was up late drafting a new paper), I'm up at 7 to start a new day. I glance through the newspaper headlines on my phone, jump in the shower and then sit down to some breakfast and emails. I spend a lot of my time dealing with emails. Today I have questions from students, a request for a letter of reference, agendas for meetings I have to attend, a new assignment to mark, and a whole lot of irrelevant junk. I deal with what I can and leave the rest for later - I have to glance through my lecture one more time before I'm out the door at 8:15.

I teach from 9 am until 11 am. I'm tired and my brain feels a bit slow, but I hope I get my point across. Some students look happy with the material, but others look decidedly confused - a pretty standard lecture! Afterwards, I spend about 15 minutes answering questions before running off to my first meeting of the day.

A student feels they are struggling in my class, and has asked to meet with me. I'm always happy to receive these requests - I love my subject area, and enjoy helping other people appreciate it too. We chat a bit about how the student is feeling and work through some problems together. At the end of the meeting, I think we've cleared up some issues, but I always feel like I could have helped more.

It's 12:15 and I check my emails again - more questions, more meetings, more junk. I fire off a couple of answers and then run to my next meeting.

A colleague from another department wants to hear about my experience collecting data, and is asking for my advice. I don't feel qualified to give anyone advice about anything! I am very much a sufferer of imposter syndrome. We have a nice chat and a cup of coffee, but I'm again left feeling like I could have helped more than I did.

At 2 pm I have a meeting with members of the department. I had been hoping to get some lunch before this meeting but ran out of time. With stomach grumbling, I listen to updates on UCL bureaucracy and the department's attempts to do good work despite it. Some updates are promising, but most will inevitably lead to more work: more boxes to check, more meetings to attend, and less time for research and teaching.

Late for my next meeting at 3, I rush back to my office and open up Skype. I'm meeting with a colleague in another department about a paper we're working on together. Unfortunately, neither of us has had much time to look at the data, and our deadline is coming up. We update each other briefly on what we've read, what we've written, and what we intend to write before the next time we meet, and we reassure each other that if we put in a few extra hours over the weekend we'll be in a better position next week. Then they have to go for their own departmental meeting.

It's 4 pm and time for lunch. I eat while going over my emails. I try to delete what I don't need, but am still left with over 30 that need answering. For about an hour and a half, I answer these, and do some Moodle admin (updating lecture slides, posting a new assignment, answering a few questions...). I know I've made progress, but these kinds of tasks feel never-ending. At 5:30 I decide to head home, but end up chatting with a colleague and generally putting off heading out into the cold and dark.

I'm home by 7 and am faced with a dilemma: do I get a start on my marking, or do I try to make some progress on the paper I'm working on? I decide that I don't quite feel up to the marking, so I read over what my colleague and I have written so far, and heat up some leftovers for dinner. (Note to self: need groceries!) After a while, it's clear I'm not going to make any more progress tonight, so I check back to my email. This was a mistake: I find more emails to answer, but don't have the energy to do so. Around 9 I decide to call it a day (well, maybe one more email...), and spend the rest of the evening on Netflix and the Guardian feeling like I should be working.

Objectively, I know I've been busy all day, and I know that I've done a lot. But the list of what I haven't done feels longer: marking, prepping my next class, finishing the article that's been sitting in my drafts folder for weeks, cleaning my bathroom, answering that text from an old friend... I constantly feel like the tide of 'to-do's is on the verge of sweeping me out to sea, and it's only by swimming as hard as I can against it that I'm able to stay within sight of the shore.

Right now it doesn't feel like things are going to get a lot better. That's one of the reasons I'm striking: these workloads are unsustainable, and they are going to push dedicated, able people like me away from working at a university. I can only hope that universities listen to their staff, and do what they can to allow us to work more effectively and more healthily.

Thank you, students!

We're three days in to the strike and we are simply overwhelmed with your support.

Students across UCL are supporting striking UCU workers, as evidenced by this open letter from Laws students, this mass rally, and this interview on Sky News.

But we think Chandler House students are the best. You've been bringing us coffee and baked goods. You've come down to the picket line to have a chat with us. You've been attending our Strike School events in numbers. You've been emailing the Provost. And you've been absolute stars in choosing not to cross the picket line.

We really appreciate each show of support. It's what keeps our hearts warm on the cold, wet picket line!

And there is even more good news: your support is making a real difference. After just two days of action, UCEA (the body that represents UL universities) agreed to consult with their members regarding casualisation, pay gaps and unsustainable workloads. Unfortunately, they are still unwilling to discuss our 20% real-terms fall in pay over the last decade. There's also no word from UUK (the body governing our pension scheme) that they intend to listen to us. That just means we need to shout louder!

Momentum is growing in this dispute, and our spirits are high. There are five more days of action, including teach-outs across UCL, the march for Planet, Pay & Pensions, and a day of joint strike action with our colleagues in IWGB on the 4th of December.

We are so excited to stand together with UCL's security, portering and cleaning staff in their fight to be brought in-house. Unlike us staid UCU staff, we've been warned that IWGB members know how to party! Here they are teaching us a lesson this morning:

Solidarity with @CHonStrike!@iwgbucl cleaners have your back!

Outsourced members and UCU academic and support staff are ready to strike together on 4th December!👊✊

Join us! pic.twitter.com/pD8YpQi8jt

— UCL-End Outsourcing!✊ (@iwgbucl) November 27, 2019

Make sure you come out on the 4th to support all striking staff, and get ready to make some noise!

Finally, we know student budgets are more stretched than ever, but if you possibly can we'd like to ask you to donate to UCU's fighting fund, and (especially) to IWGB's fighting fund. Fighting funds support striking workers, including by providing them with some strike pay, as strikers would otherwise be completely without pay for the time they are on strike (and possibly while participating in action short of a strike as well).

Thank you once again for all of your support!

Case study: Trickle down economics

We asked striking staff members to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone who teaches on a temporary part-time basis, which is especially common for people in the first few years after their PhD. Temporary and part-time lecturers often would like to move in to full-time permanent academic employment, but such jobs are extremely hard to come by due to the increase in casualisation in the UK higher education sector. Insecurity and lack of prospects force many bright, able people out of academia.

Part-time lecturers often have to take whatever work they are offered

The following experience left me angry and depressed, as it shows how part-time and temporary staff can be very badly treated by universities.

A two year position became available at another London college (not UCL). The position was to provide cover for a full time member of staff who had won research funding.

I was contacted by the head of the department about this position, and after discussing what was involved I asked about how much I would be paid. The answer was that I would be paid individually for each module taught, with the total pay for one year being about £9000. So over the two years, I would earn £18000. What I did not know during this conversation was that the college had been given around £100000 by the research funding body to cover the two years teaching. In other words, they intended to pay me just a fraction (less than 1/5) of the money that they had been given for the replacement teaching.

This reveals an attitude that can only be described as scandalous and contemptible. Part-time temporary staff, such as myself, work in situations of insecurity and financial uncertainty. The department in question wanted to take advantage of this, keeping most of the research money for itself, knowing that part-time lecturers often have to take whatever work they are offered. They showed no interest in supporting my academic career. Incidents like this do not happen in a vacuum. (I did not take up the position, and in the end the college was pressured by the funding body to change its offer.)

Case study: Zero-hours contracts

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone affected by casualisation, who is employed to teach on a zero-hours contract. Decisions taken at various levels of the university have made zero-hours contracts the easiest way for departments to employ people teaching on a non-permanent basis, and use of these contracts has soared in recent years. Many of your PGTAs, and some of your lecturers, are employed on such contracts.

I had no desk and no access to the computer system

When I started working on a zero-hour contract, I had no desk and no access to the computer system, printing or copying facilities, which were absolutely necessary for me to do my job, as I had to put together and print out handouts for most of my classes. Moreover, some of the classes required access to computers. As a result, I had to use the desk and the passwords for computers, printers and copiers that a PhD student kindly shared with me. However, one day an email was sent out with a warning that passwords should not be shared with anyone, after which I could no longer use the student’s details. It was a colleague at the department who eventually helped me get my own access to computers and printers/copiers.

As I had no desk, I had to meet with students in common spaces, which was not optimal as there were other people around us talking loudly and distracting us. After teaching for one term, I was offered by a colleague to share an office with them, which had a free desk. This was a great improvement. However, as my name was not displayed next to the office door, students had problems finding me. Part of my job was to meet with students and guide them in their preparation for presentations, which added to their overall grade. I did my best to inform the students which room I was using. However, the students still had problems finding me, as they were searching for an office with my name on (as they would normally do).


During a term break, I went to the office I was using to collect some of my books only to discover that someone else was already using my desk, with all of my stuff displaced. When I asked around what was going on, I was told that the desk was now being used by someone on a proper [non-zero hours] contract. I was told that because there were several people now working on proper contracts at the department, there was no room for someone like me and that I could only use a hotdesk that was there to be shared by me and four other people in the same position as me. Actually, this was more than what the department had to do: only employees of UCL are entitled to desk space, and zero-hours contract workers aren't entitled to any space at all. None of the above made it easy for me to do my job and was also morally discouraging. Everyone at the department - academic and administrative staff - have been helpful and supportive, but obviously they are not the ones who can or should sort out the problems created by the use of zero-hours contracts.

What are we hoping to accomplish?

You might agree with UCU that casualisation, falling pay, unsustainable workloads, pay inequality, and rising pension costs are bad, but maybe you think there's not much to be done about them. Isn't life getting harder for everyone? And how exactly are universities supposed to bring about change in areas like workloads or pay inequality?

In other words, what exactly does UCU want to change?

Firstly, UCU is asking UCEA, the body that represents universities in the UK, to sit down and have a grown-up conversation about what can actually be done. This morning at Bentham House, representatives from UCU and UCEA are meeting to talk about the Four Fights dispute. UCEA have said the talks are 'without pre-conditions'... except they refuse to talk about pay! If universities are not willing to talk about pay (including pay inequality for women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities, as well as falling real-terms pay), how do they expect to do anything about addressing these issues? If you want to ask employers this question, you can join the demonstration from 9:30 at the main entrance of Friends Meeting House (near Euston).

Here is the concrete action UCU is asking for on each of the issues:

• Pensions: 'No detriment'. This means that any changes to the pension scheme should not result in higher costs to members, or in lower pension payments. We don't think this is asking for a lot!
• Casualisation: 'Stamp out casualisation.' Universities are insisting that casualisation is a local issue - i.e. an issue that affect each university differently. This clearly misses the bigger picture. However, UCU are engaging individual universities in the fight on casualisation. Their demands include ensuring that all hourly-paid teaching staff (which includes most of your PGTAs as well as some Teaching Fellows and other teaching staff) to be employed on a (non-zero-hours) contract. The problem of casualisation goes beyond teaching staff, and UCU are committed to ending the gig economy in higher education. Again, we don't think it's a lot to ask that staff at universities, where students are paying between £9250 and £34,660, should be entitled to benefits like sick pay and maternity leave. 
• Pay inequality: 'Equal pay for equal work.' What year is it? 1952? Oh no, wait, it's 2019 and women, people from BAME backgrounds and people with disabilities are still getting paid less than their white, male, able-bodied colleagues. UCU is calling for meaningful action on this disgraceful inequality. UCEA is not willing to talk about pay. 
• Unsustainable workloads: 'An end to occupational stress and bullying.' UCU wants all of the work we do - administrative, pastoral, teaching-related, supervisory, research-related - to be fairly counted, and for workloads to be managed in a fair way. The fact that universities including UCL are threatening to withhold 100% of pay for employees who are working to rule by working a standard 36.5 hour week demonstrates that they know it is impossible for us to complete our contracted tasks in that time. 
• Falling pay: 'A real-terms pay rise'. UCU is asking for a pay rise of RPI+3%, or a minimum increase of £3,349 (whichever is greater). This is to address the fact that, over the last decade, our pay has fallen by 20%. At the same time, average rents in London have risen by as much as 30%. But not everyone is worse off - university Vice-Chancellors' pay (including UCL Provost Michael Arthur) rose by 13% between 2009 and 2017. Students are paying more fees than ever - where is your money going? 

More detail on UCU's demands can be found in this document from UCU.

Maybe you agree that things should change, but think that all these demands will just cost too much? UCL's UCU branch have shown that addressing issues with the USS pension will leave plenty of money left over to address the other demands (follow the link to the slides). UUK are currently paying to devalue our pensions!

UCL UCU are not alone. The Guardian's recent editorial shows that universities can and should pay to fix these problems. UCU shows that universities' income, surpluses and reserves are rising. Even the Vice-Chancellor of Essex University agrees that universities can pay more!

We hope you agree that our demands are not unreasonable. If so, we'd ask you to show your support however you can. 

Case study: Casualisation

Welcome to our series on the personal stories of staff members in the department. You can follow this series with the tag 'your stories'. We'll be updating daily with more stories of why we're striking, so make sure you check back regularly.

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the five fights have affected them. Below, we hear from someone affected by casualisation, who fell between the cracks of several different zero-hours contracts. Decisions taken at various levels of the university have made zero-hours contracts the easiest way for departments to employ people teaching on a non-permanent basis, and use of these contracts has soared in recent years. Many of your PGTAs, and some of your lecturers, are employed on such contracts.

I constantly felt like a second class citizen

As a default, someone working at UCL on a zero-hours contract is not entitled to the following:

• a regular paycheque
• sick pay
• parental leave, including maternity leave
• card access to UCL buildings
• access to room-booking systems
• off-site access to library e-resources (e.g. journals, e-books)
• progression up the pay scales or redeployment opportunities
• access to the UCL software database, which allows staff members access to software for which UCL has bought licenses, including software that is crucial for research purposes

Additionally, there are often problems accessing the holiday pay to which they are legally entitled (because each department manages holiday pay for zero-hours workers differently), and the way that UCL manages pensions essentially makes it impossible for someone on an irregular zero-hours contract to qualify to be enrolled in the pension scheme.

In order to make ends meet, I took a few different positions at UCL, each of which was managed through a separate zero-hours contract. Some of these contracts paid monthly, while others paid twice a year. Imagine only receiving a paycheque twice a year! This situation meant that I had to spend many (unpaid) hours each month, just checking that I was getting paid for the work I had done and for the holiday pay to which I was entitled. This task is made more complicated because UCL pays one month in arrears, so I would have to work out at the beginning of, say, May whether I had gotten paid for the work I did in March. Mistakes often happened: when I didn't get paid enough, I had to check the following month that the shortfall had been paid on top of what I would normally have gotten, and when I got paid too much, UCL would claw it back by paying me less the following month. This financial uncertainty meant that I had to put several life decisions on hold, because I didn't know whether I would have the cashflow to, say, move house or attend a friend's wedding. 

Additionally, I constantly felt like a second class citizen. One day, on my way in to teach a lecture, my ID card stopped letting me in to buildings. It turned out that my visitor access had lapsed. This would not have happened to someone on an employment contract. The truth hit me that, despite the fact that I was teaching classes, UCL still considered me only a 'visitor' - not a part of the academic community. I also had problems with library access for the same reasons. The department was able to help me work around these problems, but the problems were a constant reminder that I didn't belong at UCL, and it made me feel that my contributions were not as valued as someone with a non-zero-hours contract. 

The fact is that I shouldn't have to rely on the help of sympathetic faculty, admin, library, finance AND security staff in order to do the job that UCL needs me to do and to get fairly remunerated for it. The fact that I personally was able to find a way around these problems does not mean that the situation is acceptable: people who are less informed about their rights, and less able to push for those rights, are currently being exploited throughout UCL. We need to fight back against the rise in casualisation, and push for an end to zero-hours contracts for teaching staff at universities. That's why I'm striking. 

And we're off!

We were hoping it wouldn't come to this, but here we go. UCU at UCL and 59 other universities across the country are now officially on strike. You can read more about what this means for you, and how to support us elsewhere on the blog.

If you have to cross the picket line between now and the end of the day on Dec. 4th, make sure you give your lecturers a wave and tell them you're supporting them.

If you won't be crossing the picket line, you are welcome to join picketing staff members outside of Chandler House between 8 am and 12 pm every day. We also hope to see you at our Strike School - make sure you bring a phone or tablet with 3/4G (or a laptop with the material already downloaded), so you can access talk slides and other materials! The first talk's slides are already up.

To keep up to date with strike news and stories, check the blog regularly, keep an eye on your UCL email, and follow us on Twitter (@CHonStrike).

Two more reminders: 1) don't forget to register to vote if you're eligible - you have one day left, and 2) keep emailing UCL Provost Michael Arthur to let him know that you support striking workers.

Finally, we know it's not very British to talk about money, but if you want to donate to a good cause, you can donate to UCU's fighting fund, and/or to IWGB's fighting fund. Fighting funds support striking workers, including by providing them with some strike pay, as strikers would otherwise be completely without pay for the time they are on strike (and possibly while participating in action short of a strike as well).

Tell us your story

We're going to be taking a break over the weekend (washing our thermals in preparation for the picket line on Monday!), but we'll be back Monday morning with stories from the front lines of casualisation, falling pay, unsustainable workloads, pay inequality, and the pension dispute.

What's that you say? Your classes are cancelled next week so you don't have any homework? We've got you covered. First of all, you can read up on sexism and language on our reading list. Then, you can make a note of our Strike School activities and start thinking up some discussion questions to stump your lecturers. Finally, you can tell us why and how you're supporting the strike, by sending us an email. We want to publish students' stories as well as staff, so tell us yours!

Teach-outs aplenty

We are happy to announce that the schedule for Week 1 of our Strike School is now available on the Strike School page.

But what do you do if you've got an itch for learning that the Strike School won't scratch? Fear not, our colleagues at the Institute of Education over on Bedford Way have a full programme of morning activities you can attend in addition to the Chandler House Strike School!

Not only that, but you can follow @UCL_UCU on Twitter as they report on all teach-outs around the university.

PICKET LINE TEACH- OUTS AND ACTIVITIES

More actions and events will be added so do please come along and support the strike

ALL WELCOME! –

20 Bedford Way (CONCOURSE)

Monday 25th November

10:00 Pensions, neoliberalism and the future of the university

John Yandell (IOE)

10:30 Chilean Protests 2019: "It's not 30 pesos it's 30 years".

Felipe Acuña and the Chilean students’ society

11.00 Transformations in South African Universities; Lessons for our Strike

Elaine Unterhalter (IOE)

Tuesday 26th November

10:00 Dogs Against neo-liberalism (back by popular demand)

Morris (with Adam Unwin)

10.30 Temporalities of education and why we all need to slow down

Cathy Elliott, UCL

11:00 Education and Social Conflict in Hong Kong

Bob Adamson (The Education University of Hong Kong)

Wednesday 27th November

10:00-12.00 Intergenerational solidarity - Protest songs from three generations

Rebecca O’Connell (IOE)

Retired members and students are especially welcome to join the picket on the IOE concourse from 10am-12pm on Weds 27 November to demonstrate and celebrate intergenerational solidarity through collectively singing protest songs from three generations. Song book and backing track provided.

10.30 Intergenerational Solidarity and Intergenerational Justice

Judith Suissa (IOE)

Thursday 28th November

10.00 Insecurity, Precarious Employment and Casualisation

Bella Malins (UCL UCU anti-casualisation officer)

11:00 What can we learn about global education from historical and global policy studies of the OECD?

Christian Ydesen (Aalborg University, Denmark)

Friday 29th November

#ClimateStrike: Planet, Pay and Pensions - March and Rally

Come and join us on the concourse for banner and placard making

Monday 2nd December

10:00 Pay and Pay-Gaps in Universities

Alex Bryson (IOE)

11.00 Students and Global Protest Movements

Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (IOE)

Tuesday 3rd December

10.00 Forum Theatre

Theo Bryer (IOE), Chris Routh (IOE) and others t.b.c

11.00 Marx walking tour - details to follow

Sandy Leaton Gray (IOE) Mary Richardson (IOE) and Arthur Chapman (IOE)

Come and join us for the anti-Trump demo and activities in support of migrants and refugees

Wednesday 4th December

10.00 Poetry (and other) Readings

Do you have a favourite poem or piece of literature related to our strike themes? Come and share it!


Solidarity with outsourced workers – support the IWGB strike

Language and sexism reading list

Happy Friday! To whet your appetites for our Strike School next week, and to keep you busy over the weekend, we are happy to present our first reading list, on language and sexism. Below you'll find a few papers, books and links from fields represented in Chandler House to get you thinking about some topics you wouldn't normally hear about in class. Take a look, and then come discuss with striking staff on the picket lines or at our Strike School!

We hope to release a number of themed reading lists throughout the strike. If you have an idea for a reading list, send it along to our email.

• Chao, Monika, and Julia Bursten. "Heard but misunderstood: Understanding negative reactions to female vocal fry." m.s. (2016). 
• Hancock, Adrienne B., Holly Wilder Stutts, and Annie Bass. “Perceptions of Gender and Femininity Based on Language: Implications for Transgender Communication Therapy.” Language and Speech 58, no. 3 (2015): 315–33. doi:10.1177/0023830914549084. 
• Kahn, Lynda G. "Sexism in Everyday Speech." Social Work 20, no. 1 (1975): 65-67. www.jstor.org/stable/23711988. 
• Litosseliti, Lia and Claire Leadbeater. "Speech and language therapy/pathology: Perspectives on a gendered profession." International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 48 (2013): 90-101. doi:10.1111/j.1460-6984.2012.00188.x
• Macaulay, Monica, and Colleen Brice. "Don't touch my projectile: Gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples." Language 73, no. 4 (1997): 798-825. doi:10.2307/417327. 
• Oman-Reagan, Michael. "Sexism in the Oxford Dictionary of English." medium.com (2016). 
• Slater, Anne & Saul Feinman. "Gender and the phonology of North American first names." Sex Roles 13, no. 7-8 (1985): 429-440. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287953

You might also be interested in a This American Life segment on vocal fry. 

News roundup: IWGB strike

With the news that IWGB workers at UCL will hold another day of strike action on the 4th of December (the last day of the current UCU strike action), we present a roundup of how the first day went. We look forward to standing together with our colleagues in security, cleaning and portering on the 4th!

The Independent (read the full article for a shocking description of Sodexo's attempt to scan their workers' fingerprints to monitor their working time - yes, this was proposed at UCL!)

iNews

The Tab

Strike school announced

To complement our picket line, Chandler House staff are organising a Strike School, and we want you all to come along. The Strike School will involve a number of teach-outs, and some group trips to local sites. The final schedule will be announced over the next day or two, but you can keep an eye on developments on our Strike School page.

Teach-ins are a form of protest that trace their origins to anti-Vietnam War protests in the USA in the 1960s. They're an opportunity to educate each other about issues relating to our protest, in an informal setting. They're are also meant to be participatory, so come prepared for discussion!

We're holding teach-outs (rather than teach-ins), because we're choosing not to cross the picket line. Teach-outs are a way for striking staff members to connect with students: we love sharing knowledge and ideas, we just don't love being exploited for it! The theme of our teach-outs is 'languages under threat'. We'll feature talks and discussions on minority languages like Greenlandic, Kîîtharaka, Welsh and Yiddish, exploring the threats such languages face and how they are responding to them.

But the Strike School doesn't end there. We'll also have events like a participatory reading of Harold Pinter's play "Mountain Language" (followed by discussion in the pub) and an LGBTQ-themed trip to the British Museum.

The Strike School will also give you a chance to chat with striking staff members in a less formal setting. We appreciate the support you show by attending Strike School events, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the issues under discussion.

All events start between 12:30 and 1 pm, in the neighbourhood of Chandler House. Everyone is welcome, so bring a friend (even if they're not based in Chandler House!) and spread the word - we want to see as many of your smiling faces as possible!

What is a zero-hours contract?

A rise in the use of zero-hours contract is one symptom of rising casualisation in higher education, which is one of the targets of the current strike. Zero-hours contracts are a type of employment contract where the employer is not required to offer a minimum number of hours to the worker (note that people employed on zero-hours contracts are not legally considered employees, but merely workers), and the worker is not required to work a minimum number of hours. Zero-hours contracts can be useful when flexibility is required or desired on both sides of the employer-worker relationship, such as when a student wants to pick up a few hours here and there working at a shop during their busy periods, or a stay-at-home parent wants to earn a bit of extra money doing the filing for an office that sometimes gets behind.

Zero-hours contracts are clearly not suitable for work that has fixed hours, and where the worker can't say no to the hours offered. It may therefore come as a surprise to you to learn that most of your PGTAs and some of your lecturers are employed on zero-hours contracts. Despite the fact that teaching hours are fixed, and a TA or lecturer can't just decide to take a week off, decisions made at various levels of UCL have led to a situation where zero-hours contracts are often the easiest way for departments to employ non-permanent teaching staff like PGTAs and sabbatical cover. Many of these people teach for several years, but nonetheless don't have any job security or access to the benefits that people formally employed at UCL enjoy. That's why UCU is asking universities to stamp out zero-hours and other casual contracts.

You can read about the laws around zero-hours contracts here.

For personal stories of people affected by casualisation, see some of the posts on this blog (you can filter them using labels), as well as the following news stories:

Temporary work at £9 an hour. No wonder lecturers are balloting to strike The Guardian

University lecturers 'anxious' over casual contracts, union says BBC

Universities accused of 'importing Sports Direct model' for lecturers' pay The Guardian

This report from Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation:

‘I am a single mum. I don't feel like I can be as competitive as other people’: experiences of precariously employed staff at UK universities

And this report on the issue from the University and College Union:

Counting the costs of casualisation in higher education UCU

What it costs us to strike

Did you know that your lecturers will lose money when they are on strike? A recent email from UCL management told staff:

"Please use the online reporting system to declare if you are taking part in the strike or “action short of strike” (or both). Staff who are not members of UCU and who choose not to cross the picket line should also report their absence in this way. In this instance your absence will be treated as unauthorised and a payroll deduction will be made as if you were on strike."

A newly-appointed lecturer will lose at least £1000

In other words, staff will not be paid for the time they are on strike. This should tell you how strongly we feel about the dispute: we are losing eight days of pay in order to take part in this action. For a newly-appointed lecturer, this will cost them at least £1000; senior lecturers and professors will lose a lot more.

But this email goes even further: UCL are threatening to dock pay from staff members who are taking part in action short of a strike, by working strictly to their contract. This means that staff who work the full 36.5 hours for which they are paid (but refuse to work beyond this) stand to lose all of their pay.

There are 169 academic members of staff listed on the Psychology and Language Sciences divisional website. Let's assume that half of them decide to strike. If all of them were employed as newly-appointed lecturers (a very conservative assumption - many are paid much more!), UCL would refuse to pay out a massive £84,500 over the course of the eight days of strike action. Multiplied across all UCL departments, the amount of withheld pay will easily reach into the millions of pounds. Now multiply that across the 60 universities taking place in this strike action...

What do you think UCL and the other universities are going to do with this money? How would you spend this money? UCL Provost Michael Arthur (who was paid £368,000 in 2017-18) might be interested to hear your thoughts.