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.