Strike - Spring 2020 - where we stand

Echoing something we said in the fall: We were hoping it wouldn't come this - but here we are. The University and College Union has called 14 days of strikes at 74 universities across the United Kingdom. That's up from 59 universities in the fall. You can read more about what this means for you, and how to support us elsewhere on the blog.

We are back fighting over the same four issues that were already at the heart of the strike in the fall:

• Pensions
• Pay
• Pay equality
• Working conditions and casualization

You can read about the issues on the blog here. Unfortunately, the employers' organisations have virtually not shifted their position on these issues. Despite the threat of strikes and in the knowledge of the disruption that strikes would bring to your education, the universities have refused to make a new offer to the union over pay and pensions. As a result, we are still faced with a pay offer below inflation - a de facto pay cut. We are still faced with a detrimental deal on our pensions. We are still faced with pay inequality for gender and race, with casualisation and worsening working conditions. 

Unless the universities shift their position quickly, this means that UCL will be on strike on the following dates:

• Monday Feb 24 to Wednesday Feb 26
• Monday March 2 to Thursday March 5
• Monday March 9 to Friday March 13
• Thursday March 19 to Friday March 20

We hope that you will support the strike, our cause, and that you will email the provost to record your support and your annoyance at the disruption to your education. You can use the union's template here. 

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!

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!

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!

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

Why are we striking?

The University and College Union (UCU) is currently engaged in two disputes: one over governance of our pensions, and one over pay and equality (in particular, we want to address workloads; insecurity; real-terms cuts to salaries; and lack of progress on gender, race and disability equality. UCU members at 60 universities nationwide intend to strike starting on the 25th of November.

These two disputes are at the heart of two legally separate strike actions that are running concurrently.  Below you'll find some information on each of these disputes.

1) Pensions

In 2018, UCU completed 14 days of strike action over changes to members' pensions. Employers had previously changed the pension scheme to the detriment of members - lecturers lost the equivalent of 13% of their salaries due to changes imposed from 2011 onwards. Employers were hoping to move the pension from a defined benefit scheme (where your pension payments are guaranteed) to a defined contributions scheme (where your pension payments depend on how the investments do). In other words, employers wanted to open up pensions to a lot more risk, while asking members of the pension scheme to pay more out of their salaries. At the same time, staff were told that the pension scheme was in deficit; this was not true

UCU balloted for strike action, which members supported. When university management bodies refused to negotiate in good faith, your lecturers picketed for hours in sub-zero temperatures and snow. Throughout the UK, an estimated 42,000 staff went on strike with 575,000 teaching hours being lost.We received a huge amount of support from students and colleagues, and the end result was that the employers came back to the negotiating table, and both sides agreed to a panel (the JEP) to help make decisions in the future.

As a result of changes to the pension scheme the employers are currently proposing, each member stands to lose £240,000 in retirement. Pension members no longer trust that the people managing the pension scheme have their best interests at heart, and do not want to pay more for a pension that will pay them less.

Pensions are not a nice bonus for us - they are an integral part of the pay package we receive for the jobs we do. Cutting pensions, opening them up to risk, or asking us to pay more for them, is equivalent to reducing our pay. This is why we are fighting to protect them.

2) Four fights, one voice

UCU members are frustrated that no progress is being made on four other key issues that affect them. These are issues of basic fairness: between men and women, young and old, white and BAME. We are fighting for a fairer university for all.

a) Pay inequality

• Black academic staff earn 12-13% less than white colleagues of the same gender and experience
• Women in UK universities are paid on average 15% less than their male counterparts
• In many universities, these trends are actually worsening

b) Job insecurity

• Large numbers of staff are employed on fixed-term (non-permanent) contracts, casual contracts, and zero-hours contracts. Many of these staff are paid hourly.
• Hourly paid staff can sometimes end up earning less than minimum wage
• Many hourly paid staff aren’t paid for the time they spend giving feedback to students, marking essays or preparing seminars

c) Rising workloads

• The average academic works 55 hours a week, and is paid for 37.5

d) Pay deflation

• The value of pay in higher education has fallen by around 20% since 2009
• Falling pay also affects our pensions: changes to the pension scheme made in recent years ensure that our pensions are based on a career average salary, so less pay now means less pension later
• Vice-chancellors' (university bosses') pay is rising, while staff pay is falling

It’s all connected – the same reason so many people work insecure, badly paid jobs is the same reason why university staff pay and conditions are deteriorating. 

See below for some links between these two disputes:

A glossary of terms

There are a lot of initialisms and new terms involved in this industrial action. Here is a list of some of the most important.

JEP: Joint Expert Panel (a panel composed of representatives from employers and the union, as a response to the 2018 strike action. Their role is to report on and make decisions about the future of the USS pension scheme)

NUS: National Union of Students (the body representing university students throughout the country)

UCEA: Universities and Colleges Employers Association (the body that represents university management)

UCU: University and College Union (your lecturers' and librarians' union)

USS: Universities Superannuation Scheme (your lecturers' and librarians' pension)

UUK: Universities United Kingdom (the body representing employers participating in the USS pension scheme)

What is a strike?

In the simplest terms, a strike is when a group of workers refuse to work. This usually happens because the workers are unhappy with some aspect of their job: pay, working conditions, concerns about safety, etc., and the problem can't be resolved by negotiating with their employer. Strikes can be very local, or very large - a general strike, for instance, happens when workers in a whole city or even country refuse to work. Strikes are a way of pressuring employers to listen to their employees' grievances and to negotiate with them.

Many of the employment rights we enjoy today have come about because of strike action. The legal requirement to pay men and women equally for the same work, the eight-hour work day, and increases in wages have all been direct results of strikes. You can read more about some of these campaigns on the Independent and at Striking Women.

Trade unions are bodies that represent workers in a given field or at a particular employer. Most staff at UCL are represented by one of four unions: the University and College Union (UCU), which represents academic staff and librarians - this is the union whose strike action we are concentrating on; Unison, which represents administrative staff and other public service workers; Unite, which represents technical staff; and the IWGB which represents security guards, cleaners, porters and Sodexo workers (these workers are not technically employed by UCL, and are engaged in their own industrial action to change that situation). Additionally, students at UCL are represented both by the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Students' Union, UCL.

Unions represent the interests of their members, which will vary from union to union and from workplace to workplace. For instance, the Students' Union, UCL recently organised a very successful rent strike, where they pushed for better living conditions and increases to rent bursaries, among other grievances. IWGB workers at UCL are currently pushing to be 'insourced', or made formal employees of UCL, in order to improve benefits like sick leave, parental leave and pensions. UCU members at UCL, which includes many of your lecturers and library staff, are striking over five main issues: detrimental changes to their pensions, increased casualisation, falling pay, the gender and ethnicity gap and unsafe workloads.

Strikes can take many forms, including work-to-rule (where workers work to the letter of their contracts), sit-down strikes (where workers occupy their place of work without actually working), and walk-outs (where workers walk out of their place of work and refuse to return). More information can be found on Wikipedia.

This strike will involve both a picket line and, later, work-to-rule. A picket line is a form of protest where striking workers gather outside of their place of work, often holding signs and chanting or singing songs. This form of protest raises awareness of the dispute outside of the place of work. A picket line is also a symbolic barrier, which can serve to discourage other people from entering the place of work ('crossing the picket line'). One way to support striking workers is to refuse to cross their picket line. UCU members intend to picket all UCL entrances during the strike. They won't prevent you from entering if you choose to do so, but they will appreciate your support in choosing not to cross the picket line.