What do we spend our time doing?

This is the third 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? Here is a look at one linguist's typical weekly to-do list (with commentary):

I am lucky if I spend one hour a week reading something new.

Emails:  Right now, there are over 100 emails in my inbox that require some sort of action or significant response. I received the oldest of these two years ago (!). The list is ever-growing. On a typical day, 30 new emails needing a response or action will be added. If I spend just 2 minutes on each email on average, it takes an hour of my day just to keep from falling further behind (though many take more than 2 minutes).

Teaching:  This is my light term, so I am only in the classroom teaching 3 hours per week. In my heavy term, it would be 8 hours per week. A lecture I have taught before takes 1-2 hours to prepare; a new one takes about a full working day to prepare.

Student projects:  I need to urgently help students prepare experiments for their projects, else they won't finish in time. I prioritise this over my own research. In the past, I have had up to 12 student projects to supervise at one time (I try to meet with each student an hour every two weeks), though at the moment I have fewer.

Student meetings:  On average, I spend around 6 hours per week in meetings with students (at certain times of year, this will be more like 10-12 hours), including PhD students, students in my modules, students I am supervising, students in the degree programme I run, personal tutees, academic misconduct panels, prospective students, etc. 

PhD supervision: I normally meet my PhD student on a weekly basis. Right now, they are waiting on my feedback on a draft of a thesis chapter. This will take at least a full working day to do properly.

Programme administration:  I am in charge of a degree programme, which carries its own workload. Right now, we are in the midst of the annual review (mandatory for every degree programme). We review survey data (NSS, PTES, etc.), other student feedback, and Faculty priorities, and develop a detailed plan of programme changes for the next year. The process and expectations for the review change each year, so each year's review requires significant work. Throughout the year, each week contains several hours of additional work related to programme administration, though the tasks vary from week to week (admin meetings, emails, open days, talking to prospective students, giving tours, admissions decisions, plagiarism cases, handling extenuating circumstances cases, meeting with students who are struggling, etc.). 

Administrative meetings:  Often at least one admin meeting occurs in a given week, including departmental staff meetings, departmental teaching committee meetings, divisional teaching committee meetings, faculty teaching committee meetings, departmental exam board meetings, divisional exam board meetings, faculty exam board meetings, SSCC meetings, etc. These last between 1 and 2 hours. In many cases, the content of these different meetings largely overlaps, but we are usually expected to attend them all, so we tend to hear the same information many times.

Marking: Between September and May, there is almost always some amount of marking (or second marking) waiting to be done. A standard written assignment will take around 20-25 minutes to mark per student (including giving proper feedback). More in-depth essays take closer to an hour per student. Dissertations take well over an hour per student. Right now, I have only a little marking to do, but at some points in the year, I have 120 essays to mark at a time in the span of a few weeks. Marking 120 essays in three weeks takes up almost my entire workload for those weeks, even if I take no breaks and do zero other work during that time period (which is impossible, of course). Those periods are very stressful.

Mandatory surveys, training, etc.:  We seem to live in an age of endless surveys -- as students surely also feel -- and staff are not immune from this. Usually, the claim is that they take 'only 5 minutes', but it tends to be more like 15. Every part of the university seems to have its own survey now; a couple are sitting in my inbox right now. A few times a year, there is mandatory training that needs to occur. These are almost always important issues, so I understand the need to do them, but they are time-consuming nonetheless.

Recommendation letters:  I need to submit recommendation letters for half a dozen students in the coming few weeks. One of these students notified me less than a week ago, but I will fit them in. One student is applying to 8 universities. A letter takes me about an hour to write, and each application takes about 10 minutes once I already have a letter written (they ask for extra information for each students than just the letter itself). Overall, I write dozens of letters each year.

Reviews:  I have two reviews to do for journals. We get no pay or recognition for these (even though many journals make lots of profit for publishers), but the peer review process is important for the field. It takes me about a full working day to do a decent review. One of these is overdue and the editor has started to pester me about it. What can I put off to get this done?

Grant writing:  The university places high priority on securing external grant funding. I am aiming to submit two grant proposals in the coming year. A grant proposal takes weeks of work to put together. An unsuccessful proposal (the vast majority of them are unsuccessful) gets no credit in our workload, as if the work was not done at all. Only successful ones are acknowledged. I usually only get around to working on these on the weekend.

Research:  I have 8 ongoing research projects at various stages. One of these projects started 7(!) years ago, and I have still not been able to finish it. I am meant to spend 40% of my work time working on research, but I feel lucky to get more than a couple of hours during the work week. Mostly, if I want to have solid time to work on research, I have to spend my evenings and weekends. For academic staff, research (and grant funding) is by far the most important aspect of our work when it comes to professional advancement, but I spend the least time on it because other tasks (students, teaching, administration) end up taking priority.

(Self-)Marketing:  In today's academic world, it is not enough to just output quality research; you are also expected to market yourself (and your research, and the field) to the world. These activities include things like maintaining a personal website, maintaining other profiles (e.g., Google scholar), maintaining social media accounts, contributing to blogs, giving conference and (especially) invited talks around the world, volunteering time to teach summer schools (usually without pay), seeking out media opportunities, contributing to initiatives promoting the field, talking about the field in schools, volunteering for national societies, etc. Most of these things are considered extra-curricular, to be done in our 'spare' time. I do some of these, but find it overwhelming to do others. I am regularly chided by some colleagues for not maintaining an active Twitter account. 

Professional development and learning:  When I was a student, I had the view that academics spent a lot of time reading books and articles, thinking, and using that knowledge to generate new ideas. In practice, I am lucky if I spend one hour a week reading something new. The list of articles I need to read to keep up with the field grows longer and longer. I also want to develop some new technical skills to push aspects of my research forward. If I want to do reading or pick up a new skill, I usually have to spend my evenings and weekends doing it. If my academic discipline were my only hobby and I had no family, then this might be fine, but it isn't my only hobby and I do have a family.

My to-do list only gets longer over time, and I am one of the lucky ones. Many university staff members have it far worse than I do.

New Instalment: What I would be doing if I weren't striking

This is the fourth 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...

I rush back to Chandler House well past 1pm for a talk which I am supposed to be organising

It’s Wednesday morning. I get up at 7, and after a shower and some breakfast soon hop on the tube where I get in a good 20 minutes of reading my book; if I’m lucky I even get a seat. I get to Chandler House around 8.30, and after making a cup of tea, start the working day with going through my inbox, sorting through what needs doing right away and those emails that can wait. I reply to a few student queries, and schedule some meetings later this week with the various project students I co-supervise. 

Then I work through some administrative work from the teaching I did yesterday; I had two back-to-back teaching sessions from 1 to 5pm, meaning I had no time to sort this out before leaving work yesterday evening. After finishing all this, I have about 30 minutes left to start taking a look at some of the marking that has come in earlier this week, before making my way to the main campus for a two hour lecture from 11am. 

I am not the only one having to come to the lecture theatre from further afield: the majority of the students have lectures across campus right before this one, so my lecture starts 15 minutes late to give people time to actually make it to the building. Even though I started later than scheduled I try to squeeze in all the material. It’s a topic I really enjoy teaching, but my schedule these past few days meant that I didn’t have the time to prepare as much as I would have liked to; regardless, students seem to be reasonably happy. 

I end up staying behind to answer some student questions about the upcoming coursework assignment before rushing back to Chandler House well past 1pm for a talk which I am supposed to be organising. Normally I help the speaker set up before their talk and chair the questions, but today someone else was kind enough to take this on, knowing I wouldn’t be able to make it in time from main campus. After an interesting talk I am off to my last teaching slot of the day at 2pm, where I teach a three hour long session for master students. It’s only a small group so the sessions themselves are very interactive, which is a lot of fun and makes for very satisfying teaching, but it’s also very exhausting. 

I end up staying late to finish up the administrative work after the last lecture, going through my inbox to check for urgent emails that I might have received since I last had time to look at my email 8 hours ago, and doing some preparatory work for my meeting at 10am tomorrow morning, knowing I won’t have time to manage all of the preparation between 8.30 and 10am otherwise. I leave, knowing that despite really enjoying all the teaching I do, my never ending to-do list will be similarly packed tomorrow. 

What I would be doing if I weren't striking

This is the third 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...

As I drift off, I dread the even bigger backlog of unanswered email that will greet me tomorrow morning. 

It is Wednesday morning. After getting up and making breakfast for the kids, I hop on my bike and reach Tavistock Place at 8:30. Time to grab a cup of coffee and look at my email inbox. There is a big backlog of unanswered emails - it won't grow shorter today. I do answer a few urgent queries, respond to the moodle forum questions from students, promise to write three letters of recommendation by the end of reading week, then leave the coffee shop for Chandler House. 

At 9am, the tutorial for my class begins. I don't know this group particularly well, so the tutorial requires a lot of thinking on my feet: I have to adapt the material to the level of the students. I have to be nimble, but I enjoy it. At 10:55 the tutorial is over. 

Now it is 11:00 and I am teaching a small group session for advanced MA students. A student is presenting a paper and I try to figure out how to help them break down the author's and their own argumentation better. How do I explain what the relation between a (superficial) counterexample and a (solid) counterargument is? I don't feel I am getting through, but this time I am not nimble enough to change tack. The session is over at 12. Though I never got through to the student presenting, I think some of the other students got something out of it. At least I hope so. 

A number of new emails have come in, some with material that is relevant for the departmental committee meeting that I am charing at 1pm. I read these emails and summarise the content in preparation of the meeting. Why didn't I get this information earlier? Then I rush around the corner to get a falafel just before my meeting. 

The meeting runs until 2:15, which is quite quick given the long agenda. I can't linger to chat with colleagues, because I needed to be at the central campus for the next meeting at 2pm. I won't make it until 2:30.  At lesat, I don't have to chair this one. The second committee meeting ends at 3:30.  

I return to Chandler House. I had promised a PhD student feedback on a draft chapter. The draft is 45 pages long. I read it and comment on content and writing. It is now 5pm. I organise a Skype meeting with a colleague for next week to work on a paper draft and an in person meeting with another colleague to do some research-related brainstorming together. 

It would have been nice at this point to read some research papers from my long to-read list, to think about one of the half-finished papers, or to clear my head and write, but I have to go pick up my kids and make dinner. I only manage to do a bit of reading when the kids are in bed. At that time, my brain is not at its best. As I drift off, I dread the even bigger backlog of unanswered email that will greet me tomorrow morning. 

Case Study: Gender Pay Gap

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 first-hand experience of the gender pay gap. According to UCL's published statistics, the gender pay gap at UCL amounts to 15.9%. The main reason for the discrepancy is that women make up more than half of the work force in lower paid jobs. This trend reverses for higher paid jobs (Associate Professor and above) where men all of a sudden dominate.

The comparison between my own and my wife's pay check always leaves me gasping.

My wife and I graduated with a Ph.D. in the same field, from the same university, and in the same year.  When our first child was born, we each took the same amount of parental leave. A decade after we had graduated from university, the difference in our career progression was stark. I had been in permanent employment for several years and had been promoted to Reader. My wife had just managed to move from precarious temporary employment to a beginning permanent lecturer position (at a university other than UCL).

When our second child was born, the difference between our incomes was so big, we couldn't afford to split parental leave: we needed my income and couldn't have gotten by on hers. Over the years, the situation has not changed substantially and the pay gap between us remains stubbornly at about 25% despite the fact that we have the same qualification from the same university with the same year of graduation and have been comparably active in terms of publications.

The gender pay gap at UK universities is real, it is shockingly high, and it is time the universities addressed it by giving the same opportunities of career advancement to men and to women.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.