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!

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

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.

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!

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).

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

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 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.

New info hub from UCU

UCU, the union representing your lecturers and librarians, has launched a new info hub on next week's strike action.

It has a a special page for students, with info on how to contact your university and ask them to help us avoid a strike. UCU wants to negotiate with their employers, but the employers are so far not willing to engage in constructive talks. You can help change their minds by contacting UCL management using the tool on that website. They have a set text you can use, but you are encouraged to personalise your message. Every email helps to avoid strike action, and helps support striking staff!

You can also check out the video below, on how and why to support the strike.


 

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.

A related dispute: Support our security guards, porters and cleaners!

IWGB, the union that represents UCL's security guards, porters and cleaners, is also involved in industrial action. These positions have been outsourced at UCL, which means that although these workers work on campus, they don't formally work for UCL. Many of our security guards, porters and cleaners, who are predominantly from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, work on zero hours contracts and so have very little job security and low benefits. They are campaigning for insourcing, to be treated like all other workers at UCL and to receive the same types of contracts and benefits.

IWGB at UCL intends to strike on Tuesday 19th November. You can find out more about their campaign here.

What the strike means for students

You’ll be leaving university thousands of pounds in debt, while those who teach you can barely afford to pay their bills. Remember: staff working conditions are student learning conditions!

Staff at 60 UK universities, including UCL, will be going on strike from the 25th of November until the 4th of December.

Concretely, the strike means that staff who are on strike will not be teaching you during the strike days, they will not answer email, not mark essays, and not hold meetings with you. It is a reasonable assumption that you might hear from your lecturers whether they are going to participate in the strike, though you should know that they are not legally obliged to tell you (or anybody) beforehand if and when they will be on strike. 

On the strike days, members of the union will create a picket line at the entrance of Chandler House (and all other entrances to the university). This picket line is a symbolic barrier. The strikers will ask colleagues who are not striking yet to support the strike and refrain from entering the building. The picketers will also ask students to support the strike. You can support the strike in a number of ways. You can refrain from entering the building, you can chat with the picketers, you can bring warm drinks and food to those standing out in the cold… 

If you want to support the strike in this way, please consider finding places away from UCL to work. You could work from home, your favourite cafe, or you could use the library facilities around that don’t belong to UCL such as the SOAS library, the Senate House Library, or the British Library. 

The union has asked lecturers not to reschedule missed classes, so you will end up missing eight days of teaching. Lecturers in linguistics will make sure that missing lectures and tutorials during the strike will not affect your marks, for example, by adjusting exams so that they do not cover material that was not taught, or in some other appropriate manner. While the strike should therefore not affect your marks, it will negatively affect your education and your educational experience here. We understand that this effect will be frustrating to you, and we hope you make the provost and senior management team at UCL aware of your frustration.

The Students' Union, UCL has their own information page on the strike, which includes information on compensation. You might be interested to know that the NUS and UCU have issued a joint statement, saying that students stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with staff in these disputes.

How can students support the strike?

We realise that in taking strike action, we are in the first instance targeting your classes and your eduction. You have paid for those and you should feel entitled to getting your money’s worth. An overseas student on the MA Linguistics, for example, stands to lose the equivalent of £620 if all classes get cancelled. Whether you support our cause or not, we recommend that you complain to the management of the university about the fact that you are, in this case, not getting your full money’s worth. There are many ways of complaining; a simple one is to send an email to the provost of UCL (Michael Arthur, michael.arthur@ucl.ac.uk) and the vice provost of eduction and student affairs (Anthony Smith a.w.smith@ucl.ac.uk). You can email them individually or as a group. While they may not read every email, they will certainly take note of the volume of emails they receive.

In 2018, some students won the right to a partial refund of their fees because some of their lectures had been canceled as a result of the strike. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UK_higher_education_strike#Compensation We suspect that threatening and taking similar steps this time around will increase the pressure on the universities to return to the negotiating table and to resolve the strike more quickly (or to avoid it altogether). Some students in Wales have already started a campaign around this issue.

You can also choose not to cross our picket line. We understand that this is not always possible, and we will never prevent you from entering the building, but we really do appreciate your support in choosing not to cross.

We would also appreciate moral support on the picket line - a friendly chat, a thumbs up, or a hot drink are all big morale boosters for picketing staff. 

You should also keep an eye out for communications from the National Union for Students (NUS) and the Students' Union UCL with other ways students can support the strike. The Students' Union has their own information page. You might be interested to know that the NUS and UCU have issued a joint statement, saying that students stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with staff in these disputes.

Finally, we have organised a Strike School, with activities every day of the strike, starting between 12:30 and 1 pm. You can head over to the Strike School page for the latest info. Attending events and chatting with striking staff members is a great (and fun!) way of showing your support.

Welcome to the blog!

Dear student,

We are writing to give you some information about the planned strike called by the University and College Union (UCU) and which, if it does go ahead, will take place from Monday November 25 to December 04. 

What is the strike about? 

The University and College Union is in two legally separate disputes with the umbrella organisation of universities in the UK. One of the disputes is over pensions of (mostly) academic staff and it already led to a strike in the spring of 2018. We have seen the value of our pensions shrink massively over the last decade. It has been the consistent strategy of the universities to reduce the pension benefits of staff and increasing the cost of the pension to us. This reduces the value of our pay across the lifespan massively: according to Jo Grady, the general secretary of the union, the average union member stands to lose around £240,000 over their lifetime. The second dispute is about salaries and working conditions. Real term pay has fallen more than 20% since 2008 and an increasing number of, particularly junior colleagues, are employed without any job security and on hourly pay, which means, for example, that they receive no sick pay when they fall ill. We believe that it is wrong to cut our pensions, our pay, and to treat young aspiring academics in this way. 

This is why members of UCU voted by a large margin to go on strike. Nobody wants to go on strike. We like our jobs and we would rather be paid doing our jobs than be on strike, not be paid, and not do the job we love. However, we see no alternative to taking this action. If the universities don’t shift their position, a strike from 25 November to 4 December is now inevitable. 

The national union of students has issued a joint statement with UCU supporting our action: https://www.ucu.org.uk/UCU-NUS-jointstatement More information from the student union should come out in due course. 

Some further background information can be found in the following places:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/10408/UCU-announces-eight-days-of-strikes-starting-this-month-at-60-universities?list=1676

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/07/university-staff-dont-want-to-strike-for-fair-pensions-and-pay-but-were-being-forced-to

We will also hold an information meeting for students in linguistics on Friday, 22 November, 3-4pm in the A V Hill Lecture Theatre 131, Anatomy Building, Gower Street. 

What does this mean for you? 

Concretely, this means that staff who are on strike will not be teaching you during the strike days, they will not answer email, not mark essays, and not hold meetings with you. It is a reasonable assumption that you might hear from your lecturers whether they are going to participate in the strike, though you should know that they are not legally obliged to tell you (or anybody) beforehand if and when they will be on strike. On the strike days, members of the union will create a picket line at the entrance of Chandler House (and all other entrances to the university). This picket line is a symbolic barrier. The strikers will ask colleagues who are not striking yet to support the strike and refrain from entering the building. The picketers will also ask students to support the strike. You can support the strike in a number of ways. You can refrain from entering the building, you can chat with the picketers, you can bring warm drinks and food to those standing out in the cold… 

If you want to support the strike in this way, please consider finding places away from UCL to work. You could work from home, your favourite cafe, or you could use the library facilities around that don’t belong to UCL such as the SOAS library, the Senate House Library, or the British Library. 

The union has asked lecturers not to reschedule missed classes, so you will end up missing eight days of teaching. Lecturers in linguistics will make sure that missing lectures and tutorials during the strike will not affect your marks, for example, by adjusting exams so that they do not cover material that was not taught, or in some other appropriate manner. While the strike should therefore not affect your marks, it will negatively affect your education and your educational experience here.

What you can do? 

We realise that in taking strike action, we are in the first instance targeting your classes and your eduction. You have paid for those and you should feel entitled to getting your money’s worth. An overseas student on the MA Linguistics, for example, stands to lose the equivalent of £620 if all classes get cancelled. Whether you support our cause or not, we recommend that you complain to the management of the university about the fact that you are, in this case, not getting your full money’s worth. There are many ways of complaining, a simple one is to send an email to the provost of UCL (Michael Arthur, michael.arthur@ucl.ac.uk) and the vice provost of eduction and student affairs (Anthony Smith a.w.smith@ucl.ac.uk). You can email them individually or as a group. 

In 2018, some students won the right to a partial refund of their fees because some of their lectures had been canceled as a result of the strike. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UK_higher_education_strike#Compensation We suspect that threatening and taking similar steps this time around will increase the pressure on the universities to return to the negotiating table and to resolve the strike more quickly (or to avoid it altogether).