Strike 2020 - an update

In the fall, we blogged about what the union's demands are in the two disputes that are currently going on. I have excerpted the key demands from the older blogpost to refresh your memory
In other words, what exactly does UCU want to change?

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

• Pensions: 'No detriment'. This means that any changes to the pension scheme should not result in higher costs to members, or in lower pension payments. University employees accepted cuts to the pension in 2011. In October 2011 future members of USS lost 65% of their pension wealth, equivalent to a reduction of roughly 11% in their total compensation. That is, in 2011 the total life-time pay for university employees was reduced by 11%. Now we are asking for no further reduction: We don't think this is asking for a lot!
• Casualisation: 'Stamp out casualisation.' UCU demands firm and measurable commitments reducing casualisation in higher education. Russel Group Universities have recently acknowledged that casualisation negatively impacts mental health, family planning, the research power of universities, and student learning. The problem of casualisation goes beyond teaching staff, and UCU are committed to ending the gig economy in higher education. Again, we don't think it's a lot to ask that staff at universities, where students are paying between £9250 and £34,660, should be entitled to benefits like sick pay and maternity leave. There are several blogposts on our blog (here and here) detailing some of the problem from personal experience. 
• Pay inequality: 'Equal pay for equal work.' What year is it? 1952? Oh no, wait, it's 2019 and women, people from BAME backgrounds and people with disabilities are still getting paid less than their white, male, able-bodied colleagues. UCU is calling for measurable commitments on this disgraceful inequality. UCEA is not willing to talk about pay. A personal view on this issue can be found here. 
• Unsustainable workloads: 'An end to occupational stress and bullying.' UCU wants all of the work we do - administrative, pastoral, teaching-related, supervisory, research-related - to be fairly counted, and for workloads to be managed in a fair way. The fact that universities including UCL are threatening to withhold 100% of pay for employees who are working to rule by working a standard 36.5 hour week demonstrates that they know it is impossible for us to complete our contracted tasks in that time. Our series of posts on What I would be doing if I weren't striking (here, here, and here) gives you a flavour. 
• Falling pay: 'A real-terms pay rise'. UCU is asking for a pay rise of RPI+3%, or a minimum increase of £3,349 (whichever is greater). This is to address the fact that, over the last decade, our pay has fallen by 20%. At the same time, average rents in London have risen by as much as 30%. But not everyone is worse off - university Vice-Chancellors' pay (including UCL Provost Michael Arthur) rose by 13% between 2009 and 2017. Students are paying more fees than ever - where is your money going? 

The main argument that UCU is putting forward is that there is a link between the disputes. In brief, the money to address the issues that don't have to do with pensions is there; universities have just chosen to pay that money into the pension fund. That probably sounds strange and non-sensical, so do read on.

The pensions scheme for university lecturers, the University Superannuation Scheme (USS), was set up as a defined benefit final salary scheme. 'Defined benefit' means that the payouts are guaranteed and set down in the rules of the scheme. 'Final salary' means that the guaranteed payouts are calculated as a percentage of an employee's salary just before they retire. In 2011 these rules were changed. For incomes up to £55,000 per year, the pension scheme remained a defined benefit scheme but the benefits were now calculated on the basis of the employee's average salary rather than their final salary. One's average salary over a lifetime is, of course, much lower than one's final salary. For salaries about £55,000 per year, USS was shifted to a defined contribution scheme, which means that employers and employees pay in a defined percentage of the salary but that what is paid out is not guaranteed but depends on how the investments made by USS perform. As mentioned above, this change amounted to an 11% cut in life-time compensation for new members of USS.

From the perspective of university staff, this massive cut in compensation was, of course, a bad thing. From the perspective of the universities, it was a good thing, as it reduced their potential liabilities: Pensions they would have to pay for were reduced and if USS investments underperformed, the shortfall would be to the detriment of the pensioners but would not create future costs and liabilities for the universities. In 2017, the universities argued for further changes in the pension scheme. The employers suggested to change the scheme completely from a defined benefits scheme to a defined contribution scheme. This change, employers claimed, was needed because a valuation of the scheme showed that it was in deficit. This valuation was widely criticised as flawed, including by the joint panel of experts set up by the union and the universities. However, that valuation has lead on October 1 2019 to an increase in contributions that employees and employers have to pay into the pension scheme for the moment (the employer contribution went up from 18% to 21.1% now with a planned increase to 23.7% in 2021). If the universities relented and pushed USS to accept a modified valuation of the scheme, then employer and employee contributions to the pension scheme could drop back. This would free up money that employers are currently paying into the pension fund. This money could be used to finance pay increases and to tackle the issues of pay inequality and casualisation.

It is the insistence of the employers on the negative valuation of USS that locks up the money that could be used to deal with the other issues. This insistence is rooted in the employers' aim of turning USS into a defined contribution scheme to the further detriment of employees. Universities need to start negotiate in good faith and in earnest on these issues and respect the recommendation of the Joint Expert Panel that was set up as a result of the strike in 2018.

As a result of our strike and student pressure, there appears to be some movement in the negotiations. It is important now to keep up the pressure. Please write to the provost again. and ask for UCL to push UUK and UCEA to table acceptable offers so that we can end this strike swiftly.

Case study: zero hour/casual 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 who has first-hand experience of the the consequences of casualization at UCL: 

Trying to rent somewhere in London without a fixed employment contract means not having a job reference when landlords ask for it.

Since I finished my PhD, I have been doing various kinds of casual work across the division, coming down to at least 3 different jobs that are being paid out of about 7 different pots of money. While this requires quite a lot of organisational skills on my side to keep track of how much work I do for which pot of money (colour-coded multi-tab spreadsheets are my best friend at the moment), this also asks a lot of other staff in the building. Not only that: it means that I spend a lot of time and energy chasing people up, while ideally I should be spending this time on teaching and supporting students, or even writing up research from my PhD. 

In a sense, I am lucky to have stayed on after my PhD in the first place, as this means I am still be able to use my previous desk, have access to my email, printing, and the UCL computer systems, and know how things work (and who to ask for help when things stop working). However, my contract is still being sorted out despite its official start date being months ago. For part of the work I do, the wonderful administrative staff have been able to come up with a workaround and have managed to pay me for my work, but despite that I am half a year behind on payment for one of the many jobs I’ve been doing. And heaven forbid I get sick, as zero hour contracts don’t have sick pay. 

Moreover, starting this casual contract coincided with my having to move house. Trying to rent somewhere in London without a fixed employment contract means not having a job reference when landlords ask for it. I can’t commit to a full-year tenancy, because what if I were to find a slightly less precarious job at the other end of the country and would need to upend everything at a few months’ notice?

While I am eternally grateful to the very helpful and supportive departmental and finance staff and administrators who are going over and above to help sort my things out, this is not a workable situation to be in. Just because my specific situation means I have been around long enough to be able to use workarounds for impossible issues, relying on the goodwill of other staff should not be essential for me to be able to do my job.

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. 

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.

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.