Strike School 2 - Week 2

Here is the programme for the second week of the strike school.

It is linked from the top of the page and here, but you will need to check back frequently as this an evolving programme. If you are unsure where a particular event is taking place, you can always come to the picket in front of Chandler House before 12:00 and we will know where to go.

Please share this information widely and check back regularly for updates.

• Monday, March 09 2020: 12:30 at The Place (London School of Contemporary Dance, 17 Duke's Road, WC1H 9PY). Kriszta Szendrői will talk about "On the nature of pervasive change: the story of Hasidic Yiddish." (Bring your own lunch.) The slides are here.
• Tuesday, March 10 2020: 12:30 at The Place (London School of Contemporary Dance, 17 Duke's Road, WC1H 9PY). Tim Pritchard will give us some insights into "Telling the truth to deceive."  (Bring your own lunch.) 
• Wednesday, March 11 2020: 12:30 upstairs at the Lamb. John Harris will talk about "Roots and routes: the linguistic legacy of colonialism in Atlantic contact Englishes."
• Thursday, March 12 2020:  12:30 upstairs at the Lamb. Tommy Liu will present on "Language laws: Why the restaurant name 'KFC' and the 'Stop' sign are illegal in Quebec."
• Friday, March 13 2020: Our Future Not For Sale: March for education and the earth. Assemble from 12 at Malet Street. March on Parliament at 1.

Here is the pretty flier! 

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 School 2 - Week 1

We now have something like a programme for the first week of the strike school.

It is linked from the top of the page and here, but you will need to check back frequently as this an evolving programme. As you can see, we still don't know what will happen on Wednesday or where most of the events of the week will take place. You can always come to the picket in front of Chandler House before 12:00 and we will know where to go.

Please share this information widely and check back regularly for updates.

• Monday, March 02 2020: 12:30 upstairs at the Lamb.  Richard Breheny will give a talk on Pragmatics and Political Discourse. Please bring a 3G/4G enabled device since we will most likely not be able to project slides and you will have to view them on your own device. 
• Tuesday, March 03 2020: 12:30 upstairs at the Lamb. Andrea Santi will talk about "Gender Proportions Across Academic Levels (Leaky Pipeline): Consequences and What Can be Done?"  
• Thursday, March 05 2020: 12:30 at The Place (London School of Contemporary Dance, 17 Duke's Road, WC1H 9PY) Hans van de Koot will give a talk called "(Mind) the copula gap: Or why Black English Vernacular is as ‘normal’ as the next language" Please bring your own lunch to this event, as you won't be able to buy food or drink at the venue. 

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.

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.