Tell us your story

We're going to be taking a break over the weekend (washing our thermals in preparation for the picket line on Monday!), but we'll be back Monday morning with stories from the front lines of casualisation, falling pay, unsustainable workloads, pay inequality, and the pension dispute.

What's that you say? Your classes are cancelled next week so you don't have any homework? We've got you covered. First of all, you can read up on sexism and language on our reading list. Then, you can make a note of our Strike School activities and start thinking up some discussion questions to stump your lecturers. Finally, you can tell us why and how you're supporting the strike, by sending us an email. We want to publish students' stories as well as staff, so tell us yours!

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

Language and sexism reading list

Happy Friday! To whet your appetites for our Strike School next week, and to keep you busy over the weekend, we are happy to present our first reading list, on language and sexism. Below you'll find a few papers, books and links from fields represented in Chandler House to get you thinking about some topics you wouldn't normally hear about in class. Take a look, and then come discuss with striking staff on the picket lines or at our Strike School!

We hope to release a number of themed reading lists throughout the strike. If you have an idea for a reading list, send it along to our email.

• Chao, Monika, and Julia Bursten. "Heard but misunderstood: Understanding negative reactions to female vocal fry." m.s. (2016). 
• Hancock, Adrienne B., Holly Wilder Stutts, and Annie Bass. “Perceptions of Gender and Femininity Based on Language: Implications for Transgender Communication Therapy.” Language and Speech 58, no. 3 (2015): 315–33. doi:10.1177/0023830914549084. 
• Kahn, Lynda G. "Sexism in Everyday Speech." Social Work 20, no. 1 (1975): 65-67. www.jstor.org/stable/23711988. 
• Litosseliti, Lia and Claire Leadbeater. "Speech and language therapy/pathology: Perspectives on a gendered profession." International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 48 (2013): 90-101. doi:10.1111/j.1460-6984.2012.00188.x
• Macaulay, Monica, and Colleen Brice. "Don't touch my projectile: Gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples." Language 73, no. 4 (1997): 798-825. doi:10.2307/417327. 
• Oman-Reagan, Michael. "Sexism in the Oxford Dictionary of English." medium.com (2016). 
• Slater, Anne & Saul Feinman. "Gender and the phonology of North American first names." Sex Roles 13, no. 7-8 (1985): 429-440. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287953

You might also be interested in a This American Life segment on vocal fry. 

News roundup: IWGB strike

With the news that IWGB workers at UCL will hold another day of strike action on the 4th of December (the last day of the current UCU strike action), we present a roundup of how the first day went. We look forward to standing together with our colleagues in security, cleaning and portering on the 4th!

The Independent (read the full article for a shocking description of Sodexo's attempt to scan their workers' fingerprints to monitor their working time - yes, this was proposed at UCL!)

iNews

The Tab

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 is a zero-hours contract?

A rise in the use of zero-hours contract is one symptom of rising casualisation in higher education, which is one of the targets of the current strike. Zero-hours contracts are a type of employment contract where the employer is not required to offer a minimum number of hours to the worker (note that people employed on zero-hours contracts are not legally considered employees, but merely workers), and the worker is not required to work a minimum number of hours. Zero-hours contracts can be useful when flexibility is required or desired on both sides of the employer-worker relationship, such as when a student wants to pick up a few hours here and there working at a shop during their busy periods, or a stay-at-home parent wants to earn a bit of extra money doing the filing for an office that sometimes gets behind.

Zero-hours contracts are clearly not suitable for work that has fixed hours, and where the worker can't say no to the hours offered. It may therefore come as a surprise to you to learn that most of your PGTAs and some of your lecturers are employed on zero-hours contracts. Despite the fact that teaching hours are fixed, and a TA or lecturer can't just decide to take a week off, decisions made at various levels of UCL have led to a situation where zero-hours contracts are often the easiest way for departments to employ non-permanent teaching staff like PGTAs and sabbatical cover. Many of these people teach for several years, but nonetheless don't have any job security or access to the benefits that people formally employed at UCL enjoy. That's why UCU is asking universities to stamp out zero-hours and other casual contracts.

You can read about the laws around zero-hours contracts here.

For personal stories of people affected by casualisation, see some of the posts on this blog (you can filter them using labels), as well as the following news stories:

Temporary work at £9 an hour. No wonder lecturers are balloting to strike The Guardian

University lecturers 'anxious' over casual contracts, union says BBC

Universities accused of 'importing Sports Direct model' for lecturers' pay The Guardian

This report from Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation:

‘I am a single mum. I don't feel like I can be as competitive as other people’: experiences of precariously employed staff at UK universities

And this report on the issue from the University and College Union:

Counting the costs of casualisation in higher education UCU

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.