Strike has been announced for 24th, 25th and 30th November with a national demonstration in London on the last date. Source: UCU Social Media (not included in article at time of posting)
My university staff were useless 9 years ago. Not all of them obviously, but the course I did, the tutors were all useless. The staff, I didn’t interact with as much. I aren’t sure whether they were underfunded then, but my course of 100 people were paying £900,000 a year (in loans) and the course was not funded properly enough to warrant that amount.
I hope students receive automatic refunds tor any missed teaching.
Conditions is not a secondary concern after pay here. Working conditions in most universities are **awful**. Almost everyone is systematically, brutally overworked and many many people are on casualised basis that means they don’t know where (or if) they will be working from one term to the next.
Workloads aren’t just excessive, they’re flat out dangerous. Over 50% of staff are showing signs of depression. At Cardiff, a lecturer killed themselves over the impossible workload. The university’s response? Put locks on the windows. Another colleague recently told me that at their university, the staff counselling service was withdrawn. Why? Because so many staff requested it that the counsellor got overwhelmed and burnt out.
We care deeply about our students and this is for them, too. So many staff are so overworked that it’s effectively impossible to teach to the standards students deserve. If you’re a student, please support the teaching staff and put pressure on your university’s management to spend money on making their employee’s lives bearable rather than on ridiculous salaries for themselves or vanity building projects.
Uni staff, nurses, rail workers… should’ve known how fucked the place is when the lawyers went on strike – what a total omnishambles of a clusterfuck of a country this is becoming
What is even the point? They’ve been striking intermittently since march 2018 and haven’t achieved anything other than disrupting students.
It’s looking more and more like a general strike is needed, as the only way to address the underlying inequality that is driving all these problems across the UK.
“Pay and conditions” doesn’t really describe it. It’s pretty much the whole freaking job.
I work far more hours than I’m contracted for, and we are refused new hires to ease the burden because we don’t have the budgets – yet we have budgets for multi-million pound teaching space refurbs, in order to attract more customers. Sorry, students.
They drastically cut our (very expensive) pension scheme based on a deficit reported in a valuation carried out in… March 2020. Just as the markets crashed. Now there’s a surplus, they’re refusing to undo the changes and give our pensions back.
Our salaries are supposed to be union negotiated. Last year we got a 0% pay rise. This year we got 3% which was forced on us (it’s been implemented without union agreement). It’s not negotiated any more – it’s imposed because “fuck you we can get away with it”.
Whilst VCs are earning stupid salaries, this will continue.
8 comments
Strike has been announced for 24th, 25th and 30th November with a national demonstration in London on the last date. Source: UCU Social Media (not included in article at time of posting)
My university staff were useless 9 years ago. Not all of them obviously, but the course I did, the tutors were all useless. The staff, I didn’t interact with as much. I aren’t sure whether they were underfunded then, but my course of 100 people were paying £900,000 a year (in loans) and the course was not funded properly enough to warrant that amount.
I hope students receive automatic refunds tor any missed teaching.
Conditions is not a secondary concern after pay here. Working conditions in most universities are **awful**. Almost everyone is systematically, brutally overworked and many many people are on casualised basis that means they don’t know where (or if) they will be working from one term to the next.
Workloads aren’t just excessive, they’re flat out dangerous. Over 50% of staff are showing signs of depression. At Cardiff, a lecturer killed themselves over the impossible workload. The university’s response? Put locks on the windows. Another colleague recently told me that at their university, the staff counselling service was withdrawn. Why? Because so many staff requested it that the counsellor got overwhelmed and burnt out.
We care deeply about our students and this is for them, too. So many staff are so overworked that it’s effectively impossible to teach to the standards students deserve. If you’re a student, please support the teaching staff and put pressure on your university’s management to spend money on making their employee’s lives bearable rather than on ridiculous salaries for themselves or vanity building projects.
Uni staff, nurses, rail workers… should’ve known how fucked the place is when the lawyers went on strike – what a total omnishambles of a clusterfuck of a country this is becoming
What is even the point? They’ve been striking intermittently since march 2018 and haven’t achieved anything other than disrupting students.
It’s looking more and more like a general strike is needed, as the only way to address the underlying inequality that is driving all these problems across the UK.
“Pay and conditions” doesn’t really describe it. It’s pretty much the whole freaking job.
I work far more hours than I’m contracted for, and we are refused new hires to ease the burden because we don’t have the budgets – yet we have budgets for multi-million pound teaching space refurbs, in order to attract more customers. Sorry, students.
They drastically cut our (very expensive) pension scheme based on a deficit reported in a valuation carried out in… March 2020. Just as the markets crashed. Now there’s a surplus, they’re refusing to undo the changes and give our pensions back.
Our salaries are supposed to be union negotiated. Last year we got a 0% pay rise. This year we got 3% which was forced on us (it’s been implemented without union agreement). It’s not negotiated any more – it’s imposed because “fuck you we can get away with it”.
Whilst VCs are earning stupid salaries, this will continue.