Alternative headline – **The government’s insistence on cutting workers’ pay and worsening their conditions could hit graduations this summer**
Don’t blame the workers. Blame the people who are treating the workers like shit.
Worth noting the pension cut average mentioned there, 35%, gets progressively worse the earlier stage in your career you are.
For someone like me 5 years in, in those 5 years my pension contributions have nearly doubled while my expected payout has halved. This would not be a problem if it were not a take-it-or-leave-it fixed rate of contribution, on what is to be frank a salary that has gone from fairly underpaid to completely fucking embarrassing for the amount of work and level of skill and commitment expected.
I will also add its another one of these careers where salaries are done on spine points so any increases you can get are limited to at most an extra £1,000-odd a year (pre-tax). And frankly as someone working in life sciences, private sector salaries are not *that* much better and also entail completely cutting off any freedom to build up your portfolio and CV. As a scientist I know I’m far from alone in shaking my head at this talk of “science superpower” and spending more and more time looking for opportunities abroad.
This is going to hit the University I work and it’s going to be such a mess. Can only really support the strikes though as pensions have been basically pilfered
I discovered just how bad things are for university staff today, I’m studying abroad right now and they have 1/3 of the students here compared to my university in the UK, and yet more academic staff.
Mon the strikers!
As a mature student graduating an OU degree after a very long slog it will suck if this causes delays but that’s not what’s important. Staff deserve much better than they get, and the current system is completely unsustainable and causing huge amounts of burnout.
I hope my fellow students feel the same. Delays and less support won’t kill us.
5 comments
Alternative headline – **The government’s insistence on cutting workers’ pay and worsening their conditions could hit graduations this summer**
Don’t blame the workers. Blame the people who are treating the workers like shit.
Worth noting the pension cut average mentioned there, 35%, gets progressively worse the earlier stage in your career you are.
For someone like me 5 years in, in those 5 years my pension contributions have nearly doubled while my expected payout has halved. This would not be a problem if it were not a take-it-or-leave-it fixed rate of contribution, on what is to be frank a salary that has gone from fairly underpaid to completely fucking embarrassing for the amount of work and level of skill and commitment expected.
I will also add its another one of these careers where salaries are done on spine points so any increases you can get are limited to at most an extra £1,000-odd a year (pre-tax). And frankly as someone working in life sciences, private sector salaries are not *that* much better and also entail completely cutting off any freedom to build up your portfolio and CV. As a scientist I know I’m far from alone in shaking my head at this talk of “science superpower” and spending more and more time looking for opportunities abroad.
This is going to hit the University I work and it’s going to be such a mess. Can only really support the strikes though as pensions have been basically pilfered
I discovered just how bad things are for university staff today, I’m studying abroad right now and they have 1/3 of the students here compared to my university in the UK, and yet more academic staff.
Mon the strikers!
As a mature student graduating an OU degree after a very long slog it will suck if this causes delays but that’s not what’s important. Staff deserve much better than they get, and the current system is completely unsustainable and causing huge amounts of burnout.
I hope my fellow students feel the same. Delays and less support won’t kill us.