Academics on the picket line

As a retiring academic, I’ve so far stayed out of discussions on the current dispute about proposed pension changes. After all, I’m receiving my pension already; although I left before my sixtieth birthday, I was lucky enough to have been able to pay into the scheme for many years (with no career breaks) and to leave at a relatively high point on the pay scale. And, as the system at that point was about years of service and final salary, I was able to retire without stress. In addition, as I’m currently also being paid by a university in the US, I’m not really ‘in’ the UK higher education system.

I’ve restricted my comments to supporting my former colleagues and to explaining to academics outside the UK what is at stake here. As a senior academic, I think it is very important to offer such support (including financial support for the Union’s hardship fund), and to remind people that this strike has also drawn even more attention to the precariat. Without these early career researchers and staff on short-term fixed contracts, the universities would fall apart, and one of the things I’ve felt able to do in the strike is to reassure those on these contracts that the rest of us understand fully why they haven’t always been able to join the strike action. I’ve also joined the movement on academic Twitter to stop tweeting about research and only to comment on, or retweet comments on, the strike. I believe that our presence on social media is part of our job, and therefore should be covered by strike action; I know that not everyone agrees with this, but the silence from UK colleagues about the sorts of interesting discoveries we normally share has been deafening.

I’ve been involved with industrial action at many points in my career, sometimes in national disputes and sometimes about local issues. I’ve done my stint on the picket line, most memorably on a day so wet that I resorted to occasional dashes to the university gym to warm up under the hand-dryers. But there has a never been a strike like this one. We’ve had odd days; we’ve even had what felt to me like an entirely crazy period of striking for a few hours here and there (does anyone notice?). We’ve had periods of working to contract, for example in 2011, but I don’t think we were very good at that, accustomed as we are to working all hours just to get the job done. There was a marking boycott in 2014. We’re not good at marking boycotts, because we hate hurting our students. I remember when there was a marking boycott during the summer exam season – I think this was the 2006 boycott; but, rather than stop, many of my colleagues did the marking anyway and just didn’t register the marks on the system, so when the boycott was called off they simply entered the marks immediately. I was never comfortable with that.

In many of the strikes in which I’ve taken part, I was aware that many colleagues saw them as an opportunity to get on with their research; there’s never enough time for research, even though it is part of our job, and a bonus day in the library is something to be treasured. This time around, there has been some debate on whether this is an acceptable approach. Our research benefits not just us, but our universities, who use it in the REF and in constructing ‘impact cases’ as part of that. But it is also what will enable us to get a job, or to keep a job. It would seem crazy for an academic without a secure post to stop applying for jobs, or to refuse to attend an interview, during the strike period.

But that’s the precariat – what about the responsibilities held by the rest of us? I was therefore very impressed by the commitment showed by a colleague, Laurence Totelin, who wrote in her (excellent) strike blog:

I have fully withheld my labour. I feel that if, as a lecturer in relatively secure employment, I disrupt students’ learning and delay administrative work, it is only fair that I should not seek to develop my own career by working on my research.

This time’s strike was called as an escalating one, in which one more day each week was a strike day. In the week that is about to end, that meant a full five days of strike action. That in turn means 14 days of pay lost, and the more humane universities have already said that they’ll deduct that over several months rather than all in one go.

Ah, the more humane universities… One effect of the strike so far is that it has shown us which universities showed themselves prepared to listen and which still refuse to acknowledge that the valuation of the pension scheme on which the current proposals are based is unduly pessimistic. For those academics already unhappy about their managers, this may have confirmed all their worst suspicions. It’s not a great recipe for future trust when, on Monday, staff return to work even though the dispute is still not over.

The other thing that has come out of this is a sense of what we mean by ‘the university’. Is that shorthand for the management, for the Vice-Chancellor or the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive Committee? Or is it all of us? Many of my colleagues have described how being on the picket line has enabled them to meet their counterparts in other departments. We used to do that sort of thing – a very long time ago – in the staff common room, but these days there just isn’t the time. Meeting other people, sharing ideas – isn’t that what a university should be about? Lots of universities have held ‘teach-outs’, where they give free lectures open to anyone who wants to turn up, often on topics related to industrial action. One of my former universities, Reading, had a particularly impressive programme of such lectures. Learning available to all, with no barriers – isn’t that what a university should be about?

In all of this, a new vision is emerging of what a university could be. Will this lead to real change? We’ll see.