If you are a recent UCU joiner, you are one of the 30% of new members we have welcomed since the action began – hello, and nice to meet you. Please come and introduce yourself, and join us on the picket lines!
This is day 10 of the longest, most sustained higher education strike I can remember and I have been in UCU (and before, its predecessor. AUT) for nearly 30 years.
I don’t know about you but I am exhausted and desperate to go back to work. It is draining being on the picket line, despite the collegiality and the strong sense of shared purpose. The teach-outs have shown how wonderful teaching and learning can be, but they also remind us that this is where we want to be, doing education. For others, research deadlines loom, and projects are being damaged. And our academic-related colleagues have had to watch as processes, systems and projects they have nurtured and developed begin to unravel.
ASOS has been an eye opener, too – we all knew we took home work and did extra on top of our contracted hours, but being asked to work your hours really brings that into focus – as have the messages from senior managers telling us to prioritise two-thirds of our workloads on non-strike days. In other words, the SMT appear to have conceded that we are overloaded.
It has been salutary to engage with our students about the value of education, about bigger issues such as fees and loans and VCs pay, and to talk about the damage that marketization has wrought on our once world-leading University system. It has been wonderful to have their support – individually, and via SUSU – despite the fact that the impact of the strike is felt first by them.
We have achieved a lot, but we are not at the finish line. UUK reluctantly agreed to talk at ACAS. The debate about our pensions has been broadened. We have significant public and political support. The evidence base from which to challenge UUK decision making is larger and stronger. There are signs that UUK may be beginning to listen.
But…
We have to be aware that all the way through this dispute a handful of powerful VCs and some hardliners in UUK have pushed to destroy our pension and break the promises we were made. Our own VC has chosen not to align with those who are calling for an alternative proposal that would preserve defined benefits. He has not publically distanced himself from the questionable data about the scheme, or the dubious decision-making processes that we have discovered are at the heart of these damaging pension proposals. Other universities’ SMTs are finding ways to reduce the impact of the strike on their most precarious staff, but we have been told that we are the authors of our own misfortune, and that we should “reflect” on the harm we’ve done (to the students who are supporting us day in, day out).
We have to maintain the pressure by continuing to strike this week. If UUK sense that our resolve has been weakened by their delaying tactics they will not up their offer. Our UCU negotiators will fight for the best deal we can achieve, but they can only do that if they can point to our strike action. For that reason we are asking you once again to join us on the picket lines, to refuse to work and to maintain the strike.
There will be pickets on campuses from 8am each day. If you have not signed up to a rota slot, please call in at the office at 47 University Road and we will deploy you to a picket line.
We have also arranged teach-outs again this week: here’s the schedule:
| Mon 12 March
2-4pm |
SUSU meeting room 2
Level 1 B42 |
An audience with the Dinosaur of Solidarity – tbc |
| Tues 13 March
2-4pm |
SUSU meeting room 2 Level 1 B42 |
What is education for? An open discussion – Lucy Watson
In an age of increasing student debt where ’employability’ has become the benchmark for the success of a programme, students are finding themselves in the difficult position of having to decide what courses deliver the best ‘value for money’. This session will focus on the recent marketization of HE and explore some of its intentional and unintentional results. |
| Weds 14 March
2-4pm |
Swaythling Neighbourhood Centre, Broadlands Rd, nr Brewed Awakening |
How have digital technologies and social media changed activism? – Silke Roth
In this teach-out we look at the relationship between online and offline activism. We look at online media as a game changer and have a look at the affordances of social media, at repertoires of digital activism and the fragility of networked action. We will consider slacktivism and how ‘digital prefigurative action’ can lead to the participation in offline protest events. |
| Thurs 15 March
2-4pm |
Swaythling Neighbourhood Centre, Broadlands Rd, nr Brewed Awakening |
Music Workshop
“WA Mozart, Casual Employee?” – Tom Irvine
“The Arts, the War on the Welfare State and the end of Keynsian Economics” – Andrew Pinnock
“How to Improvise a Protest Song” (with audience participation) – Andy Fisher
|
| Fri 16 March 2-4pm |
Swaythling Neighbourhood Centre, Broadlands Rd, nr Brewed Awakening |
Workshop: The ethics of taking strike action: principles, consequences and care
Taking strike action entails struggling with competing duties and responsibilities, thinking through and articulating why one principle trumps another, calculating the short and long terms costs and benefits, and taking practical actions with other people. This interactive workshop will offer an opportunity to explore these ideas and introduce concepts to build on over the coming weeks and months, as we reflect on what a university is and what being an academic and professional in higher education means to each of us. |
We know many of you are worried about the financial impact of the strike – we have a local hardship fund in addition to the national strike pay so we will do our best to mitigate this, prioritising our lowest paid colleagues and those in casualised, precarious posts.
If you wish to donate to the fund the details are:
UCU Southampton 71 Hardship Fund
Account number: 20391537
Sort code: 60-83-01
This message has been posted on our blog but also sent to the all members email list as we know that some people are reading their soton.ac.uk accounts. if you are reading your work email please, please do not work while the strike is on. If there is a meaningful proposal from UUK the action will be suspended, but we really must keep up the pressure or our efforts since 22 February will be in vain.
I know that you are fed up with striking and with ASOS. I know you are angry with UUK, with our University governance and our senior managers – rightly so, for they have all contributed to this situation. I know you are tired of striking.
I want to remind you that we are the University. UUK, the VC, the senior managers, the lay members of Council, are not the University. They do not do the things that you do to keep higher education and research going at this University. We are standing together – with our students – and we are saying no to the broken promises about our pension.
I’d like to end by saying that while this message will be signed by me, your branch VP, this action to defend pensions here is the work of an inspirational collective. Members of UCU at Southampton have the most brilliant branch executive. I cannot tell you how grateful I have been to them over the past month. They have pulled together; we have supported each other and our members, and collectively responded to all manner of issues ranging from last minute requests from management for a detailed risk assessments for our joint union rally, to managing picket lines through some of the worst weather we have ever had in this city, to crafting petitions and open letters to try to influence the debate locally and nationally. We may be tired but we are also blessed. I am hopeful that we will win. We just have to stay strong, stand together and hold the strike a little longer.
See you on the picket lines.
Catherine Pope
Vice-President, Southampton UCU
