Thread by @gsoh31

I thought that I would write quite a long thread on why strike ballot turnout looks fairly low in many universities - something which may puzzle outsiders, and some colleagues. This in lieu of an article, since I've got four Zoom calls coming up. 1/? /THREAD

1/ First and foremost, this is not unusual, but in fact the norm. Organising academics is indeed like herding cats - they are often highly individualistic Rule Governed Achievers... 2/?

1/ (Cont.) Who sit in that uncomfortable professional place - a bit like GPs - which says 'am I am employee, or am I a self-organising, self-employed sole actor?' Days spent in the office can be far fewer than those on their own - it's not conductive to collective action. 3/?

2/ There is a widespread view that after wave after wave of strikes, and also of course after Covid - of which more later - students should not be harmed as collateral damage between staff and employers any more. 4/?

3/ Academics are battered, and to be honest a bit beaten. Smallest violin in the world, I know, but I didn't mind too much when I started dropping breakfast and lunch and eating a sausage roll in the street between meetings. I did mind when I started dropping dinner. 5/?

4/ Lecturers know that striking now, given everything's that happened, will be about as popular as Owen Paterson's lobbying. I reflected on this a while back, in this double tweet. 6/?

https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1451101259948302342?s=20

5/ Universities are not what you think they are. Your standard Lefty Don on here is not representative. Most academics work in fields a world away from politics or industrial relations, and move in and out of HE and the private sector all the time. 7/?

6/ I think there is grave unhappiness with UCU among many colleagues who do not usually voice their opinions (more of this under [7]). Many colleagues regard their own union as a joke that couldn't organise a... party in a brewery. 8/?

7/ Who organises for a strike in Dec/ Jan, in the midst of winter and with far less at stake than in April-June? Ballots went astray everywhere - that speaks to (1) a bit in terms of where people are actually working, but still. 🤷‍♂️ 9/?

8/ That's not even getting to the overt politics of the UCU leadership, which turns off a massive % of the membership who don't say that - they just fume in silence. 10/?

9/ Let's get into the detail. First, older colleagues - your Profs in their 50s - already have most of their pension in the bank. That won't be touched. If you've got 25/ 37 years on final and average salary, you're fine. So why shake the tree? 11/?

9/ (Cont.) This goes back to [3]. Most Profs of a certain age say to me: 'I'll just get my head down and do my thing, if I get offered a deal to go fine, if I don't I can go when I was going to go anyway'. It's the Skateboard Out/ Coast Out theory. 12/?

10/ Younger colleagues, your Senior Lecturers in their 30s, fatalistically think 'there aren't going to be any pensions anyway, I'll die on a work day, that's just how it is'. 13/?

10/ (Cont.) This *fundamentally totally illogical* position - for junior colleagues will by far suffer the most, and will have to work well into their 70s - is emotionally appealing, and characteristic of young people's attitudes I hear all the time. 14/?

11/ Then there's the pay issue. Basically, you might not earn enough to be that engaged. The people who'll suffer the most will be higher earners, because you can never now earn DB pension on your earnings over £40k. Many think they'll never earn that. 15/?

11/ (Cont.) If you're an Associate Lecturer teaching at four different places, or a one-year half-time lecturer on £20k, are you going to worry about your earnings over £40k? Of course not. You're going to worry about getting a job - and then being grateful. 16/?

12/ Some of those people, of course, simply cannot afford to take strike days. Can anyone on low pay afford to lose pay for loads of strike days? 17/? theguardian.com/education/2021…

13/ I think essentially very competitive, very successful people have a problem asking for help. They've always succeeded, hit their targets, moved on. Admitting that you've mistake with a career from which you can't retire is very difficult indeed. 18/? nature.com/articles/d4158…

Hang on, more in a bit.

14/ Okay, two more. Pensions are complex. I don't think that many colleagues have truly absorbed the point, not about contributions, but about indexation. If there's a large-scale inflation, they could well be left in poverty in their 80s. That's not been clear enough. /19

15/ The social profile of academics, and often their elite schooling, prevents them truly conceptualising that they can be proletarianised within the existing social structure, which is connected to... 20/?

16/ What's also not crystal clear to many colleagues is that they have left the public sector. Without govt underwriting, they will not get the pensions that civil servants, teachers and local govt workers have. 21/?

17/ They still think something will give, something will turn up, a compromise will be reached, without a full-scale confrontation focused around the political economy they now live in. That won't happen. 22/?

18/ Okay, that's enough. I hope that's been helpful as reportage as I see it (no time to write something at full length). None of this is to suggest some kind of hellscape - but it does raise serious questions about social capital usage. 23/?

19/ It's all very well spending £20bn+ on research, but relying on the lure of research per se is risky. If university roles earn *neither* pay up front *nor* have conditions or pensions benefits, they become deeply unattractive. 24/?

20/ Under those conditions, the lack of a real turnout surge over pensions (though big majorities for strikes were returned almost everywhere) is not a good sign. It's a bad sign - of fatalism and disassociation. 25/25 /END