Thread by @mjbayly

Let's talk about precarity and the UK higher education sector. 🧵 #UCUStrikes @LSE_UCU

One of the outcomes of being precariously employed is a fear of calling out unjust working conditions. I’m one of the ‘lucky’ ones, now on a more permanent contract. I want to share my experiences of what being precarious feels like, since others may feel they can’t.

1. Precarity forces overwork. You do all the things: The things you have to: Teaching, publications, service, admin, pastoral support. And the things you don’t have to: Evening events, extra pastoral support, advocacy, extra office hours, …

...blog posts, event organizing, teaching innovations, training. You don’t have the experience to decide which things you *need* to do, or the courage to turn things down. So you do it all. You are extremely vulnerable to exploitation.

2. Precarity forces compliance. You do exactly what you are told, because you think if you don’t that will be a black mark. You deeply interrogate any feedback or comments on your performance for fear that it signals something negative.

…These comments induce anxiety, and can stay with you for days, weeks, longer. You feel under constant scrutiny – like a permanent job interview. The effects of this endure. You are extremely anxious.

3. Precarity produces imposter syndrome. The longer you remain in a precarious role, the more you convince yourself there’s something wrong with you. Structural inequalities in higher education manifest in individual feelings of inadequacy. You are unsure of your work, your ideas

Being tapped up for jobs feels amazing but when u don’t get those jobs it’s confirmation of your imposter status. U don’t see the truth: a massive oversupply of labour producing an impossible hiring process & decisions made on the slimmest of margins. Rejections haunt u for years

4. Precarity forces silence. You don’t flag up the things that bother you, because you don’t want to ‘complain’. We’ve seen again and again, across the sector, how this can produce horrifying patterns of abuse.

Meanwhile, many colleagues (not all) assume everything’s fine, when it’s often not. Well-meaning colleagues say things that they don’t realise can be deeply wounding or induce immense concern (this also endures). Precarity perpetuates because it produces disciplined workers.

Getting a more permanent contract produced overwhelming relief. I hadn’t realised how my working life was burdened with the fear of a wrong move, failing to impress, or something that would mark me out as somehow inadequate. Precarity produces an incredible mental health burden

I developed survivor guilt. I still have it. Many precarious colleagues remain on temporary contracts, despite their brilliance & doing all the things & way more that we’re told will guarantee us a liveable career. They are kept on an endless treadmill of temporary employment…

…*kept there by the best and wealthiest universities in the world*.

Yes, there are many other sectors that operate this way. But how many of those sectors require you to do 3,4, 5 (or more) years of (mostly unpaid) training *before* you then get a shot at potentially another 3, 4, 5 or more years of precarity? (I did 6)

We’re running an entire sector here on labour exploitation.

The people doing this work can’t get on with their lives. They fear building relationships, having kids, putting down roots, they can’t *plan*. And their working lives are an ongoing process of anxiety, insecurity, and vulnerability.

There’s so much more to say here. Precarity is a root of many of the evils that haunt the employees of UK university staff and make university careers the gendered, racialised, ableist careers they are. Another university is possible. Ending precarity is the start of this. Ends.

I’m glad this seems to resonate with so many people. I want to add one more thing (because it’s important). There are *many* working in HE who see these structural effects; are trying to address them; & help guide, mentor, & coach the precariously employed through them…

I was lucky to have met and worked with many such people. These people are saints. I hope to be like them when I grow up (actually ends).