So I'm on strike today and tomorrow, and probably some of next week too. I do not like this. But I think action is needed given how the job academics do is being steadily eroded. Lower pay, no security at the start of your career, no security after retirement.
If my younger self were finishing their UG degree right now, I am not sure I could recommend becoming an academic to them. Years of low paid PG study, years of insecure post-PhD employment, if you win the fight for a permanent job, its poorly paid for years after.
Long hours meeting impossible demands from a management class who demand everything - world class research, world class teaching, constant paperwork - and offer nothing in return. Real terms pay cuts for a decade, a constant slow burn war against secure pensions
Hasn't everyone had to make sacrifices? Yes, a lot of people have had it tough, and made sacrifices. But not all sacrifices are right or necessary. And the way unions organise in this country is sector by sector. So the only fight I can join is in my own sector.
Isn't this special pleading? I don't believe so, no. The demands made are pretty basic - in particular job security, equal treatment and protection of security in retirement. These are reasonable and affordable demands.
As an illustration of how university managers response to such reasonable demands, here's where we are on pensions:
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1495685232783245316
I don't like being on strike at all. I hate having to cancel lectures and classes. But I also hate what has happened, and is continuing to happen, to the job that I love. I hope that a sensible way out can be found, and soon.
As usual my co-author (and partner in crime more generally) @ProfSobolewska puts it better than I managed to:
https://twitter.com/ProfSobolewska/status/1495688901784178690
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