Thread by @UWankings

The strikes are hurting unis, raising solidarity, but the pain is mostly felt by staff/students. Unis lose face (a bit – press coverage sucks), are inconvenienced, but it's abundantly clear *managers don’t care* about HE/HE people.

A 🧵
#UniCivilDisobedience #OneOfUsAllOfUs
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Industrial action's impact on unis is watered as limited to specific union members who will/can afford to, ASOS/strike. But unless (and even if) union membership were greater, we’re limited by anti-union legislation and that we care so deeply about our work and students.
2/

There was a great thread (that we can’t find) by @JamesBSumner on the varied personal/political reasons that folks don’t engage with unions locally/nationally. It’s nuanced, not either/or. We need more membership, coordination between unions AND to co-opt non-union peeps.
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If, as @mike4ucu says, UUK’s fuckery is about union busting, we need to fight to protect what we see as ‘basic decency’ but what managerialism categorises as ‘risk’. Things are bad, but if it wasn’t for unions, things would undoubtedly be even worse. Petrifying.
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We have to prioritise ways that managerialists hate while minimising impact on students and staff (academic and admin). Who hurts offers a way of assessing options – the best actions only/mostly create pain for the uni. Basically, that’s money – directly or indirectly.
5/

As @KalwantBhopal says, when it comes to universities, money doesn’t just talk, it screams. If unis weren’t FORCED to be more equitable by funders/policy, they wouldn't bother. Look at how slowly (and shitly) they implement EDI, harassment policies etc.
6/

The main premise is that we should cease all work we’re not paid to do, or the work that's underpaid (yeah, we know, that’s *everything*). If you're asked to do something new/additional, the response should be “okay, but what are you going to take out to make space for it?”
7/

We don’t want to lose our jobs, some of these things can be built into recruitment, probation, promotion. There’s a balance – we may need to take some short term pain the benefits of the wider system. So don’t kill your career, but do #loveHE. Remember, it’s #OneOfUsAllOfUs
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Actions work best if *everyone* does them. Divide and conquer allows policy makers to fragment the sector into self-interested parties, and managerialism passes that to individual levels. Targets and metrics that can look benign and logical but they're punitive proxies.
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Managers will eventually work their way around, ensuring that they’re built into contracts and then workloads - then we’ll be paid for it. Let’s face it, they want us to keep doing it for nowt, and HR departments are a bit dim and slow, and often don’t understand HE.
10/

Don’t engage with senior leadership, beyond asking them how they think staff (who’ve work for 30+ years) can be expected to live on a pension of <checks notes> less than £10K. They’ve fucked us over, with little to no recognition of the suffering felt by staff .
11/

Don’t fill in internal surveys or other initiatives around the ‘health of the university’. Managers couldn’t give two hoots - if we filled them with vitriol and poor ratings, they'd hide the dirty laundry, pat themselves on the back, and pay themselves more.
12/

Resign from external examining. We get paid for it although it doesn’t cover the hours/effort. The pain to us is minimal (bar lost income), it won’t paralyse the system, but it will create headaches for managers and would be a colossal, easy win expression of mass solidarity.
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Refuse external PhD exam invitations. The honorarium for these is derisory, it’s at least two days of work if you do it properly. This does hit ECRs, though, but it would create headaches for unis – in the longer run their PGR completions etc would fall.
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Don’t review grants. UKRI et al are part of the issue , spreading their butter FAR too thinly on the toast, rewarding profs at older unis and shafting/excluding everyone else. A system where 90% of grants are rejected is a colossal waste of effort and an emotional nightmare.
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Don’t submit grants. If you aren’t given the time for them, stick to your ASOS, focus on colleagues and students. We know some contracts (and ECRs’ survival) is dependent on this, but it could be done selectively.
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Once your grant has ended, stop filling in ResearchFish etc about impact, publications etc. You’re no longer being paid for the work, so disengage. Our ongoing work etc ‘needs this’ but if REF etc grind to a halt, we can survive without. It’s tick-box impact: blurgh.
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Don’t use uni branded materials (or ranking etc info) on emails, presentation slides, paperwork etc. It’s minimal pain to the uni but quite fun, and if done systematically, it will irk the hell out of the brand/marketing wallahs. (THX @Pankhuri_A)
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Don’t do with TEF, REF, KEF unless it’s in your job description. REF has just run, but if people aren’t playing, managers will be running scared. It could hit ‘top unis’ harder in the pocket, and thus staff, but the spread of cash in the sector is a national scandal.
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Withdraw from staff recruitment activities such as shortlisting, interviews, and so on. The tough bit here is that we need more people to ease workloads, but as @MissChisomo points out, the selling points for working in UK HE are dwindling almost by the day.
20/

As @ProfRichHarris suggests, don’t advertise/RT etc any staff positions at your/UK unis. We can’t attract colleagues into jobs where conditions have deteriorated so much. An alternative: circulate them with caveats about workload/pay/pensions. Easy win where unis lose face.
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Perhaps the hardest one – withdraw from equity (e.g. decolonising, LGBTQI+ allyship) work unless workloaded or part of your existing practice. Hits those the marginalised hardest but may translate loosely into poorer metrics; as @MadhuKrishnan says, it is ethically coherent.
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Don’t review papers/edit journals (THX @PriyamvadaGopal). Dissemination is vital but there are other ways. The publications machinery is absurd – masses of work for which only publishers get paid? Hits metrics could burden non-UK colleagues (can we target UK journals/staff)?
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Don’t review PhD applications. Hits future ECRs, but we’re not paid for it. With luck they’ll be able to study outside the UK. Unis must make PGR conditions better or their stats should suffer – they’ve overrecruited PGRs for the REF AND created an exploited ECR workforce.
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Don’t put any publications into institutional repositories, and/or don’t record your institutional affiliation when submitting journals. We could even use our personal emails rather than work ones, as this spanners up the system of matching up publishers and institutions.
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Don’t do open days, summer schools, particularly for international students. We love our students, subjects, courses, our material, but study conditions should be FAR better. Unis overwork us and overrecruit them; they're just bums on seats/cash in the bank. (THX @Pankhuri_A)
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Don’t do student references after they’ve graduated. Refuse to do them with a response that they should approach the university leadership directly with a complaint about this, or just ask the leadership for references, filling their inboxes. (THX @cagsgaraway)
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Don’t get involved with public engagement – or if you do, don’t record it for the university’s impact stuff, and don’t brand it as your university-affiliated. You want your work to have an effect, but it’s outside what’s essential.
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Don’t present at conferences, invited talks, and so on. It’s fun to travel and engage with colleagues, and presenting helps us share and develop our ideas and work, but it’s effectively unpaid. There’s also the frightening carbon footprint of the travelling academic circus.
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Leave UK HE. It’s tempting (where it’s possible) and might help you individually, but it’s not a collective action. Many of us are bound through local relationships with places and people. We can’t leave, don’t want to leave, and it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
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Stick to ASOS: All email autoreply and prominent signature statement along the lines of ‘I will respond as soon as possible, however please be aware that, as part of the appalling working conditions in UK HE, my response may be delayed. Easy win but #carbonfootprint
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Students (and parents?!?!) need to complain vociferously about staff working conditions. This can go through the NUS and local unions, but also other groups. As with staff, there are all sorts of reasons why students do and don’t get involved with their SUs.
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A blanket NSS boycott; if students fill it in poorly, staff who get it in the neck, and if they fill it in positively but fill the comments with complaints and working and study conditions, managers will cherry-pick. A national campaign would petrify managers.
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Thanks to the people cited here, and apologies to those whose ideas/tweets we’ve used but couldn’t find. Few of these options are ours, but having them in one place seems useful.

UK HE has to change, and govt/managers won't do it unless we make them. Solidarity.

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