Students back striking staff as regulator highlights disruption

There are big claims being made - but what I have seen are consolidated picket lines (breaking all striking guidelines) and small groups of organised extreme activist students jumping on the band wagon and tweeting to an audience of themselves. They see this as an opportunity to target the institutions they are unconditionally at war with. Language like 'Scabs' has been directed to other lower paid union members (who aren't on strike) . So while social media allows some flexing form these small groups, they are still marginalised groups, but not really doing anyone any favours. The issues are real but 1970s styled demos like this are a little pathetic when more inventive and consistent ways of publicising the struggle can be deployed. Ultimately the lives of other staff are being affected and disrupted, as is the learning experience of some students, especially those studying for January exams. We have to recall that these groups were also on strike during the WEEK that lockdown started in 2020 and refused to suspend or call it off (but then expected 18 months of full pay and employment protection from Universities whilst for a large part, sat at home).

I am an overworked burnt out academic who is “on strike” but still working 12hour days as work load is massive , constantly growing….and it will still be there next week after the strike. I answer emails from distressed students, supervise project students and undergraduate students, work on two grant for which the deadline is next week, do huge amount of admin with no support. And feel guilty that I am not on the picket line.

It's not so much the pay, it's partly the ongoing steady precariatarisation, and the concomitant insecurity, but the biggest factor is the relenltess rise in paperwork for everything from claiming/getting a grant to visiting the toilet (yep that must be coming soon, a H&S exercise, planned visit times, log of how much water you used, who else was in there, were they traumatised, etc etc....). Why have we allowed HR and creeping maganerialism to vastly raise the paperwork burden, albeit gradually like the proverbial frog in a slowly heating pan of water? We are spending most of our time filling in reports and forms about what we do, more than actually doing any of it If the supposedly best qualified and moist intelligent cohort of workers on the planert can't stop this process, what hope for the other 99.9% of worker-drones (yes that's what we'll soon be, but on somewhat lower pay than the private sector)?