UCU threatens wider industrial action in bid to force move online

"Raj Jethwa, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, said that unions had agreed joint principles with institutions on the safety of reopening campuses. “Given how hard employers have been working with unions locally to make campuses as safe as they can be in the current environment, any ballot for industrial action is naturally disappointing,” he said." Speaking re my own University, that last sentence of how hard employers have been working with Unions is laughable. They (SMT) have, and still are pursuing their own agenda of wholesale change whilst in a pandemic and have obfuscated at almost every turn.

Yes, and this rag spurs them on with its vacuous awards and meaningless rankings that seem to metastasise like a spreading cancer sucking the lifeblood out of UK academia (and globally); with their ideology of a marketised HE. And the award goes to THE (amongst others)...

Every branch now has the ammunition to demand online teaching only as recommended by Sage on (?) 21 September. VCs will not have any counter argument.

All this reminds me why I do not waste my money on the UCU. After a previous strike that only cost those involved money and has achieved nothing, more action is proposed. I cannot see the goverment or the public supporting this and so fee returns will follow with subsequent catastrophic consequences for universities. I have often said we have too many universities but solving that problem like this is not ideal, to say the least. I have been into my office and met students. I felt perfectly safe and we should not hysterical about some face-to-face teaching. I am over 50 so supposedly much more at risk than my students but life is more than just staying alive by being imprisoned at home.

Students are customers, who has paid for a service. If that service cannot be delivered, or that service has to change (eg to online teaching) the consumer/ student should be compensated.