RT @JG_THE: As tens of thousands of university staff strike, re-upping this from a recent debate I chaired with VCs. In which two acknowledged "“systematic" underpayment in UK higher ed. via @timeshighered #UCUstrike https://t.co/FecoiWNKNh

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1596087946494742528

So we must routinely withhold research that was not fully and adequately paid for by the institution that claims it. Then the #UCUstrike will have a chance of making the management take action.

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1596086129803264001

RT @UEA_UCU: Picket locations for today. Come down for more cake, solidarity, and support. #UCUstrike #ucuRISING

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1596064995812450304

What a picket line!

#ucuRISING
RT @ucuatdurham: Massive pickets today in Durham! #UCUstrike #ucustrikes #ucuRISING

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/GreenPartyMolly/status/1595768172279484418

RT @BrightonUCU: Fabulous pickets at all sites in Brighton #UCURising #UCUstrike We will fight until we win!! ✊

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/CarolineLucas/status/1595815165089681408

Worse than I thought. #UCUstrike
RT @DrJoGrady: This is a disgrace. We cannot foster sustainable education and research cultures that are built on insecurity and precarity.

Uni bosses have chosen to build this type of sector. Not us. But together we can change it.

See you on the picket.

#ucuRISING

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/JackieJonesWal1/status/1595681469871316992

Picket lines at @uniofeastanglia. Solidarity with lecturers striking for fair pay and conditions.
#UCUstrike #UEA #PicketLines

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1595714996926926851

In January this year I handed in my notice at the school I was working at. I knew I wanted to get out of that place, but felt maybe I wanted out of teaching too. I was doing more and more academic research and finding more joy from that than I was from what I was teaching.

I have a PhD, some publications, excellent references, and over a decade of teaching experience. I’m producing new work regularly, have long-term research goals and specialisms in anarchist political philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of education. Maybe it was time to get back into academia, I thought?

However, every single academic I spoke to about this told me to run as far from the universities as possible. I heard horror story after horror story of how awful it is these days to work in academia. The instability, the workload, the constant pressure to generate funding and the endless admin and soul-crushing meetings. Petty hierarchies and fiefdoms.

While I was questioning whether I wanted to still teach in a school, I knew I definitely still wanted to teach. In universities, however, I was repeatedly being told, and seeing, that teaching was secondary. A nuisance in the way of the more important work. Students just consumers now, paying tuition fees to fund the coffers. Bums on seats rather than opportunities for education.

I still thought it might be worth looking into. it had long been a dream, after all. i decided to apply for a few things and saw straight away how precarious all the jobs were. Temporary contracts and the expectation you would move halfway across the country for a position that only lasted a year, or even just a few months. Conditions unsustainable for living an actual life. We were willing to pack up and leave if necessary for a long-term job somewhere else - anywhere in the world - but not blow up our entire lives here for twelve months of precarious uncertainty.

I began to realise that all the research and writing I was doing could continue to be done in my spare-time, as it had been done when I was teaching. That actually, if I wanted people to read what I wrote, an academic journal was probably the last place I should publish it. That there were far more opportunities to teach and explore interesting stuff outside the university.

It helped that the job market was so competitive I didn't get a single interview anywhere I'd applied for.

I realised that academia was a dead-end. Worse than the conditions in secondary schools I was already running from. I decided to take a sabbatical instead, and focus on research and writing outside of academia, then return to teaching in schools again when the time was right, to pay the bills.

I think I'd be an excellent academic philosopher, but the current academic system is so undesirable a system to work in, and so inhumane, that to do so is no longer my dream. I'm sure there are many more like me out there, alienated by, or refusing to join, a profession so steeped now in structural unpleasantness that it seems like self-harm to join it.

I hope these strikes contribute at least a little to changing those conditions so that those already stuck within the academic system no longer feel they have to warn aspiring academics like myself to do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING ELSE with their lives instead of joining them, and gives them the conditions that made that career, once, such a dream for so many.

#UCUStrike #UCURising #academia #universities #teaching #jobs #burnout #education #HigherEducation

The government pretended it was shocked by the fire & rehire fiasco at P&O ferries, but it's mired in law breaking itself, and has done nothing to strengthen the power of trades unions or to ensure that we're free to protest against injustice.
#UCUstrike

https://greenworld.org.uk/article/po-ferries-why-uk-law-alone-fails-protect-workers

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1518131044385439744

RT @RebeccaBamford: Very worthwhile piece by @catherinerowett - relevant to #UCUstrike #FourFights discussions, as well as to thinking on impact of the loss of #EU membership.

🐦🔗: https://nitter.eu/catherinerowett/status/1517976554168627203