Tag Archives: strike

subtext 191 – ‘fresh from the fridge’

Every so often during term time.
Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk
Back issues & subscription details: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/about/
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EDITORIAL
A new dawn has risen on a new day and a new government. Our next chance to change things in Westminster will probably be in 2025. Shall we just go back to bed?
The need for a university which challenges the marketisation of education, defends its international community and champions free speech has never been more important, but as subtext has reported in issue after issue, our management has been merrily pursuing exactly the opposite strategy for years. Our governing bodies show little or no knowledge of the issues which make our students and staff feel less and less welcome – and our students and staff have little or no knowledge of what our governing bodies do in our names.
There are, however, some reasons to be cheerful. Our students have finally realised that a students’ union governed by unaccountable appointed trustees and advised by ‘student juries’ is no way to represent their interests. The results of two referenda in Week 8, one on the proposed sale of the Sugarhouse (see subtext 190) and one on how many trustees should be elected, showed emphatic opposition to the former and widespread support for electing the majority of the latter. The trustees have decided this week to abandon the Sugarhouse sale – ‘you voted, we listened’ says a LUSU press release, which raises the question of just why the trustees had the discretion to not listen in the first place. Meanwhile, our UCU staff have recently taken strike action, with significant support from students and other campus unions.

This is no time to lessen the pressure on those in power, be they sat in University House or Westminster. If the last ten are any indication, the next five years will be dark. The most vulnerable amongst us – the disabled, those from overseas, the sick – will be bearing the brunt of it. It may be tempting to give up, but if we don’t fight now – when?

RETURN OF THE ANGRY DUCKS

It was pure picket line déjà vu. Not just the buses and cars queuing on the main drive, trying to avoid running anyone over. Not just the hand-made banners and placards, the angry ducks and the picket discos. No, what most made it seem like February 2018 all over again was that staff had downed tools (or keyboards, in most cases) for pretty much the exact same reason as before: to protest against higher pension contributions, after employers refused to fully implement the recommendations of the Joint Expert Panel convened after the last strikes.
There were some differences this time around, however. Rather than just being about pensions, this was the first industrial action at Lancaster over pay and conditions for quite some time – no doubt helped by the focus on workload and equality (in particular Lancaster’s massive gender pay gap). Unlike last time, this strike seems to have enjoyed widespread student support, including from the previously rather apolitical Students’ Union. Successively more senior managers visited the picket lines to chat with the unwashed masses. When the interim VC eventually found his way there, he faced some difficult questions, but was not subjected to quite as thorough a grilling via megaphone as the previous incumbent (see subtext 175).

Rather than striking for an increasing number of days each week spread over a month, this strike was a contiguous period of eight working days. UCU activists were said to be split over the purpose of this different pattern, with some claiming that the current structure was not conducive to negotiation. And in fact, on a national level, there seems to have been very little movement by employers. It seems likely at this point that the pickets will return in the new year, ducks and all.

HONG KONG PHOOEY

Lancaster University does not seem to be showing a lot of solidarity with its Hong Kong students at the moment. Private Eye and SCAN reported recently on the college accommodation manager who ordered a student to remove a display of sticky notes in a kitchen window which spelled out ‘Stand with Hong Kong’ – SCAN’s story is online at:
https://scan.lancastersu.co.uk/2019/12/04/hong-kong-posters-raise-free-speech-questions-on-campus/
This was not the only recent incident of censorship. On 13 November, a reader wrote to let us know that, at 8:50am that morning, three members of Security were taking down pro-Hong Kong posters. Our reader made enquiries and was told that the University was removing all such posters because they were ‘against the Students’ Union’s rules.’ Lancaster Poster Code 1, Freedom of Speech 0.
On a related note, a group of Hong Kong students came down to the Sports Centre picket line on the first day of the UCU strike to share their stories and to show their solidarity:
https://twitter.com/ZoeFLambert/status/1198982862013370368

Readers with other tales of anti-HK censorship on campus are encouraged to contact subtext at the usual address.

subtext 190 – ‘get subtext done’

Every so often during term time.
Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk
Back issues & subscription details: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/about/
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EDITORIAL
Anyone walking up the Spine on Monday at around 6pm would have seen hundreds of students queueing to enter the Great Hall. A jobs fair? Yet another 6pm lecture? No. In a heartwarming display of activism, they were queueing to enter the Annual General Meeting of Lancaster University Students’ Union – an event that in recent years has seen just a few dozen diehards attending.
Let this put the lie to the notion that students are chronically apathetic. Nark them off enough and they will punish you for it. The spark for the nark this time was the proposed closure of a much-loved nightclub, and it is our hope that these students, having now experienced an intoxicating taste of activism, will develop their impulses in directions more socially rewarding than maintaining their access to 3-for-£5 VKs – perhaps the re-democratisation of their own Students’ Union, or this climate lark that everyone seems to be banging on about.
Speaking of democracy in action, as we go to press the news of the recent UCU ballot on industrial action over pay and pensions reaches the subtext warehouse. Lancaster is one of the 55 (for the pay dispute) and 43 (for pensions) institutions to both vote in favour of action and reach the 50% threshold. Expect more picket discos in the near future.

By the way, has anyone noticed that it’s now 1 November 2019 and we’re still in the European Union?

GET THE VOTE OUT… AGAIN

The University and College Union is yet again balloting its members over industrial action – not over pensions this time, but rather over casualisation, workload, pay inequality, and… well, pay. Union members are said to be scratching their heads as they walk around campus in a daze (that’s just the standard academic habitus, mind you), wondering whether they hadn’t already done one of these about six months ago. And indeed they did – but only a small handful of institutions reached the magic 50% figure imposed by recent trade union legislation, so there really wasn’t much of a solid platform for industrial action. This time, after some ill-tempered shouting (or should that be well-reasoned debate?) at a national union conference, UCU has gone for an aggregated ballot, which means that all branches are lumped together and the 50% threshold must be reached across the board.

Opinion seems divided on whether this will succeed – on the one hand, the last, ill-fated ballot still achieved the highest turnout of any ballot over a national pay & conditions negotiation ever. On the other, there is nothing like the sense of unity and anger that surrounded the pensions dispute. Is this a case of people only voting when their own interests are at stake?

ALUMNI NEWS

News reaches subtext that our former VC Paul Wellings is continuing the friendly, inclusive style he pioneered at Lancaster, in his current role as VC for the University of Wollongong. UOW staff were striking this week over insecure work and unfair pay, in particular Wollongong’s use of casual and fixed-term contracts. Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has ‘accused University of Wollongong management of misleading and coercing staff ahead of a strike this week. […] A letter from management was posted on the UOW staff intranet on October 4 which directed employees to notify managers, via an industrial action participation form, of their intention to strike. Union branch president at UOW Associate Professor Georgine Clarsen said the letter was illegal.’ In response, UOW management has stressed its commitment to ‘supportive and flexible career pathways for staff.’

Where Lancaster leads, others follow, it seems. According to the NTEU, management at UOW were ‘seeking to bully intimidate and coerce staff not to participate in legally authorised and protected industrial action.’ The NTEU has asked for an apology from Prof Wellings, but doesn’t appear to have received one so far. You can’t teach an old VC new tricks, it seems.

subtext readers are encouraged to show their solidarity with UOW workers – the local NTEU branch can be contacted via:

https://www.nteu.org.au/uow

Full story at:

https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/5689713/union-accuses-uow-of-coercing-staff-ahead-of-strike/

WATCH THIS SPACE: LEGAL ACTION

Ever the trend-setter, Lancaster found itself being the first university in the UK to be sued for loss of teaching time due to the industrial action. We suspect that this case will collapse fairly quickly (if it hasn’t already), and we’ll cover that eventuality as a matter of tying up loose ends.

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/special-report-the-mysterious-case-of-the-cancelled-lecture/

THE STUDENTS’ UNION

It all started so well for the Students’ Union. In subtext 169 we reported on their campaign against an unnecessary rent increase of up to £249. To make their displeasure known, LUSU set up a stall and put £249 worth of pasta on display. A little gimmicky, we thought, but enough to get the usual ‘our costs are going up and we have the best halls ever anyway’ line trotted out by the university. And so, we sat back, and then… nothing. There was no further campaigning action, no publicity releases about negotiations, and no attempt to actually mobilise students into a General Meeting, or a protest, or anything.

And then the SU was complicit in the abolition of University Court (detailed above under UNIVERSITY COURT), the decision making body with the largest student delegation, the only one to which any student representative could propose motions and policy, and at which students had fought and won against the university.

But the University Court was due to be abolished anyway, and perhaps it wasn’t the best hill for the SU to die on if it wanted to pick more important fights. As the industrial action took hold of the entire higher education sector, and the student body increasingly swayed towards the side of the staff, subtext eagerly awaited the SU’s statement of intent, and its plan of action, before issue 173 went to print. The plan, it transpired, was to ’empower [student] opinion with impartial information.’ Yes. After making clear that it wasn’t best pleased that the action was going ahead, the SU decided that it wasn’t even going to OPPOSE it. Instead, it put out some tepid ‘on the one hand this and on the other hand that’ infographics. Thankfully, hundreds of students spontaneously organised, many of whom were heard shrieking with derision at any mention of the SU, joined by striking UCU members.

Even JCR officers weren’t safe. A series of posters denouncing the Vice-Chancellor’s salary and lack of funding for the counselling service quickly disappeared from campus, and LUSU’s higher-ups were reported to have advised the JCR officers responsible to take a different tack, apparently pledging to help ‘broaden’ the campaign and attract wider attention. As we predicted in subtext 177, such a campaign never came to fruition – LUSU simply quashed the activism.

LUSU might have made better decisions, be it on Grad Ball (which this year was cancelled for the first time since the 1970s), opposing strike action, or allowing fascism on campus to be funded, if it were more accountable to students, and hadn’t gutted almost all of its accountability structures in 2015 (as we recalled in issue 174). Could LUSU’s ‘scrutiny panel’ have curbed this behaviour? No. In subtext 174, we noted that the ‘scrutiny panel’ hadn’t met at any point during the nine months that the sitting sabbatical team had held office, and was denounced by a former appointee for producing toothless reports that ‘nobody reads.’ Perhaps a General Meeting of the student body could have passed policy? Not a chance – LUSU’s General Meeting failed to reach quoracy, because they failed to seize the enthusiasm around the rent increase in the first term, or the industrial action in the second term to drive attendance. In lieu of a quorate General Meeting, LUSU instead held an ‘online general meeting’, which is completely unconstitutional and has zero powers to authorise LUSU to do anything.

There must have been SOMETHING keeping LUSU’s political wing busy, because one now-former officer appeared on Bailrigg FM back in May boasting to a Labour Party representative that by-election turnout was healthy because LUSU had bothered to do a bit of promotional work, even though it ‘isn’t their job’ (it is).

subtext keeps a close eye on all of the university’s most influential wings, and the SU is one of them. You can read all of our reporting on the SU’s activities throughout 2017-18, which is far more detailed than our VERY brief recap, below.

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/23/the-rent-is-too-damn-high/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/01/court-the-final/ |

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/15/student-citizens-advice-bureau/|

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/02/15/student-activism-shows-some-signs-of-life/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/01/special-report-scrutiny-mutiny/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/01/analysis-lusu-elections/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/03/15/lusu-news/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/gradballs/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/sufferin-succofash/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/04/26/general-fiasco/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/10/poster-boy/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/democracy-does-good/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/general-knowledge/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/05/24/sheer-brass-balls/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2018/06/07/another-glorious-victory-for-subtext/

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STOP PRESS – ALL IS FORGIVEN, LUSU!

That was then. This is now. subtext is pleased to report that the new team of LUSU full-time officers seem to have got off to a blistering start, by calling a student demonstration against the proposed introduction of 6pm to 7pm lectures, during this Saturday’s Undergraduate Open Day. The details:

https://lancastersu.co.uk/articles/join-our-teaching-hours-protest

Don’t miss your Week 1 subtext for our full report on the ‘extended teaching day’ proposals, including why you shouldn’t dramatically increase your undergraduate numbers without also dramatically increasing your lecture theatres, and why this problem isn’t going to go away any time soon.

subtext 180 – ‘better sorry than safe’

Fortnightly during term time.

Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk

Back issues & subscription details: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/about/

In this issue: editorial, welcome week, deanshare, lab location, UA92 galore, FASS typos, house-building, union blues, shart, poem, TV review, letters

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EDITORIAL

Gaps, holes, deficits, cuts, absences. Call them what you will, it would be hard to deny that the academic year has been littered with them, providing the subtext drones with more than enough metaphorical material to stretch to breaking point and enough space to fly the traditional end of year round-up through on a bus.

The biggest gap generator has been the ongoing building work on campus, particularly on the Spine. There have been holes in the ground where the Spine has been dug up, communication gaps where the pink and purple diversion signs have failed to keep up with the actual situation ‘on the ground’, and most worryingly there has been a huge gap in provision for disabled users of the spine, with accessible routes around the pinball game that traversing campus has become having all but disappeared. Add to this the gaps of buildings that failed to appear (squints at the Management School) and the gap we didn’t know we had (cocks an eyebrow at Alexandra Square’s Big Screen), and it’s a wonder we didn’t all get a collective sprained ankle.

There have been financial gaps as well. Students who may have specific learning disabilities have seen a cut of 50% in the funding available from the University to be assessed for them – a massive blow to the life chances of those that need one but can’t afford it. Nationally, the most disruptive gap of the year was the deficit in the UCU pension fund – and understanding thereof – that saw an unprecedented turnout in support of strike action, and UCU members picketing for two weeks in freezing conditions. Whilst the picket lines saw a huge amount of support from students and non-striking staff there was another gap: no clear or coherent response from the VC. The University as a whole continued to fail to cover itself in glory when the Gender Pay Gap report was published in April, revealing LU to be third from the bottom in the country (University of the Year, though!) with a mean pay gap of 27.7% as opposed to the national average of… cough… 17.8%.

There have been notable gaps in democracy, honesty and decency. Maybe it started when Lancaster University Students’ Union refused to take a stance in regard to supporting the UCU strike, and it definitely didn’t end with their ‘creative’ approach to the online AGM ballot. Maybe it started when the University Court was abolished, removing one of the last democratically elected bodies in the institution (and one that oversaw the appointment of various posts). In fact, subtext notes – with some glee – that you can read all about the machinations of Lancaster University’s ‘Strategic Planning & Governance’ division at gap.lancs.ac.uk. Maybe it started when the VC led us to believe that Lancaster was the first port of call for UA92 (it wasn’t) and shrouded the entire business in a cloak of secrecy. Maybe it started with swastikas on Sociology department doors appearing overnight followed by the attempted setting up of a new student society concerned with white supremacy and other alt-right (i.e. fascist) ideas. This is a gap that is going to take more than a bit of polyfilla and a trowel to sort out.

And we’ve been feeling a bit gappy ourselves – retirement and illness have left us short of an editor or two in the subtext warehouse, so we welcome all those readers with a critical eye, a writerly bent and a typing speed of 80wpm to drop us a line at subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk to get involved. And so, once more unto the breach, dear readers – starting October. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks for writing in – do keep doing that. Failing that, hit us with your ‘like’ stick on our Facebook page, at www.facebook.com/lusubtext

LU TEXT LOST AND FOUND

The Complete University Guide 2019 is out. If you click on ‘Lancaster University,’ you’ll see a big list of reasons to enrol. One such offering? ‘The Graduate Ball.’ D’oh! https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/lancaster/

The fact that we are the first UK University to face legal action over loss of teaching provision during strike action has caught the attention of the student media at our comparator institutions: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2018/05/15/student-takes-legal-action-against-lancaster-uni-over-strikes/, https://mancunion.com/2018/05/22/uk-university-faces-legal-challenge-over-strike-action/ (see subtext 177 for our report on the case.)

Gary Neville, who is literally a business partner of the University of Lancaster, which is soon to set up a literal university with him, continues to prove his worth. https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/gary-neville-hits-back-campaigners-12532925  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-44107743

Private Eye’s architectural columnist has thrown their penneth worth in on student housing developments in university cities, singling out Lancaster as the ‘locus classicus of student housing blight […] pock-marked by mini-hi-rise incongruities.’ The piece, which concludes by calling on university chancellors to wake up ‘to the architectural vandalism they are allowing’, can be found in the latest edition of the mag.

SENATE REPORT

It was a somewhat subdued Vice-Chancellor who opened Senate with his usual verbal report, and it is fair to say that he had much to be subdued about. There was the small matter of Lancaster’s rather large gender pay gap – one of the highest in the HE sector and not a league position he relished. He did not want to speculate on what might have caused this (though management policies and practices might be a good place to start). He was instead in the process of setting up a Task Force to look into this, with membership and terms of reference were being finalised. But we should not expect immediate results and it was likely to take ‘years of activity’ before the situation was resolved (so don’t hold your breath, laydeez).

He mentioned the recent pensions strikes (the most effective and best-supported that UCU had ever mounted, though of course he didn’t say this). He wanted to express his thanks for how the action was conducted to all involved, to Lancaster UCU, to heads of departments, and to the students. We all behaved magnificently, it would appear. As to the pensions issue itself, employers and union were now united in trying to ‘shift the goal posts’ (he wasn’t saying this the last time Senate met). On the plus side, he was happy to report a major improvement in the student retention rate, something he had previously identified as a major concern for the university. There was also to report a successful bid for an additional 60 medical student places, and a move from 9th to 8th place in The Times Complete University Guide.

There followed a discussion and approval of an Intellectual Property Strategy, content embargoed so we can’t report it. Then came a further look at proposed amendments to Charter and Statutes. As reported in subtext 174, Senate at its last meeting had relinquished its right of veto over Statute changes but had asked Council to look again at its proposals to ensure that Senate was at least consulted before changes were made relating to academic matters and student welfare. With the assistance of Professor Alisdair Gillespie of the Law School, a form of words was found that required Council to ‘give consideration’ to the views of Senate before making future changes. This, suggested Professor Gillespie, was the next best thing in the absence of a veto. The amendments were generally welcomed, though one senator pointed out that Council could still override the wishes of Senate if it was minded to do so. He believed that the result of all these changes gave too much power to Council and, with the abolition of Court, there was now no constitutional restraint on its actions. His, though, was very much a minority view and Senate voted overwhelmingly for the Statute changes.

Then came reports on University KPIs, and on revised arrangements for the conferral of PhDs (see below). Finally, approval was given to the new title of the Department of Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation, and a recommendation for the appointment of two Professors Emeritus (names embargoed, but they know who they are).

SPECIAL REPORT: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE CANCELLED LECTURE

Lancaster is set to make history, this time as the first university to be named in a class action lawsuit over a breach of contract due to industrial action.

The Law Gazette reports that the consumer and human rights firm Leigh Day has notified our Vice-Chancellor of a claim for lost tuition time. The student who instructed the firm has set up a crowdfunding page to fund the case, and has, at the time of writing, raised £490 of its £10,000 target (this has been reduced from the original, more ambitious target of £30,000).

So, are we doomed? Is Lancaster going to be the first domino to fall, sparking off a national frenzy of universities shelling out hundreds of thousands of pounds to outraged consumers *ahem* students? Your correspondent consulted his 1987 A-Level law textbook (and a couple of highly qualified legal professionals) for some answers.

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BASKET CASE

The case is almost certainly unprecedented – class action suits against universities are rare in the UK, with cases tending to be individuals suing for academic failure. In the case of a class action suit, it is nigh on impossible to determine how to recompense the students, since one student will have lost more or less contact time than the other, meaning everyone would be ‘entitled’ to a different amount in ‘compensation.’ On that basis, the case is highly unlikely to succeed, and plaintiffs would stand more of a chance if they sued individually for the amount of contact time that they themselves have lost.

This isn’t to say that a plaintiff would be likely to enjoy any luck whatsoever if they were to bring individual action against the university. Given that each subject, and therefore each student, is different, the university will no doubt have some sort of clause to obfuscate what is promised in terms of classes – as far as we’re aware, there isn’t a separate contract for every degree scheme. Furthermore, a firm would have to demonstrate how a few missed sessions in a three year degree programme is going to make a difference to how ‘educated’ the student is. It’s not as though you can measure how ‘educated’ somebody is at the end of the degree – you might hold up a Physics student with a 3rd class degree as an example of how the missed contact time has held the student back, but you only need one student in the same cohort with a 2:1 to blow that theory out of the water entirely.

In unprecedented cases such as this, courts are highly conscious of what they are unleashing on the public, and whether or not opening floodgates is in the public interest. Since granting credence to this sort of case would likely lead to the bankruptcy of every university in the UK and an appetite to curtail trade union rights, subtext’s legal experts were doubtful of the case standing any sort of chance.

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PROTECTIVE CASE

It really wouldn’t be at all difficult for the university to defend itself in court over this. All students have had the opportunity to catch up on missed contact time – they have access to the reading lists that they are required to consume in order to understand key theories and concepts, their fees pay for an entitlement to utilise facilities in which to study and libraries and online archives replete with educational materials, as well as lecture slides and handouts. Since the university has provided plenty of ways for students to work around the industrial action, it could easily be argued that students are to blame for not taking the initiative.

We also have to consider whether or not students are entitled to any kind of financial recompense whatsoever.

Why would any student come out of this lawsuit with a few hundred quid in their pocket, when most have taken out a loan from the taxpayer?

Will universities write off a fraction of the debt that wasn’t going to be paid off in the first place?

Is the hardworking British taxpayer going to enjoy a little more on top of their rebate come the end of the tax year?

Is there a planet where this case isn’t a waste of time orchestrated by some students who think they’re going to get rich quick, and a law firm which when mentioned to our legal expert elicited the response ‘Leigh Day is a bunch of publicity seeking ambulance chasers in my opinion and a lot of lawyers regard them as a disgrace to the legal profession’? This is the same legal firm that recently suspended some of its employees for touting for business after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and earned significant scorn from the mainstream media and the general public for representing members of a Shia Militia in a murder compensation case against members of the British Armed Forces.

The subtext collective is confident that the case will come to nothing, and that those who have donated to the legal fund have done so wastefully. We wish the university well in dealing with this nonsense, and hope that it doesn’t prove to be too much of a distraction or financial burden.

After all, we’ve football universities to fund!

DEEP DIVE: CASUALISATION AND PRECARIOUS WORKING PRACTICES

PRECARI-R-US

The casualisation and precarious working practices of academic staff are issues that universities are loath to acknowledge, let alone address, and are a far bigger issue than they would admit. However, as universities become more competitive for students, reputation becomes more important, and they are vulnerable to charges of sacrificing quality by employing their staff on contracts that hinder their ability to deliver the best for their students.

It doesn’t help that the figures collected and disclosed by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and by universities are obfuscatory. HESA claims that figures, as they are currently gathered, don’t give a straight answer on the level of precarious employment in academia, making it impossible to understand the real scale of the problem. However, a 2016 report in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/16/universities-accused-of-importing-sports-direct-model-for-lecturers-pay) found that 53% of academics in British universities were on some form of insecure contract, leading to accusations that vice-chancellors had imported the ‘Sports Direct model’ into British universities.

So, how does Lancaster fare? Well, on the minus side, we’re up there with the Russell Group, ranking 14th most insecure out of the 50 respondents, in a league table calculated by adding 2013/14 HESE data to the results of a UCU FOI request on zero hour contracts. On the other minus side (there isn’t really a plus to this, as far as we can see), 65.9% of our academics are designated as being on precarious contracts.

It does not have to be like this. The University of Glasgow has agreed a new employment policy which should rule out putting zero-hours contracts on teaching staff, as well as limiting the use of casual ‘worker’ contracts. Recent reports in the THES (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/universities-under-pressure-scrap-use-nine-month-contracts – paywall) suggest Durham will no longer use 9-month contracts for Teaching Fellows, after a sustained campaign by the so-called ‘Durham Casuals’, a group of staff fighting against precarity and casualisation.

There is still a long way to go before the sector as a whole reverses the damaging tide of precarity, but these small gains indicate that the onward march towards precarity may be slowing.

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PRECARITY AND THE HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT

Lancaster University likes to think of itself as ‘a global university, which operates on a human scale’. But is it?

Lancaster’s Strategy for 2020 clearly articulates that its ‘core strength’ is ‘its people’. Yet an increasing number of highly skilled professionals, who contribute to Lancaster’s international reputation, face challenges conveniently obscured by the global ethos. In the UK today, more than a quarter of researchers are from abroad, as are more than a third of PhD students. In a 2017 survey of 1,300 ‘international’ researchers working in Higher Education Institutions, 79% expressed uncertainty about the future of research and their profession post-Brexit, and doubts about their long-term financial security. International researchers reported feeling unwelcome in the UK through the perceived increase in xenophobia and the uncertainty around the rights of EU nationals to remain in the UK. A survey conducted by YouGOV for UCU found that: 44% of respondents know of academics who have lost access to research funding as a direct result of Brexit, and that 76% of non-UK academics are considering leaving UK higher education.

The situation of non-EU academics on Tier 2 Visas is even more stringent. Universities – in line with hospitals, schools, and municipalities – are asked to participate in border control. A new requirement of academics, for instance, is to monitor the attendance of overseas students, while heads of  departments screen ‘suspicious’ unauthorised absences of ten days or more in a row of international staff and students. The compiled data is available to the Home Office.

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STRIKE IT LUCKY

A significant number of international lecturers and researchers at Lancaster (and other institutions) did not participate in the recent strikes, fearing deportation. As one informant explained to subtext, ‘I support the action but I cannot afford any hassle from the Home Office, most of my department is not on strike and I did get an informal ‘warning’ that my sponsor is required to report unauthorised absence. It took me months to secure this longer contract and even longer to get my family here. I simply can’t risk it.’

While bullying of this type is unacceptable, and technically illegal, both the university management and the government have failed to provide an unequivocal, written guarantee to international academics that days spent taking legitimate strike action will not put their immigration status at risk.

This threat to the right to participate in strikes is but one example of hostility from the Home Office, which thus far has not been adequately challenged by our sector for its treatment of international staff and students. Applying for permanent residency is an expensive (costs for visa applications range from £500 to £10,000) affair of Kafkaesque complexity. One form runs to 85 pages and requires forms of proof that one professor said ‘makes acquiring Catholic sainthood look simple’.

Post-study work visas have been abolished, with universities tacitly discouraged from hiring foreign academics – even those trained in the UK – through the imposition of a series of arcane challenges targeting non-EU citizenship. The 12-month ‘cooling-off’ period, as it is now called, is essentially a bar to foreign early career academics establishing themselves in the UK (the Tier 2 cooling off period prohibits a Tier 2 visa holder from returning to the UK for a period of 12 months after the expiry of their contract). Rather than challenging this, universities are swiftly replacing year-long positions with nine or ten-month contracts.

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MOTHER MAY I

As precarious as international academics and other university staff and students may feel, they are usually relatively affluent and have access to information and resources that others can only dream of. The Lancaster Guardian recently reported (https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/lancaster-man-faces-deportation-1-9158001) on the case of Lancaster resident Solomon Yitbarak, who was threatened with deportation for the heinous crime of ending a relationship that originally provided the basis for his spousal visa. Despite last-minute attempts to halt his deportation to Ethiopia, where he faces persecution for his political activism, it appears he has been forced to leave the country, much to the consternation of his local network of friends and acquaintances.

These shocking actions by the Home Office are not restricted to those outside academe, however – in the fall-out following the BBC Panorama investigation into cheating at a Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) test centre in 2014, then Home Secretary Theresa May is said to have illegally deported tens of thousands of students (https://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/theresa-may-wrongly-deported-48000-students-after-bbc-panorama-exposes-toeic-scam-a6958286.html), and there are multiple reports of academics from other EU countries receiving ‘pack your bags and leave’ letters from the Home Office after applying for permanent residency documentation using the aforementioned 85-page form. Despite new Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s assurances that it is over, the hostile environment is as prevalent as ever.

subtext 175 – ‘complicated actuarial subtext’

Fortnightly during term time.

Letters, contributions, & comments: subtext-editors@lancaster.ac.uk

Back issues & subscription details: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/about/

In this issue: editorial, strike, lost and found, UA92, remuneration, LUSU, colleges, shart, pine, jones, widden, letters.

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EDITORIAL

It must be hard, being a Vice-Chancellor. Apart from the hundreds of thousands of pounds you earn, the chauffeur-driven Jaguar, oh, and the pornstar martinis of course, there don’t seem to be many positives to the job.

Everyone’s always complaining at you. Staff who want fair pensions. Students who complain when they aren’t being taught, and want their money back. Deans who complain when their HoDs refuse to do what they’re told to keep striking staff in line… And to top it all off, there’s the union members who complain when you don’t come and visit them for 9 days on the picket lines, and then complain afterwards that you haven’t really said anything. Even when you throw them a bone by agreeing to spread out their payments over three months, they still complain because you’ve told them you don’t think they’ve sufficiently considered the financial impact of striking. Fortunately you’re confident that, like you, they don’t understand all the complicated actuarial science behind their pension schemes, so you’re sure they’ll come round eventually if you just keep repeating that line!

And also, you’ve taken some steps to make sure that any dissenting voices won’t have much opportunity to make themselves heard. You’ve destroyed Court, clipped Senate’s wings, and Council is hardly going to cause you much trouble, given the present membership.

And of course you would never stoop to such questionable ‘leadership’ tactics as Glasgow’s VC, who was out on the picket lines from near the start of the strike, or Kent’s, who issued a joint statement with the local union branch. Or Leicester’s, who is only deducting two days worth of pay per month for the strike action, so the financial loss is spread out over seven months. What a wimp!

Nor would you wish to align yourself with the dozens of VCs who publicly called for a return to negotiations – no, when some nasty journos wrongly reported that you had, you made sure to tell people what’s what. And coming right out and saying we should retain defined benefits, like the Cambridge VC – madness! After all, someone in as important a position as chair of UCEA had better watch out, and stay on the good side of his UUK buddies. Yes, that’s what real leadership looks like!

STRIKE UP YOUR LIFE

In the fortnight since the last edition of subtext, there has been a considerable amount of strike-related activity, both in Lancaster and at the national level.

THE LOCAL FLAVOUR

The campus picket lines have been busier than ever, with a head count of over 160 on Tuesday this week, along with music and dancing every day (Zumba being particularly popular) and even some protest poetry on Wednesday. The VC ‘visited’ on the 8th March, but received a markedly less positive reaction than the several HoDs who did their stint on the lines. A video of his visit, with added commentary by the local UCU branch, is available here: https://youtu.be/lfSTLmdnRVE

Compared to previous disputes, the staff on strike are spread across the whole range of departments in the University, with somewhat less representation from LUMS. Meanwhile, the teach out events, featuring everything from a personal history of the 84/85 miners’ strike to yoga, have also been well attended – see below.

Numerous colleagues involved in the strike have remarked what a sense of solidarity and community is emerging from being thrown together in these adverse circumstances, while the lack of day-to-day work schedules seems to have unleashed all kinds of creativity and willingness to engage in activities that we never normally have time for. Union members were particularly heartened by the strong support from students, some of whom have been coming to the picket lines and teach outs every day.

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STRUCK DOWN IN ANGER

At the national level, the past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity. Universities UK (UUK) initially refused to negotiate with UCU, then agreed to meet but not reopen the decision on the pensions proposal (raising questions about what exactly they were proposing to discuss). When one VC after another came out publicly in favour of open negotiations, UUK were eventually forced into a humiliating climbdown and agreed to talks without preconditions at ACAS.

Following a few quiet days last week, and then an announcement that negotiators would be working through the weekend, Monday evening saw the announcement of a so-called agreement between UCU and UUK. This represented an improvement of sorts on the original UUK proposal, but included a worse accrual rate (1/85th of salary for each year of service vs the current 1/75th), an increase in both employee and employer contributions, and a cap of 2.5% on the rate that pensions could increase annually with inflation, meaning that if prices rise by more than this amount, pensions would lose value in real terms.

The reaction from UCU members was… not good. Very quickly, UCU Twitterati took the proposal apart, and an open letter in opposition to the proposal had collected around 3000 signatures by midnight on Monday, while a further 4000 signed by 11am the following morning.

Above all else, members were incensed by the proposal that teaching that had not taken place as a result of strike action should be rearranged. Colleagues argued that this would effectively mean doing work they had already sacrificed pay for. And in any case, there was not nearly enough time to fit 14 days’ worth of teaching into the few remaining days of term.

Throughout Tuesday, members of the union’s Higher Education Committee were subject to a frenzy of social media and email lobbying, overwhelmingly urging rejection. A meeting of branch delegates from all over the country decided almost unanimously to reject what they felt represented a betrayal of the sacrifice that members had made by being on strike.

In the end, the reject camp prevailed, perhaps helped by the large demonstration outside UCU headquarters in London, whose chants could be heard by the delegates arguing inside. The UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, later explained that the negotiators had been tightly constrained by the ACAS process in what and how they were allowed to communicate.

So the strike continues today and tomorrow, with the fourteen further strike days set to hit assessment season, with exam marking and exam boards likely to be a particular target for local branches. This will undoubtedly have a bigger impact on students than just missing a few lectures, possibly even delaying graduations for final-years. Action short of a strike also continues: UCU members are ‘threatening’ to only do the work they are contracted to do, rather than contributing the massive amounts of unpaid overtime that normally keep universities going on a day-to-day basis.

UUK are blaming the dire situation on UCU for walking away from negotiations, while UCU’s line is that the employers could stop the strike at any point by making a fair offer. Students at Lancaster, for now, seem to be largely supportive of their local staff, though whether this solidarity will continue for a further 14 days of disruption remains to be seen.

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TAUGHTILLA

As reported in subtext 174, UCU have been running a series of ‘teach out’ events during the strike – a different way of engaging with staff and students and anyone else who is interested in what the industrial action is about, as well as a number of other somewhat related topics.

While teach outs resemble the form of the labour that staff have withdrawn from their employer, the sessions do not necessarily follow the expected conventions of university teaching. The inherent radicalism of such a venture comes from the enforced interdisciplinarity of the project: colleagues, students and members of the public may come from any academic background, or not be involved in academia at all. It is teaching for interest’s sake, not for ‘knowledge-transfer’, measuring, testing, or satisfying government ‘key information sets’.

Lancaster UCU, together with a host of other branches, organised an alternative education experience for every day of the strike action. Most of the sessions took place at the Gregson Community Centre and were largely well attended, with many packing the Gregson Centre’s modestly-sized hall to the rafters. The curriculum features a mixture of debates, interactive workshops, informal lectures featuring some outside speakers as well as Lancaster academics, film showings, a couple of musical gigs and away from the Gregson some ‘walk and talk’ happenings. In the final days of the current round of strike action, sessions with a more restorative agenda were planned i.e. yoga and craft making.

All the sessions were open to University staff, students, and other folk from the wider community. There was a strong student presence at some sessions and even some members of the public at some events. However, it was staff from the University that made up the bulk of the attendees.

Many of the sessions focussed on the question: ‘what kind of university do we want?’ Yes, pensions were discussed, but within a wider understanding of the changing nature of the sector. Attendees remarked that they felt particularly empowered by speaking with other members of the University who they would not normally meet at work. This prompted a lot of talk about the future and how the this strong feeling of solidarity could be maintained after the dispute.

Readers may have ideas on how this ‘new space’ that the striking community has built can be maintained, and what its purpose would be once work resumes. subtext would welcome contributions on this fascinating development at Lancaster, and would be happy to play a part in future conversations.

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RADICAL OR MERELY YOUNGER? A REVIEW

It seems appropriate that on Monday 12 March, midway through Lancaster’s longest period of industrial action in decades, UCU’s teach out at the Gregson played host to an event that seemed to shout, ‘Call that radical? Ha!’ Marion McClintock, Honorary University Archivist and former Academic Registrar at Lancaster, and Alison Lloyd Williams of Global Link’s Documenting Dissent project were our guides as they took us through Lancaster’s radical past, both on and off campus.

According to Mrs McClintock, Lancaster University in its early days was characterised by very conservative Heads of Department, many of whom were ex-military, alongside younger, more radical staff, who pioneered Lancaster’s distinctive degree programmes: Religious Studies (not Theology), Independent Studies, Creative Writing, Environmental Studies, Peace Studies, Marketing, and Systems Engineering. Students were given the chance to ‘grapple with subjects they’d not studied before.’ Above all, Lancaster was shaped by its first Vice-Chancellor, Charles Carter, who actively encouraged this interdisciplinary approach. We were a university that ‘was taking a fresh look at society, was taking nothing for granted and was questioning norms.’

Publications of the time, like John O’Gauntlet and Carolynne, reflected this mood and encouraged debate on drugs, sex and gay rights, although some of their editorial choices, such as pin-up girls in Carolynne, seem archaic today.

Among the many disputes of the early years were ‘the mixed bedrooms argument of 1968’, the David Craig affair (see subtexts 8 and 9) and the 1975 rent strike which lasted over 12 months. Student involvement in these disputes was strong.

Lancaster’s college system played an important role in Lancaster’s free-thinking tradition; Sir Noel Hall, one of the university’s founders, was formerly Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford and had insisted that the colleges must form an integral part of Lancaster’s governance.

Why are things not like that any more? Lancaster’s rising research reputation in the 1980s meant that staff and students no longer had as much time to spend on innovative teaching or political discussion, and even Prof Carter was subject to the same pressures as everyone else.

Ms Lloyd Williams gave a history of the Documenting Dissent project, which was inspired by Lancaster Castle and its status as a symbol of state power and the location of Lancashire’s most important court. Many dissenters, including several chartists, had been tried there.

Lancaster is particularly significant in LGBT history, given the number of people prosecuted for homosexuality at the Castle, but more happily due to the significant presence during the 1970s of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) on campus, and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in town. Lancaster University pioneered women’s studies and radical feminism, while the very first CHE Conference took place in Morecambe.

More recently, the case of the George Fox Six, where six students and ex-students disrupted a conference in George Fox Lecture Theatre 1 and were promptly prosecuted for aggravated trespass, shows both that the dissenting tradition is still there … but that the university is no longer as tolerant as it was. The Documenting Dissent website includes an account of the affair, including an interview with Matthew Wilson, one of the six.

Contributions from the floor included comments from several people who have been encouraging the radical tradition at Lancaster for decades, including city councillor Andrew Kay, who remembered long campus debates on ‘this house will not give a platform for racist and fascist speakers’ and ‘this house is glad to be gay’, and former city councillor Tony Pinkney, who thought two years stood out in particular – 1886, when William Morris’s talk in the town led to the founding of the Socialist League, and 1999, when Lancaster elected its first ever group of Green Party councillors.

The Documenting Dissent project’s website is at: http://www.documentingdissent.org.uk/

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DEMOCRACY IS THRIVING … ELSEWHERE

There have been many Vice-Chancellorial U-turns on USS and risk recently, but the most notable ones have come from the VCs at Oxford and Cambridge, both on 7 March. Given that the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge were all treated as separate institutions in Universities UK’s September 2017 survey of attitudes to institutional risk, this is a major shift.

Why the change? Of course, we are happy to accept that both VCs will have reached their decisions sincerely. But Oxford’s VC, Prof Richardson, has probably been helped by the meeting of Oxford’s Congregation on 6 March, at which a resolution seeking to overturn Oxford’s existing stance on pensions was first blocked controversially, and then discussed outside, where it passed 442 to 2.

Likewise, Cambridge’s VC, Prof Toope, doubtless had his mind sharpened by the impending ballot of Cambridge’s Regent House, on a motion submitted by 501 members, which seeks to amend Cambridge’s official view on USS.

For readers not familiar with how Oxford and Cambridge work, the Oxford Congregation and Cambridge Regent House are the supreme governing bodies of those institutions, made up of all academic staff. They can, and occasionally do, overrule the University Council.

True democracy in action! But wait. Surely these forms of governance must violate the Committee of University Chairs’ Higher Education Code of Governance, the document which our Chief Administrative Officer in particular is very fond of (see subtext 174 and other subtexts passim)?

Well … yes. But they seem to be doing OK, all things considered.

Now that our Court has met for the final time, and our Senate has willingly handed its power to amend statutes over to our Council, perhaps we should start advocating something similar here? After all, our VC’s usual answer when challenged about centralising power is ‘the Warwick clincher’ – they do it at Warwick so it must therefore be a good thing – so perhaps we should start playing ‘the Oxford gambit’ in response.

LUSU NEWS

ELECTION

Amidst all the ‘disruption of the student experience’ caused by the strike, the LUSU sabbatical elections rolled around last week, and six new people have been elected to replace the outgoing officers. The results were as follows:

  • President: Rhiannon Llystyn Jones
  • Vice-President (Union Development): Matty Robinson
  • Vice-President (Activities): Toby Wilkinson
  • Vice-President (Welfare & Community): Emily Delaney
  • Vice-President (Education): Ian Meeks
  • Vice-President (Campaigns & Communications): Islay Grant

We note that Rhiannon Jones is the first woman to serve two terms as LUSU President, and the first person to serve two non-consecutive terms in any sabbatical LUSU post for nearly 40 years. She comfortably defeated sitting President Josh Woolf.

Many of the contests offered a standout candidate who had done their homework, were deeply experienced, and had a lot to offer.

The contest for the role of Vice-President (Union Development) was not one of them. The ‘ding-dong’ between the three candidates at hustings was so devoid of content that SCAN’s live-bloggers saw no point in fact-checking their answers because ‘they said nothing of substance’.

The contest for the role of Vice-President (Campaigns & Communications) had a standout candidate. That the student body instead opted to elect a candidate who ran on a whim; has no campaigns experience; believes experience isn’t important; wants to give student media ‘directions on what needs to change’ (we’re sure SCAN editors will be only too pleased to take direction from someone who doesn’t read it); and demonstrated zero enthusiasm or knowledge of any major on-campus issues, was therefore baffling.

The Vice-President (Education) race, in the midst of intense industrial action with staff working conditions at the forefront of everyone’s mind, was won by a candidate who thinks that a four day turnaround on feedback can work in all departments because it does in Physics.

Oh dear. Resentment is growing among students – the strike action, the current political discourse, the on-campus refurbishments, the lack of transparency from their union, the rises in rents and fees, and the cuts to services are just some of the causes. LUSU’s utter failure to weaponise this is bizarre. It’s raining soup, and LUSU is out in the yard with a fork. The golden goose is heavily pregnant, and they’re plucking it ready for Christmas dinner.

Readers might have thought that the atmosphere on campus would have lead to more candidates standing on an invigorating platform, and a couple of them maybe even winning. The students deserve better than the hollow, tepid, no-effort cacophony of ‘listening to students’ and ‘having an open-door policy’ and ‘bringing people together’ that it got.

So why they voted for it is anyone’s guess. We invite the candidates-elect to prove us wrong.

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HUST NOT LEST YE BE HUSTED

Contributed by Craig Jones

This year’s LUSU FTO hustings saw a handful of candidates that (in my opinion) promised to truly change the Union and may well have seen it become a political entity once more, rather than nothing more than a front desk for management. However, the results have now been announced and only one of these four promising candidates has made it through.

Hustings were held in Barker House Farm on an evening of bar sports, resulting in the husting speeches being drowned out at times by cheers and shouting from the teams.

For the position of VP Union Development, candidates were asked what they understood the word ‘union’ to mean, to which none of them responded particularly well. A personal favourite was the answer that opened with ‘The student union is a collection of students…’. Something new every day!

The candidates for president were asked what their opinion on the UCU strikes and why they held these opinions. All candidates said they supported the strikes and when asked if they would come and show support at the picket line, all said they would ‘try and make it down’. Only two presidential candidates visited the picket line at all – one simply to hust to the students in attendance, and the other (Rhiannon Jones) to show support to the staff.

With the results in, it doesn’t look like the SU will see any massive changes any time soon… or maybe I’m too pessimistic…

SHART ATTACK

FROM: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U).
TO: Hewlett.Venkklinne123@blueyonder.co.uk
SUBJECT: Interview with student journalist

Hi Hewlett,

I trust you’re well. I was just writing to show you how well the department has been functioning since I subsumed your responsibilities. Only the other day, I did an interview with a student journalist, the highlights of which you can listen to here:

Went rather well, I thought!

MMS.

PS. I hope you find a new job soon.

PPS. Can you critique the interview so that I can be even better next time. Ta.