A thread on the strikes and why I will be taking industrial action. Nobody likes to strike — nobody likes to lose 8 days’ salary — nobody likes to cancel classes. But honestly, I’m exhausted.

My VC is also the chair of UCEA and emailed us this week to say that Soton has a “highly competitive pay and pensions package within the constraints of national agreements”. But like... you’re the chair of the national employers’ association. If it’s constraining... change it?

(He ALSO said he supported our right to take part in “peaceful industrial action” which is a bit passive aggressive. What does he think we’re planning, tanks on the lawn by midday Monday?)

Also: students are at the heart of a lot of what we do. I care about my students! I love to teach! But actually my contract is 40% teaching. It’s supposed to take a little less than half my time. Even if admin (20%) is also mostly student-related, that’s still not ‘everything’.

Maybe that sounds pedantic, but it’s important, I think. Because a lot of stress & overwork comes from being told we need to prioritise our students, oh but our research & publications are what get us promoted, and don’t miss any of the arbitrary internal admin deadlines, and...

Our student numbers get higher and higher but are never high enough. Missing an admissions target is treated like failure even when we can’t cope with the student numbers we have. Research is supposed to fit into a half day or a snatched week and is woefully underfunded.

I think myself lucky to have a permanent job & earn a comfortable wage. Many people in academia are constantly searching for the next contract, living on tiny wages, working multiple jobs to get by. We have no future jobs to offer our PhD students but we are massively overworked.

We aren’t just striking because of the threat to pensions (when am I going to retire?!) or pay. It’s because our sector is broken, and our universities won’t listen to their staff when we tell them how broken we are too.