Sharing this again bc *this* is why I am striking:
“An intellectual precariat has come of age, made up of millennials who stumble from year to year on temporary contracts, often part-time, wondering where the next teaching gig is coming from.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/25/the-guardian-view-on-university-strikes-a-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-campus

I did 5 years on temp contracts and it was brutal. I had depression, insomnia, my eating disorder flared up again, moving around so much meant maintaining personal relationships was really hard. My finances are still not great.
And the situation was got so much worse since then.

Now I have more job security, but the pressures are different and still very very real. My colleagues at all career stages and in all parts of the university are knackered.
Anyone doing simple sums about tuition fees and contact hours - that’s not where the cash is going.

What I can do is try to be honest with my students, and with the next generations of academics about what i have experienced, and do what i can to support them. And right now, that is by withdrawing my labour.

And yes, I am on research leave, I have got no classes to cancel, I am inconveniencing no one but myself (and possibily my editors, shh) but nonetheless, there’s a principle at stake here - and so i am going to dig out my big coat and get down to the picket today.

Re my temp contract years - there was a weird thing then about it being ‘paying one’s dues’ but also if you did it for too long you would be ‘on the shelf’. Fuck both sides of that. Like EC academics have more than absolutely minimal agency in what they get to do.

If you are mid or late career, think about what you can do to make this system better for the people coming after you. That might not be striking in this case - all kinds of reasons why people can’t strike - but there are other things you can do to make academia better & kinder.

Oh, yes, and another thing.
Not going to sit on my arse when PhD tutors and ECRs and prof services staff and others in less secure employment than me are striking and have gone on strike in the past to defend my rights.

Also, to the people who made me feel like the stress of precarity was just me not being tough enough or not having the right "attitude" and that I maybe wasn't cut out for academia