I’ve seen a lot of very brave & earnest threads that underscore how grimly necessary the #UCUstrikes are, especially re casualisation. Solidarity to you all. Not sure I can add much that is new, but here’s a quick thread about why I’m striking, if it helps build the case...

Over the last few years, I’ve watched brilliant brilliant colleagues both at my uni and others pour their heart and soul into poorly paid, fractional contracts with very little reward - no appreciation from their institution, no sign of a permanent job, just more fractional stuff

I’ve also seen my immediate line managers v frustrated at not being able to offer better employment to myself and others, because they are told firmly that there is no money. There is no flexibility. And yet...they have to take on more students and get better student feedback.

So they have to hire VLs and fractional, fixed term TFs. Students get to know these individuals, and then just like that they are gone. Relationships they might have built up - for example, with a personal tutor, confiding in them important, private matters - vanish.

And these casualised staff members keep the department ticking over. In my experience they often teach core first year modules that provide the foundation for the rest of the programme. It is often through their labour that students will come to know the subject at uni level.

And yet! Senior management think these people replaceable. Unimportant. Transient. While I have to say I have utmost love & respect for my colleagues in my departments at RH, my experiences with senior management have been almost uniformly negative.

Last year I worked very, very closely with another 0.5FTE colleague on a one year contract. Across the year we made a significant contribution to the department. At the end of the year we were told (ultimately by SMT) that there was only one job going next year...

...one job, that is, on 0.5FTE salaried contract. The other could only be paid hourly. We now had to compete against the person we had collaborated so productively with. I refused.

So this year I’ve had to take up multiple contracts to make a living. It’s actually not that any of these jobs individually take up too much time - though certainly they take up more time than I’m paid for - it’s that their juxtaposition, which never quite aligns, is overwhelming

This term I have found myself working flat out and I am not keeping up. I think most weeks I have ended up working for 10-12 hours a day, and most weeks that’s been 6-7 days. I don’t mean to do a Mary Beard - I don’t want to work these hours, it’s not healthy...

...and I am acutely aware that my mental health is rapidly collapsing. I find it vvvv difficult to talk about, but over (ONE of my institution’s) reading week this term I essentially had a breakdown and was wiped out for most of the week.

Which was particularly devastating because that week was my one chance to really work on ALL the stuff I need to do to ensure I have an income next year: research, book proposals, conference organisation, and bloody job applications.

And it is wiping out my creative practice. I have written nothing since term began. I am struggling to bring my best to the one gig I have managed to cling on to. In my field, being an active practitioner is supposedly incredibly valuable...

...but HOW can I continue my practice if I am having to work every hour of the day just to keep up with my casualised teaching contracts? How am I meant to do anything more meaningful than just hang on and keep up as best I can? While my mind and body slowly collapse.

And these problems are endemic. That’s why I’m striking. If we don’t stand up and demand change now, the HE sector - and our wellbeing as those who prop up the sector - will diminish until it is beyond repair.