This is day 5 of #UCUstrikes @leedsucu but my mind is already turning to when I return to work on Thursday. I will of course be kind, polite and reasonable with non-striking colleagues, including those who have undermined or ridiculed this action. 1/

But please be under no illusion: I’m angry about how people are valued in Universities. Being on strike and standing on a picket has, like it did last time, made me angrier. 2/

One of the many things I’m angry about are connections made between industrial action and a disregard for student welfare. So here are a few words to colleagues who stayed behind because they wish to look after students in our absence. 3/

We care about students, too, so please don’t peddle narratives suggesting we don’t. This includes running special wellbeing events held only during strike action. It pits students against us and undermines action taken in part because we worry about the student experience. 4/

Student learning conditions are inextricably linked to staff working conditions. High quality (‘Gold’ and 4*) research-led teaching cannot be produced at 3am, especially not on a precarious contract. #PrecarityStory 5/

Lifting the cap on student numbers and charging £9k in fees; seeking to shift pensions off-book; a decline in (unequal) pay and conditions; unacceptable levels of job insecurity. These are all part of the invidious marketisation of HE which turns students into consumers. 6/

Of course, some students are stressed to the eyeballs by the strike. If they’re here to purchase an expensive product rather than to engage in learning, everything becomes about assessment, assessment, assessment, rather than ideas, concepts, criticality and experience. 7/

Those invaluable educational ‘goods’ are still available to students during industrial action through conversations on the picket line and in teachouts. But their value is crowded out by the commodification of HE, so we shouldn’t be surprised if our students don’t engage. 8/

I do not take industrial action that impacts my students lightly, but we have been forced, after many years (stretching further back than my short academic career) of policies eroding the value of Universities which harms staff *and* students. 9/ #UCUstrikes

The collective patience of otherwise mild-mannered, reasonable and conscientious people, who care deeply about their staff and student colleagues, has snapped. It doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned about student experience and well-being. 10/ #UCUstrikesback

But it does mean we will return to work changed by being on strike, changed by being on the picket, and potentially changed by what happens in University buildings prior to, during and after our absence. 11/ #UCUstrikes #UCUStrikesBack @leedsucu