Strike while the iron's hot...

So, this week we have a lecturers' strike scheduled for Wednesday, and potentially at some point after that 'action short of a strike' - including not marking our exams. UCL apparently haven't been told this, so if they do, it's illegal. Nice of them to keep everyone up to speed, eh? The first I heard about it was from an email from the union - and not UCU, but our own students' union. Nice of the lecturers to tell us themselves - or at least it would have been.

It's all a bit disproportionate. According to this page, "Some staff are at risk of redundancy" - which is a shame, but when you put it in the context of other universities facing cuts, like Sussex, Leeds and King's, it's really not as big an issue. Those universities have announced target figures for redundancies numbering in the hundreds. For UCL's lecturers to go on strike over 'some staff' losing their jobs, what would they do if the Provost announced hundreds of jobs to go?!

Secondly, using students as a pawn in their political games is deeply unfair on us. Refusing to mark my exams - what have I done wrong?! I'm the one paying for my education, not the one who's threatening to sack them. They really need students on their side to win any fight, and pissing us off by delaying final years being able to get jobs, and other students from knowing whether they've progressed or not, or applying for internships and grad schemes, doesn't exactly put us on the same side.

Incidentally, the 'Massive defend education demo - UCL meet up' on facebook in support of the strike doesn't look particularly massive. 50 people turning up out of over 20,000 students? Yeah. Go for it. From their Q&A:

Q. Only a tiny layer of left-wing students support this action.
A. UCL Students' Union voted overwhelmingly at the AGM to oppose cuts and support the unions.

I think they'll find that the AGM didn't overtly support strikes or not marking exams. It was mainly about the Modern Languages Review, which is a completely unrelated topic. I can't see anything about it on the UCU website. Mainly since it actually only affects admin staff, who are represented by a different union. Which isn't striking. Odd, that, isn't it?

I won't be manning the picket lines in solidarity. I have exams to revise for, even if they're going to refuse to mark them.