AUT strike - peep's thoughts on exam disruption?

[Flavour]

i support the strike, but tbh UEA is full of wankers

 

[Diamond]

What makes you think that the universities aren't trying to use students as pawns to get their way in the dispute?

I accept that that may well be the case too.

My point is that both the AUT and the universities are using the students as pawns.

Consequently it is a bit pathetic for one side to completely pin the blame on the other, and then claim that they are the true guardians of the student's interests.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I accept that that may well be the case too.

My point is that both the AUT and the universities are using the students as pawns.

Consequently it is a bit pathetic for one side to completely pin the blame on the other, and then claim that they are the true guardians of the student's interests.

Given that a significant part of most lecturers' jobs is to teach students, set exams, and mark course work and exams, how would you suggest we take industrial action which would impact on our employers sufficiently for them to take notice without affecting those students? You might also want to consider what effect not attempting to protect and promote our pay and conditions would have on the eductaional opportunites available to future would be students? I think you are being both unrealistic and shortsighted.

Louis Mac

 

[Diamond]

Given that a significant part of most lecturers' jobs is to teach students, set exams, and mark course work and exams, how would you suggest we take industrial action which would impact on our employers sufficiently for them to take notice without affecting those students? You might also want to consider what effect not attempting to protect and promote our pay and conditions would have on the eductaional opportunites available to future would be students? I think you are being both unrealistic and shortsighted.

Louis Mac

Firstly, I would have thought that a total strike from all aspects of your obligations (lecturing and research obligations, as well as setting and marking student work) would be the most salient option if you want your employers to take notice.

But on the other hand I can see that it is advantageous in any negotiation to ensure that you have the power to escalate the matter.

However I would argue that the situation now is so dire for university lecturers that it would be very difficult to envisage a negative development that could legitmately provide the pretext for escalation. In other words it's all fucked now, so go all out now.

Secondly, I take your point that failure to up university lecturers' pay now will most probably continue the drastic decline in the standard of lecturers, degrees and universities in general that has occured over the last 20 odd years.

But it is a fallacy to ignore the linkages between increasing lecturers pay and the reducing the overall budget available to universities. Universities aren't shit only because the lecturers aren't paid enough. Indeed I'd argue that with the current poverty of contact time, a more efficient proportional use of funds would be to actually buy some bloody books.

I am currently in classes with 25 other students. Every week we are prescribed compulsory reading material and then ordered to further our reading using our own initiative. We are lucky if the compulsory material hasn't been lost. When it is there, there is usually 1 copy for 25 people. And that's even before you can think about using your initiative to discover further books that the library won't ever buy. No wonder our classes are so sterile.

To sum up, IMO, the action is legitimate but the rhetoric is hypocritical. The issues are important but they are not being set in their proper context. And the lecturers are guilty of naivety and myopia too.