What do people think of the Lecturers' industrial action?

[gilderof 10]

I think it's disgusting personally. I know that lecturers are very intelligent, academic wonderful people (and hey, the main reason I'm at uni), but it's completely unjustified. My mother is a primary school teacher and absolutely slogs her guts out day in day out, working a 9-day week instead of a 5-day week, and then putting in hours planning and marking over the main vacations. And yet she gets paid a lot less than these lecturers, a lot of whom I don't ever see doing very much at all.

 

So personally I think it's disgraceful. If they should reward anyone, the government should be putting more money into schools and hospitals than giving it all away to a bunch of mardy lecturers.

[Saffron 10]

Not at all. My chosen career pays well and I work standard office hours. I just wish I could have their holiday entitlement.

 

What like 40 days, 5 of which are directed days to be taken over Christmas? That leaves me with 35 days to take, and not when I please. We have to be in over August for enrolments and other activities.

 

My friend who works in an admin position for the police gets exactly the same leave as I do.

[Saffron 10]

It's enough to make you wish you had got a 2:2 instead of a first / 2:1 and had been forced to go into teaching instead.

 

!!! there is a head of faculty at Dronfield School on almost £44k who got a 3rd class degree in Geography !!!

[Phanerothyme 12]

I bet he was good at sports.

[Saffron 10]

I bet he was good at sports.

 

It's a she. And I don't think she was!

[nightrider 13]

I think it's disgusting personally. I know that lecturers are very intelligent, academic wonderful people (and hey, the main reason I'm at uni), but it's completely unjustified. My mother is a primary school teacher and absolutely slogs her guts out day in day out, working a 9-day week instead of a 5-day week, and then putting in hours planning and marking over the main vacations. And yet she gets paid a lot less than these lecturers, a lot of whom I don't ever see doing very much at all.

 

So personally I think it's disgraceful. If they should reward anyone, the government should be putting more money into schools and hospitals than giving it all away to a bunch of mardy lecturers.

 

They may well not put too much effort into teaching. This is because teaching is only a small part of a lecturers job and isnt really relevant to getting promotions/not sacked. In fact if you put lots of effort into teaching and do it really well you may well lose your job due not having done any research activities. Conversely if you do loads of research to a high standard and rubbish teaching you will probably keep your job forever.

 

When you say they dont do much you do not know what you are talking about. Perhaps you should reread the thread because this has been extensivly explained already.

[babychickens 10]

I think it's disgusting personally. I know that lecturers are very intelligent, academic wonderful people (and hey, the main reason I'm at uni), but it's completely unjustified. My mother is a primary school teacher and absolutely slogs her guts out day in day out, working a 9-day week instead of a 5-day week, and then putting in hours planning and marking over the main vacations. And yet she gets paid a lot less than these lecturers, a lot of whom I don't ever see doing very much at all.

 

So personally I think it's disgraceful. If they should reward anyone, the government should be putting more money into schools and hospitals than giving it all away to a bunch of mardy lecturers.

 

 

My mother is a special needs teacher. She works very hard for relatively little monetary reward. Yes, teachers, nurses, firemen etc etc should all be paid more, but that doesn't actually mean that lecturers shouldn't be. The dispute is largely based around the promise by the government that student fees could be charged as long as universities put one third of the students' fees directly into increasing staff salaries (not just lecturers - support staff too). The dispute is not with the government, the dispute is with the universities who continue to deny that this is what the arrangement was, and insist that recent changes in the universities' employees' payscales more than fulfills the arrangement anyway (despite that being an entirely separate issue). Also, lecturers work similar hours to teachers, just because you have no personal experience of that and only see your lecturers while they're teaching doesn't mean that's all they do with their time.

 

To put it simply - it isn't the point that other people should be paid more too, i'm sure most lecturers would be fully supportive of that. It is also not a dispute with teh government. Perhaps if you took the time to read through the thread you'd appreciate that it isn't as straight forward as you seem to think it is.

[gilderof 10]

Thanks for your post, babychickens.

 

I accept what you're saying, and fully agree with your point that people should in general be paid more. Especially those in the emergency services and other people who should definitely be rewarded for the hard work they put in, such as your mother.

 

I just find it hard in a world where some footballers earn ridiculous sums of money (sometimes several times a person's annual income in one day!) for kicking a ball round a field and being on tv. Oh the hardship. And yet I see people like my mother and yours who are clearly putting in their all and getting very little. That's the main reason this strike irritated me. You can't tell me that being a lecturer is as hard as being a primary school teacher.

 

Both my parents have been off work with depression due to the types of kids they've had to put up with in their classes - sometimes kids that will go on the rampage and lash out at other kids. There is very little support for teachers who have kids like that because of limited funding in schools. The school my mother's in has had to cut down on the number of teachers cos they have such a pathetic budget. That was my point about the government.

 

Ah well. It's the same with anything. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

[Hook 10]

We are desperately understaffed and each of us is doing the work of 2 people as we've had several staff leave and their posts 'frozen' because the university cannot afford to take someone on to replace them.

 

So how on earth are the universities supposed to be able to give existing staff a pay increase if they can't afford to pay the existing job roles?

[Twiglet 10]

Thanks for your post, babychickens.

You can't tell me that being a lecturer is as hard as being a primary school teacher.

 

Are you kidding me? Ok, so the people we teach are slightly older, but they still have many problems, just different ones. We often get confused between our position as lecturer or social worker, as we are bound by confidentiality and cannot refer them on to appropriate people if they will not allow us to. Stress is also a problem due to desperate understaffing and each lecturer having to cover the subjects of two others.

 

Lecturing also requires an additional 3 years of self funded training (running into tens of thousands of pounds on top of all previous university debt) that teaching does not.

 

If teachers had been promised extra money and then denied it, I would expect them to go on strike too. I don't see how you can think it's 'disgusting' when you're thinking of teacher's pay and conditions and they aren't in the same situation, they weren't blackmailed into agreeing with something by being told they'd get more funding towards salaries, and then told they couldn't have it.

[Twiglet 10]

So how on earth are the universities supposed to be able to give existing staff a pay increase if they can't afford to pay the existing job roles?

 

With the extra funding they'll be getting from the higher tuition fees in September

[bullseye 10]

As a senior lecturer at the University I have followed this thread with interest. One thing I'd like to stress is that not all academics are on strike action - so please don't tar all academics/lecturers with the same brush! I'm not an AUT member, the recent strike action has confirmed that I never will be. I also know a number of AUT members who are refusing to adhere to the strike action because they, like me, find the whole idea of using students as political pawns professionally abhorrent - one of my mates has cancelled his AUT direct debit as a result of this action.

 

Bear in mind that only 41% of AUT members voted in favour of this action. A lot of academics, like myself, are continuing to set exams and take part in assessment activities - in some cases we're doing extra to cover for our AUT colleagues in order to ensure that our undergraduates do graduate this summer!