Strikes in the Classics Department
With the Classics Department in the midst of Durham University and College Union (UCU) strike action and with many of our classes cancelled, the impact the cause of this strike has on lecturers and students has been playing on my mind.
I have felt driven over the past few days to reflect on the reasons for this strike, and, with requests to Ostraka for an article discussing it, I will outline the issues that have been presented to me — those the UCU have outlined, an informative speech from Dr Kate Cook, and my own thoughts.
The UCU describes two motivations for the strike: issues surrounding pensions and the ‘Four Fights’ dispute. The former, like the latter, is a long-standing concern, but has been perpetuated by a financial health check that took place in March 2020, when the economy was feeling the effects of the early lockdowns. The UCU states that the guaranteed retirement income for the typical member of staff is to be reduced by 35%, and, though this figure has been challenged by Universities UK’s, I question if it is right for such an important valuation to take place during a pandemic. The alternative figures from Universities UK were reported to be between 10% and 18%.
The second issue, and reason why our lecturers are striking, is the ‘Four Fights’ dispute. This, to me, is an umbrella under which multiple concerns for both university staff and students are housed. Dr Kate Cook, a lecturer from the Classics Department who is participating in the strike, gave an insightful speech on this and has kindly allowed me to quote her in my discussion.
Of the four disputes, the first one confronts the lack of annual pay increases in line with inflation — meaning that, as stated by the UCU:
“After adjusting for inflation, someone working at a university now is being paid around 7% less for the same work as they would have been in 2010. This is equivalent to a loss of just over two spine points … or, alternatively, equivalent to working for free in December.”
The issues with unfair pay do, however, not stop there. The second concern that the ‘Four Fights’ cover, as outlined by the UCU, is pay inequality “especially around gender, ethnicity and disability” and, at Durham University, this seems to be an issue that is particularly prevalent due to their reported 28.3% gender pay gap. On the issue of pay inequalities here, Dr Kate Cook noted in her lecture:
“The pay gap, as far as we can tell, for black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds is even worse. Now, it’s quite difficult to tell because many universities don’t keep very good figures on this, but where they do it is also shockingly bad — and it is worth knowing that the last time the figures were released no black staff at Durham were getting paid at the professorial level, which is shockingly poor I think.”
Moving on from this, she also spoke about the impact that the trend of short-term contracts has on university staff. According to the UCU: Durham has agreed to a minimum of a 12 month contract, which, despite being an improvement on what it once was, is not long enough to allow staff full Universities Superannuation Scheme pension benefits. With regards to how this impacts staff, Dr Kate Cook gave an insightful account of her own experience working at Durham with contracts of this nature. She stated that:
“Very many academics who do your teaching are currently on one year contracts, including me. I am only hired here until the end of this year — in fact — I’m relatively lucky compared to many temporary colleagues because this is my second renewal at Durham. So, I was on a one year contract when I got here, we got to the summer and they renewed me for one more year, and then they renewed me for one more year — so as you can appreciate, I’m sure, this is no way to build a life.”
Continuing to challenge working conditions at universities, the last point of the ‘Four Fights’ dispute is concerned with alleviating workloads, including how they have been impacted by the pandemic. With numbers of students attending Durham this year having risen, and with Classics and Ancient History offer-holders on the list of those eligible for the £5000 deferral incentive before term began, one can imagine that the workload of staff has also increased. Dr Kate Cook spoke about how this issue, caused by the pandemic, has impacted lecturers like herself:
“It’s really lovely to have so many students — but staffing rates haven’t kept up with that — we’ve just been expected to work more hours so we are all working evenings and weekends, which means we are spending less time being well rested versions of ourselves.”
The personal impact that this has had on people who teach me has really struck me here, particularly as it seems far removed from the official documents emailed by the university on the strike action.
Though I appreciate the university bearing the impact the strikes have on education in mind, with points in the ‘Durham University Policies to Mitigate the Educational Impact on Students of the UCU Industrial Action’, I can’t help but wonder how the working conditions of our lecturers impact us further here.
