To recent followers: we were born in massive UK uni workers strike of 2018 — initially about uni pensions.
Many senior uni managers follow us. Many are strategising over student encampments. To all of you: the movement for liberation is only intensifying - don’t forget this 🍉
Just look at this list of Palestinian academics killed by Israel.
It starts with 3 uni presidents, then 7 deans, then multiple professors + other scholars. Not all names of the 94 profs killed are known.
This is scholasticide. Permanent ceasefire now. End the occupation.
Our letter to Israeli government authorities regarding the ongoing military campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza, including the decimation of the education sector and the wanton killing of thousands of students, teachers and professors
We condemn with all our force Israel's killing of at least 94 Palestinian academics in Gaza. We mourn every one of our colleagues.
We find it unconscionable that virtually no western university has said a single word.
🔴 متابعة صفا| المرصد الأورومتوسطي لحقوق الإنسان:
▪️وثّقنا قتل قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي 94 من أساتذة الجامعات الفلسطينية ومئات المعلمين وآلاف الطلبة في إطار جريمة الإبادة الجماعية الشاملة التي تشنها على قطاع غزة منذ 7 أكتوبر الماضي
Keep tweeting about Gaza!
Everyone there is enduring day 6 of Israel’s telecommunications blackout. The atrocities are not stopping
The algorithms discriminate against posts about Palestine - so please do whatever you can to RT and boost others’ posts at the very least
“Ghent University is deliberately choosing to step out of the rat race between individuals, departments and universities. We no longer wish to participate in the ranking of people.”
Sheffield Hallam are asking students to grass on lecturers. You can find their form, open to all, here. We were happy to help and filled in a submission.
Solidarity with
@UniofNottingham
colleagues tonight, who just received this truly shocking email from management 🤯
Staff asked to 'deprioritise' current work and become "Contact Centre Advisors" taking calls from locked-down students and angry parents 😡
A new low 👇
🚨University of Galway becomes the first university in Ireland to call for a permanent ceasefire.
The President cites the ICJ ruling.
The university will also review its relationships with Israeli institutions.
1/
With the bleak news from JNC fuelling rage + horror amongst university workers, we’re thinking tonight particularly of our UCU negotiating team for all they have done + will continue to do to save our
#USS
pensions. Thank you. La lutte continue
#USSMess
#OneOfUsAllOfUs
Michael Higgins, President of Ireland said: ‘unis and academics had become overly focused on the market, because of a sense that there was “magic happening in the marketplace…when in fact actually what you had was a whole series of vulgar chancers”’
Like this tweet if the UCU industrial action has finally given you an opportunity to do important life maintenance: medical appointments, calling your parents, spending time with your children, fixing the boiler, doing the washing up, bit of exercise...
#OneOfUsAllOfUs
@QudsNen
In late October 2023, Dr Al Ran, Director of Surgery at Indonesian Hospital, who has just been released after being kidnapped by the Israeli military from the hospital, found out that Israel had targeted his family home and killed his family
"راحوا.. راحوا".. لحظة معرفة رئيس قسم الجراحة في المستشفى الإندونيسي في #غزة، الدكتور محمد الران وشقيقه الدكتور مؤيد الران بتعرض منزل عائلتهما للقصف ما أدى إلى استشهاد أفراد العائلة
#حرب_غزة
“As staff, we've allowed ourselves to be exploited. We've been told we need to do more, that we're not good enough. It's time to restore our sense of self-worth & remember how much power & authority we have”: incoming Gen Sec
@DrJoGrady
’s address
#UCU2019
💥💥💥 BREAKING!
Students at Sussex Uni have just joined the global movement & set up camp for Palestine!
Library Square has now been renamed "Liberation Square".
Get down & support them on the Falmer campus & join their welcome dinner at 6pm 🇵🇸
Is anybody "taking advantage" of industrial action to do essential self-care like medical appointments, urgent household maintenance, or just having a proper conversation with your family? All of which seem impossible to fit in given our workloads and schedules!
#UCUstrikesback
‘Her own pay, £459,000 a year, has been criticised. Is it sustainable for administrators’ pay to increase, while lecturers are striking over pensions? “I would really love to avoid talking about that,” she sighs’
#ucuRISING
🚨🚨🚨 UCLA GIVES DISPERSAL ORDER
WE SUSPECT THE COPS WILL ATTEMPT TO RAID ENCAMPMENT SOON. EYES ON LOS ANGELES!
We are holding the line and not backing down!!
tl;dr: We brought students back when you told us not to, now help us clear up the predictable disaster by a) volunteer to be shouted at by angry parents or b) be a hall receptionist. KTHXBYE
PS Don't forget your face-to-face teaching
🚨🚨🚨 UPDATE on latest USS scandal: after The Pensions Regulator corrected USS's false claims about its views on risk, USS didn't just cover it up. They repeated the claims in public! 😮😮😮
Trust in
#USS
and
@UniversitiesUK
has collapsed. Watch our video
#aesthetic
👇👇👇
Israel has now killed at least 94 academics in Gaza. It has destroyed every university.
If you work in a British university, please read and consider signing this letter, which follows calls made by Palestinian HE institutions
Massive new story on USS by
@JosephineCumbo
.
USS: we can't implement the JEP because it would contravene TPR's risk benchmarks.
TPR: not true. Please correct this.
USS Trustee Chair David Eastwood and CEO Bill Galvin: ok, let's...not share this with the other Trustees
Good morning to all
#UCUStrike
strikers and supporters 👋 👋🏽👋🏿 We are on our way to the physical and digital picket lines, thinking back to 2018
#USSstrike
and how the solidarity forged online and in person was so crucial in gaining concessions from our employers...
“When uni staff strike, they will be abandoning their lecture rooms & desks for a far greater cause than their own justified grievances. It is a battle that will help determine not just the future of our imperilled universities but our soc & culture w it”
A brand new music video, "TIERS FOR FEARS" 😭
Dedicated to all UK university staff and students 💓
Please watch with sound on 🔊
#Covid_19
#AcademicTwitter
Congratulations
@JosephineCumbo
for being named "Social Media Influencer of the Year" at Women in Pensions Awards. You were indeed "the go-to news source for academics across the UK during the university pension dispute". Profound thanks.
#USSstrike
Tell your member universities and vice-chancellors to:
🛑 Suspend face-to-face teaching immediately
😷 Cancel all public-facing events including Open Days
👛 Pay casualised staff
🐩 Stop hiding behind an irresponsible government
🤖 Show your "leadership"
#COVID19
#coronavirus
Vice-chancellors across UK HE are donating one year of their salary (£50m in total) into an emergency fund to support precarious and casualised university staff. What an incredible gesture; thank you
@UniversitiesUK
and
@viviennestern
Durham Uni ‘has reversed its plan to cut the level of face-to-face teaching it offers students after criticism...Its vice-chancellor, Professor Stuart Corbridge, said it was now "very clear most academics do not want to let go of their courses"’
Breaking apart the fantasy of what working inside a university is like is central to this action. The employer has been relying on people imagining university life from the 1980s. All our testimonies of casualization, inequalities and unbearable workloads are crucial
#UCUstrike
We mourn the death of yet another of our colleagues, Dr Hamdi Baroud, a law professor and former Dean at Al-Azhar University, who has been killed by Israel.
Israel’s scholasticide continues.
Dr. Hamdi Baroud, a prominent law professor at Al-Azhar University's Faculty of Law in Gaza and a former dean of the same faculty, disappeared on January 27 during the Israeli invasion of Khan Yunis.
Today, locals discovered his body, shot and killed in areas recently vacated
"UCL, UK’s largest campus, defies official call for earlier return"
"UCL’s order extends the DfE’s return period by a month until 22 Feb + the uni has said it could be further extended until March...Other London institutions are likely to follow the move"
@CjvHenderson
Reports of 439 HE students and staff killed back in early Nov. We're not aware of more recent updates - at least in English language materials
‘[O]ur survey reveals a severely dejected coterie of academic staff no longer willing to accept what they perceive as punitive work regimes; the absence of an ethics of care…; the non-accountability among senior managers + dereliction of leadership…’
Huh, looks as though all the things all you comrades have been appalled abt — at Liverpool, Sheffield Hallam, etc — have made it into a
@guardian
article on how our employers are trying to... well ...stop strike action & break staff student solidarity 👯♀️
All our solidarity with University of Manchester law student Dana Abu Qamar who has had her student visa cancelled by the home office after expressing support for Palestinian rights
“Keep in mind that I am a 19-year-old student. All I have done in life is go to school and receive an education, advocate for social justice, and try to be an asset to my community." Dana, undeterred, spoke out for the first time in an interview with
@AJEnglish
“Russell Group institutions have undergone their biggest expansion of student numbers in more than a decade”
#OneOfUsAllOfUs
They’ve collectively amassed a surplus of more than £2.2billion, The Telegraph reports
(we don’t tweet links to The Telegraph) 1/
Does your university now charge deposits (refundable? non-refundable?) for students who accept a place? For which courses? How much is the deposit? Let us know below👇
Indiana University cancelled Palestinian artist Samia Halaby's first US retrospective
Halaby: "I had expected being an alumna and a one-time prof who had been awarded tenure, to be somewhat immune because I knew the atmosphere and the country"
Renowned Palestinian artist Samia Halaby's first U.S. retrospective was abruptly canceled by her alma mater, Indiana University, over her criticism of Israel and its war on Gaza. She explains how she learned of the cancellation and says the school is failing its students.
#USS
: extraordinary statement from VC of Sheffield: “I would like to acknowledge the work of the local
#UCU
branch in challenging consistently the approach taken by the USS Trustee since the introduction of a revised approach to scheme valuations in 2014”
Our old pals
#UUK
are today spending
#UCUstrike
day running an event for vice chancellors sponsored by Amazon Web Services featuring presentations on productivity and on:
"HoW AmaZoN HeLpS UnIvErSiTiEs InNoVaTe" 😬💀😬💀😬💀😬💀
Also disgusting to see university’s UK bringing in Amazon to speak about ‘productivity’ and legit showing photos of an amazon warehouse as a model of how a university could be run. This at the end of the day is what our struggle is about.
#UCUstrike
#fourfights
“Strikes can be a sign that workers have broken with a habit of submission and passivity. They indicate workers are beginning to question the authority of management and are willing to dare to defend their interests”
#ucustrike
Vice-Chancellor of SOAS: UK universities that haven't called for a ceasefire must publicly justify how they square their societal values with their decision not to:
'for many this has created the perception of deep, deep hypocrisy and frankly racism'
So we are now UNIVERSITY STAFF AND STUDENT BRIEFS, because
@USSbriefs
are for everyone
#loveHE
#wearetheuniversity
💪👊✊
Again, thank you *so much* for all the incredible support in the last two weeks. Together we march on!
5/
Any VCs/senior managers reading lots of UCU tweets + thinking it’s ‘just a bit of Twitter rage’ that will subside in a while:
we have long memories - what you’re seeing carries the fury of 2018, 2019, 2020 (+ let’s face it many more years before 2018)
#OneOfUsAllOfUs
#USSmess
.
@CAF4MESA
stresses that list comprises only a small percentage of the hundreds of faculty and staff, and thousands of students and their families, killed by Israel since 7 October.
We mourn the loss of every one.
We condemn these attacks on the present + future of HE in Gaza.
6. Immortalise the Student Occupation
One of the lecture theatres that students occupied in the media department will be renamed after Shireen Abu-Akleh.
The
@Gold4Palestine
occupation will also be memorialised in an exhibition wall in the Professor Stuart Hall Building.
🚨News just in from University of Warwick, management are pushing back the traditionally early December pay day to allow the university to impose strike reductions in the Christmas paypacket, rather than wait until January pay day
“Universities must stop acting as though staff are a cost to be minimised if they wish to see any return of healthy morale on campus. Right now there is little trust in the ability of university leadership teams to do that.” By
@DrJoGrady
#USSstrike
This is really really important. Please everyone: do at least one stint of picketing next week. Many comrades are very tired and cold and ill 🤧 🤒 at this point and need your support
#UCUstrike
#FourFights
Breaking: Israeli snipers killed the prominent academic and expert in Gaza, Psychologist Fadel Abu Hain, just moments ago. Condolences to his beloved family, and his mother. Israel had previously his brothers in 2003 and several family members in 2014.
Professor of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation at U Manchester has been “stepped down” from her tutor role with medical students since she offered Zoom instead of F2F
@UM_UCU
Solidarity with Prof Bowen
An email last night informed me I have been stepped down from my PBL tutor role with my 2 groups of med students for offering Zoom instead of f2f
Sorry students for late notice cancelling this mornings & all sessions. Stay safe
@KateGreenSU
@UM_UCU
@DrJoGrady
@Larissa_Ken
🚨🚨🚨ALERT: NEW BRIEF
#USSbriefs99
🚨🚨🚨
*Why universities must move all teaching online this autumn*
@aechitty1
@felicitycallard
@WarrenPearce
review the evidence🧐
Face to face teaching puts staff & students at significant risk of catching Covid-19‼️
A timely reminder when figures about average academic salaries are banded around: these ‘averages’ come late in life after years of precarity, exclude many entirely, hide pay disparities, and reinforce narratives of privilege that threaten intellectual diversity
#UCUstrike
Today’s
#WhyIStrike
is about pensions, and particularly my take on why this action is important for academics (while never forgetting that
#UCUstrikes
are about all university workers) given the challenges of entering the profession /1
“Now academics, furious about the Home Office refusing visas to established university staff, are fighting back, with some declining to volunteer their passports for checks for casual work at other universities”
#hostileenvironment
“The abysmal pay & conditions imposed on young academics is an indictment of the low value Britain places on scholarship, on deep thinking & on culture. Instead, we prefer to reward bureaucrats: university administrators and vice-chancellors.”
Whatever you might think about strike action, please consider that all of us on the pickets stand to lose 1/4 or more of a month's salary or earnings. This is a substantial amount. Action like this is not taken lightly or without an understanding of what's at stake.
#UCUstrike
What's up
#USSstrike
Twitter: how 👏🏽 are 👏🏽 you 👏🏽 doing👏🏽?
Forget daft April Fools, our team is the real deal.
Researching 🤓 writing ✍🏽 editing ✂️ ready to serve you up some timely analysis to inform next week's ballot
#NoCapitulation
Hold tight 💪🏽
😮 😮 😮 3500 more of you have joined
#UCU
since strikes announced!
#UCUstrike
“UCU said it had been processing requests from 3,500 more workers seeking to join the union since the strikes were announced three weeks ago”
"We reject being positioned as consumers, & our striking staff as mere service providers."
Students have occupied Old Schools, administrative hub of U Cambridge
#FourFights
#UCUstrike
"VCs that I've spoken to privately say, yes, of course, we understand that we are throwing petrol on the flames by doing this [
#MAB
deductions]: staff are very angry, they say...they're exhausted, they're broken, they can't pay their bills..."
@AnnaFazack1
🚨Breaking USS news🚨
Oxford University rejects USS's call for 'contingent contributions' to support the 2018 valuation, and questioned its refusal to implement the JEP in full:
'The University has rejected the argument for contingent contributions'
So
#USSbriefs
community:
We're all pretty darn tired this weekend.
But there's still a lot going on in the
@USSbriefs
team behind the scenes.
New briefs underway.
Thinking, strategising.
What & where next.
And next Tuesday, we'll celebrate turning 2 weeks old.
We hope you're surviving the post-ballot slump. You may recall that we were running an
#aesthetic
competition for most striking display of
#USSbriefs
. Deadline was 2pm. We're delighted to announce that a Joint Expert Panel will be appointed to determine the winner.
#USSstrike
⚡️GET OUT ON THE PICKETS NEXT WEEK⚡️
Please don't sit back and assume your comrades will do this for you. Many branches have lost a 17 massive days of pay so far for
#UCUstrike
. If you haven't yet helped, now is really the time to up your game.
What can you do? 1/
VC Essex: "I believe that high-quality pension arrangemnts are an important part of the benefits available to uni employees. I also believe that the trustees of...USS), are being overly cautious in their calcs of what it will take to sustain it"
#UCUstrike
Quick round-up, our
#USSbriefs
are at
Medium:
Facebook:
Web:
Twitter: you're looking at it now.
Thanks for amazing support so far, plenty more to come.
Last year, after an extremely poor staff survey result that chronicled low morale at the University of Leicester, the institution started issuing these tote bags in an attempt to cheer people up. What examples of misguided 'staff experience' interventions do you have?
“Management at SOAS have moved effectively to sack their academic staff on zero hours or casual contracts. In order to fill the enormous gap this will leave in teaching at the college, they have also rescinded all research leave with immediate effect”
It's ironic when VCs at "prestigious" "Russell Group" universities, who often proclaim to be champions of diversity and equality, manage institutions with 60-70% staff on insecure contracts (which disproportionately impact female scholars)
#YesUniCan
“This is the story of Queen Mary University of London
@QMUL
, whose boss, Colin Bailey, is on a package worth £359k a yr (plus free housing in inner London), but which bilks its own academics as brazenly as Scrooge did his clerks”
Great piece
@chakrabortty
Minds are whirring 🧠 😫. Computers are buzzing 💻. We're approaching the final stages of getting our first set of briefs ready for release tomorrow.
*** Thank you *** to all who have followed us: there are now nearly 3000 of you.
#USSbriefs
#USSstrike
“The tuition fee income that universities receive from students has grown by a third over the past five years as institutions have expanded rapidly, although spending on lecturers and other staff has not kept pace”
The president of Tel Aviv University, and former Law Dean, tries to salvage the image of Israeli academia. In an appalling Op-Ed he asks “difficult questions” such as: is there a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and whether there is a moral or legal justification to create one../1
Suppose you run a pension scheme + you did a valuation in the middle of a pandemic which showed the need for savage cuts — and the employers’ org agreed. How do you hide the scheme strengthening a lot since then?
Sam Marsh shows you how in
#USSbriefs111
We are devastated and horrified that Israel has killed Prof Wiesam Essa, head of geography at Al Aqsa University, Gaza. We send all our condolences to his family.
Prof Essa was CARA fellow at Manchester Uni
@OfficialUoM
in 2019
@RGS_IBG
@CARA1933
Jeremy Farrar, Director of Wellcome Trust, member of SAGE:
‘It is, of course, concerning to see the number of cases among university students...Teaching in further + HE should be online, except in those few courses where it is impossible’
#COVID19
🚨ATTENTION ALL USS MEMBERS🚨
USS is currently consulting with scheme members. We have drawn up a consultation template that you can ALL use to signal your displeasure. Thanks to
@NJSHardy
@davidhuyssen
&
@MikeOtsuka
#ResileAndResubmit
Has any UK university leader spoken out about Israel's mass killing of Palestinians?
Hope all those mission/vision statements about bravery, daring to be different and the championing of social justice are proving helpful right now👍
Call for the immediate release of Dr Atif Al-Hout.
And never forget this photo - Dr Al-Hout, in medical scrubs as he continues to give care under unendurable conditions, staring down the barbarity of that IOF soldier in his puffed-up military gear
🚨Breaking: The Israeli army detained Dr. Atif Al-Hout, the director of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis-southern
#Gaza
!
They disregarded his old age, his health condition, and the fact that he is a doctor !