twitter facebook

Strikes 2020… Day 12: Wild times!

Published: 11th March, 2020

Luckily it was a beautifully sunny day on Leicester UCU’s pickets today, but still very cold so yesterday’s furry attire came in handy once again.

And we welcomed a new furry friend brought down by one of our #Profs OnPickets

Today was the 12th day of the current 14 day stint (that’s Day 20 if you include the first stint of this dispute in November and December) and many of us are feeling it. We’re tired – physically and emotionally (especially after the discussions about precarious employment yesterday), we’re missing our jobs (and there’s a creeping anxiety about the work piling up) and even our trusty megaphone packed in [it’s been overworked recently and we know how that feels].

Point of view of a person carrying a megaphone covered in UCU stickers, following a group of striking colleagues on a march who are carrying banners and UCU signs.

Those of us with student-facing roles are missing our students. However, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the students who come to talk to us and join us at the pickets and those who become more involved (for example, our student witness at yesterday’s meeting about precarious employment in HE). We’re grateful the continuous support from Leicester SU both as an organisation, and individually from Oge and Adnan. And this tweet really picked us up today:

https://twitter.com/dampcabbage/status/1237681655164424192?s=20

We’ve got to know each other quite well. We discuss all sorts on the picket line and we continue to learn from each other. Today when the pickets merged, we discussed issues and implications for Higher Education associated with the Prevent agenda – an issue that our students asked us to talk about. 
Back to the dispute, there are two days left. If you haven’t been out yet, please read this We encourage all of our colleagues and students to join us for these last two days. Remember if you’re not a UCU member you can join today! (in fact, someone did just that today!)
On Day 11 we’re dedicating the day to our Grade 7 colleagues  (for example, Research Associates, Learning Developers, Teaching Fellows, Project Managers and many other roles in IT services, the library, and so on!). To mark this occasion, we’ll be welcoming back those superheroes, The Unaffordables