9/52 - Strike

I entirely forgot about my weekly commitment to blog after a busy weekend of doing social things and a busy week of striking (Mon-Weds) and then working (Thurs-Fri)

Today I've been back on the picket lines as we embark on week 3 of this round of strikes - week 5 of this action overall - with another week left. 

As ever, it's been cold, wet, hard, tiring, and emotionally draining. But it's also been uplifitng, given me a sense of community for the first time since I started at the University, and provided an outlet for my energy and hope for this industrial action. Pictured is my creative and energetic outlet - a placard I use to generate disruption outside the management building on campus via outreach to motorists - impact!

Every strike (this is my fourth since I entered academia) begins the same; my friends (across at least 8 universities at this point) and I quietly confess to one another we "don't know how we'll do it" and "can't afford it" and "are not sure the demands are achievable" and then we dive in, and we all participate with a degree of militancy in how we withdraw our labour and man the pickets as fully as we are able. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had such a strongly unionised, strongly political cohort of PhD peers with whom I continue to share soldiarity and support in all aspects of our journey through academia.

Facebook reminds me it was exactly one year ago [yesterday] that I was offered (and accepted) the job here. And that 2 years ago we were on strike in the snow to protect our pensions. 4 years before that [last week sometime] I was participating in the marking boycott to protect final salary pensions (a fight we lost). 

Difficult though every strike is, not walking out would be a thousand times harder. Not standing up, not drawing a line in the sand, not pushing back on the slow erosion of our universities, increasing inequality, and the devaluation of our labour is not an option.