Let me just say, first and foremost, that I am a staunch union girl through and through. They've supported me through tricky times, and I've held the line for them. I will always hold the line for them even though I am technically now 'management' (whatever that means)....
BUT my local union branch has decided that as a way of registering protest against a programme of redundancies in one department we will all participate in a 'teach-in' in the student union. Excuse me? WTF? So, let me get this straight, instead of WITHDRAWING our labour in protest, we are going to DONATE IT FOR FREE? I mean, we're social scientists, did we not see this might not be the most effective tool to get management to take us seriously? Also, I am on research leave, so what am I supposed to do? A research-in? Should I move my labour from my office to the library in protest? Or go out and do some fieldwork but make it clear, somehow, that this is unpaid? How will this be distinguishable from what I do anyway?? I don't have set hours as an academic, and as a result do a huge amount of work in 'my own time'. I don't think academics ever actually switch off or retire properly.
It does beggar belief. I would take it home and open it up to debate at the Family Committee level but I don't think they'd take me seriously, plus we'd have to have a meeting to set up the agenda, and then have the meeting to show that we have properly consulted all the stakeholders on the agenda, and then another one to decide which was reserved and unreserved business, and whose responsibility it was to minute the unreserved business, by which point I have banged my head on the table until my forehead bleeds and lost the will to live.
Instead, at home, we decide things on the time honoured combination of who shouts loudest/whines the most/gets fed up first/has the most authority. On all counts, this is my 5 year old daughter. Girl Power!
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