(en) Britain, Solidarity Federation, Education #9 - Working to contract is not effective with academics

University and College Union (UCU) members in higher education (HE) institutions have 
recently voted to take action short of a strike over pay (70% in favour), but not strike 
action (44% in favour). The former (i.e. working to contract) has something very appealing 
for academics: it sings the air of the armchair industrial action. In my branch at least, 
members don?t like striking: they don?t like the idea of coercing managers and bosses; 
they don?t like picketing; they don?t like being seen as trouble makers. Action short of a 
strike is more in line with the reasons why they are in the union: doing something that is 
not too controversial, in their own time, from the quiet life of the office. It sounds 
like a softer form of industrial action, one that is not as radical and that does not 
requireas much personal commitmentsand efforts as strike action.

During the pension dispute last
year, UCU/HE members took action
short of a strike over several
months. In my branch (in a very
conservative, home-county uni-
versity) it was a complete flop.
During the pension dispute, in
order to try and make the work
to rule action as effective as pos-
sible, some of us organised reg-
ular meetings to bring members
together to discuss the problems
they faced on a daily basis to put it
into practice, ways to overcome
them, ideas to take it forward,
between 2 and 5.

The main problem that was dis-
cussed in our meetings was
the absence of specific contracts:
for most academics, these don?t
state how many hours they
should work per week, only ?as
many as necessary? to carry out
their duties, nor do they have
clear statements of what these
duties are. So it was always diffi-
cult to disentangle what was
contractual from what was down
to ?good will?. Also, there were
recurrent complaints that it was
difficult to know who was in-
volved in the action, even say in
a single department, and there-
fore to know whether or not indi-
vidual efforts has any impact. In
the absence of specific con-
tracts, carrying out a working to
contract action demanded much
personal and collective efforts,
which, alas! as far as my branch
is concerned, very few people
were willing to make.

But the non-specific contracts
are not the only obstacle to ef-
fective work-to-contract action.
What they reflect is in fact a
strong work-driven culture. The
research part of academic work
is often seen, by academics, as
the most interesting and valu-
able. In the context of cuts to HE
budgets, senior managers?
policies only reinforce this
through pressures on staff to
generate external research in-
comes. This means that aca-
demics usually think that they
are working for themselves, i.e.
for their own career, rather than
for their boss, so that anything
they?ll stop doing might turn out
to be detrimental to their own
career progression. Practically
this translates into working far
more hours than the normal full-
time week, at weekends, during
holidays or even not taking holi-
day entitlement at all. During the
pension dispute, it became plain
that UCU members in my branch
didn?t want to ?sacrifice? their re-
search during action short of a
strike: they didn?t mind cutting on
admin duties but not on their re-
search, with rather ironic scen-
arios where some would end up
working more than normal during
the dispute because they could
devote more time to their re-
search.

Given this and the poor results
that action short of a strike dur-
ing the pension dispute led to, it
is hard to see how it could be ef-
fective with the current pay dis-
pute and why UCU/HE members
are being balloted for it. The
trouble with this form of action is
that it is very misleading: it plays
down the radical nature of in-
dustrial action, which is why I
think it is so appealing to aca-
demics; but at the same time it
can only be effective if it is actu-
ally built and carried out collect-
ively (i.e. according a key
principle of industrial action),
something that our meetings
during the pension dispute made
totally apparent. The inability or
unwillingness of most academics
to accept this means that, in HE,
this softer form of industrial ac-
tion is mostly toothless because
it remains individualist. This
probably answers the second
question too.

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