I dislike strike days. I don't like to admit to being on strike. I don't like to admit to not being on strike. I reason that I am actually very well paid by the standards of most people in the UK. I also recognise that many people in the university sector are not quite so fortunate, whether they be the admin staff, the porters, or those academic colleagues on short-term contracts or how are paid by the hour-- in some universities on zero hours contracts. <\/p>\n

My first real encounter with strike action took place back in 2003 or 2004. Although not enthusiastic about the strike I agreed to man a picket line. Getting abused by an elderly man complaining about council tax was not a high point, but watching colleagues cross the picket line was a particularly difficult experience. If they actually opposed the strike action, I wouldn't have minded. However the colleagues were going in to teach classes as to not disrupt student learning, yet promising to tell the university that they had been on strike. A strike which does which has no effect on anything is hardly a strike. <\/p>\n

Many academics will be on strike today doing research. They reason that research is their own private project and not the universities. I don't buy into this reasoning, but I can sort of see how this might justify getting a research day in when this wouldn't otherwise happen. Either way I remain I'm unconvinced that strikes in higher education actually make a difference in the longer term. <\/p>\n

So what have I being doing today? Am I on strike?<\/p>\n

I've read an academic paper.
\nI've helped the owner of a small business with setting up her website.
\nI've written this blog post.
\nI've attempted to write some other stuff, but feel a bit of block.
\nI had no meetings or classes timetabled for today, so I reason no one was inconvenienced by me staying at home. <\/p>\n\n\n

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  I dislike strike days. I don't like to admit to being on strike. I don't like to admit to not being on strike. I reason that I am actually very well paid by the standards of most people in the UK. I also recognise that many people in the university sector are not quite so … Continue reading A weak conscience about today's strike<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncanning.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}