Simon Stevens

My article - 'Violence, Political Strategy and the Turn to Guerrilla Warfare by the Congress Movement in South Africa' - has now been published by @JSAS_Editors: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

A few reading highlights of 2023, a year of (amongst other things!) strikes, lockouts, and travels in Ireland and India

As another year comes to an end, a few reading highlights of 2022:

2020 was a year for a lot of reading (much of it spent while the baby napped on top of me, or more recently while sitting in Peak District car parks while he naps in the carseat). A few of the many highlights:

Paul Ginsborg obituary theguardian.com/books/2022/jun…

Happy 4th birthday to whatever the hell happened to the @UniversitiesUK twitter account that glorious evening. #OneOfUsAllOfUs #USSmess #UCUstrike

Freedom Fries achieved

Filling in the University strike/ASOS reporting form, I can't help but wonder where the form is to reclaim for the 60+ hours a week worked through the pandemic or for the 20+ days of annual leave workload hasn't allowed me to take over the last 2 years!?#UCUstrike #OneOfUsAllOfUs

What this means, is that if SETs are being used in promotion, probation and hiring (which they often are) what is being assessed is not just whether they are a good teacher, but how well women are adhering to gender-stereotyped ways of teaching. 7/11

I think there’s a problem across the board in imagining boycotts to be purely vibes-based and concerned with individual morality, rather than a coordinated effort

Jesus wept!

@BirkbeckUCU @ucu @sheffielducu thank you!!

@SimonMStevens @ucu @sheffielducu Yes! We have one for our comrades @sheffielducu

Inspired by our comrades @KeeleUCU we've whipped up a prototype blue plaque that might be of interest to UKHE institutions. Anyone want one? Would be perfect to affix to one of the many fancy buildings universities seem to have the budget for #OneOfUsAllOfUs #FourFights @ucu

I hope the #USSMess legal case is approved & rules in our favour but that's unlikely given how the establishment & legal system work. We should use every lever but there is no shortcut to building the industrial strength to ensure we can win big & conclusively. #UCUstrike

🚨 LEAVING PARTY FOR GOOD WILL 🚨 We are hosting a leaving party for good will at 10am tomorrow in Union Square. Good will has made a tremendous contribution to the success of Keele. I'm sure we will all miss it. Bring noise, bring your anger. Let's put good will in the bin.

NEW 🚨💷: UK employers claimed £27 BILLION of free labour last year, thanks to working people doing unpaid overtime.

If only members could rely on their pension scheme to act in their interests without having to go to the High Court.

Today I'm remembering that lovely summer when the university threatened to sack and rehire us on worse conditions in the middle of a pandemic.

I won't be working weekends ever again for an institution and employer body that treats me with such contempt

(I say this as a self-criticism as much as anything else. I don't think I worked in the 2018-19 academic year any differently from how I had before February 2018, despite anything I may have said on twitter or to colleagues during or in the immediate aftermath of those strikes)

This is such a crucial question. During and after the 2018 strikes, there was so much talk of #ASOSforever, new attitudes to work in UKHE, and so on, and yet it seemed like within weeks we were all back working in exactly the same ways we always had