ASOS – Action Short Of A Strike – Starts Wednesday 23rd Nov ’22 and until further notice
ASOS Action short of strike starts from Wednesday 23 November, ’22 onwards and until further notice.
Action short of a strike will consist of the following from Wednesday 23rd November, ’22 until further notice:
- working to contract
- not covering for absent colleagues
- removing uploaded materials related to, and/or not sharing materials related to, lectures or classes that will be or have been cancelled as a result of strike action
- not rescheduling lectures or classes cancelled due to strike action
- not undertaking any voluntary activities.
Please note that the Marking and assessment boycott (MAB) called for in January will now not go ahead – the higher education committee (HEC) has called for a marking and assessment boycott in April 2023 and a launch of a re-ballot to renew UCU’s mandate for industrial action.
Limits to ASOS & Reprisals:
Wherever management challenge your decision to decline work under ASOS its important that you involve the UCU to ensure you are advised and supported.
For more information and UCU guidance on ASOS please see here
Local Branch Guidance On Potential ASOS
Here are some suggestions to ensure that you are not working beyond your contracted 37 hour week.
- Take care if you work flexibly – it is all too easy to overwork when you work outside a standard working day/week.
- Ensure that personal development time [RSA/SMT for staff on teaching contracts] including writing, conferences, reviewing, CPD etc. is not sacrificed. We are entitled to a balanced workload.
- Stick to the allocations for work activities whether that is teaching, marking, supervising, [management] roles or [contract] research. If things take longer, prioritise, re-negotiate deadlines, ask for support from a line manager or Local UCU Rep.
- [Departmental/Area] meetings – this will vary depending on role and area of work but even the increased GAD allowance [meetings allocation for Research Staff] cannot cover the many meetings we are expected to attend. Prioritise.
- Cover for staff absence/shortages – we have colluded in our own downfall by being kind and collegial and putting the needs of the institution above our own and that of our colleagues, especially when it is sickness absence. This has resulted in chronic understaffing and overwork in many areas. In cases of planned absence e.g. maternity leave, sabbaticals, the university is required to provide cover, not you.
For teaching and related activities, we urge you to prioritise the current student experience whilst adhering to ASOS. This is not an inherent contradiction: improving our working conditions and environment and avoiding over-work can only lead to an enhanced student experience now and in the future. Here are some suggestions:
- Open Days – these rely very heavily on volunteers and for UG, are at weekends – just say no.
- Meeting the 3 week turnaround – if you – or colleagues in your teaching team – cannot meet this within your contracted hours, let management and students know. Students want – need – good quality feedback and this takes time.
- Validation/portfolio review – this is NOT work-planned for a majority of staff and as such is voluntary unless it can be accommodated within contracted working hours
- Office Hours – these are clearly face to face activities involving students and as such should be work loaded as STD hours. If they are not, they are voluntary.
We advise you to act as a group e.g. at course, module, research team or subject group level. Please also encourage non-members to only work their contracted hours and not to cover work which is not done by others whether it is a result of ASOS, sickness absence or additional – unworkplanned – activities.
Suggested Wording To Use When Refusing A Task:
‘I am currently engaged in action short of strike to defend [eg] pay, equalities and pensions which includes working to my contract. All UCU members are advised not to cover for absent colleagues or undertake voluntary activities as part of this action. For this reason I am unable to…’
Workplans Versus Contracted Hours
At SHU we are in an unusual position in that our contracts specifically state that we are contracted to work 37 hours a week only. This gives us a degree of power in delivering ASOS.
We all know, including the work planners, that the allocated work cannot be done in the “notional” time in our work plans. Our contracted 37 hours a week essentially trumps our workplans.
A useful statement from the AWP manual is:
“Allocations within this document are notional and are derived from past resource modelling activity”
This dictionary definition to the word notional seems to apply well to our experience:
“existing as or based on a suggestion, estimate, or theory; not existing in reality.”
We are therefore perfectly justified in not completing our workplans during ASOS action. The reps survey and common experience shows that the maximum work plan level that can be achieved within contractual hours is approximately 75-80%; a full 100% workplan takes an extra day or so of unpaid overtime, which we are now refusing to do during ASOS.
Bunching of Work-planned Activities
At certain times of the year (eg January) we have to do marking and teaching at the same time. Sometimes it is not possible to turn round a large number of essays in 3 weeks and plan teaching adequately. Both of these activities will be on the workplan but the workplan doesn’t account for bunching of activities. In that case you can email your manager to say that the work simply cannot be done in the 37 hours so the 3 week turnaround time may not be met (for example).
We should be confident in setting our own priorities based on professional autonomy, competence, respect, and stand firm if line managers try to micro-manage with their own perceived priorities.
Challenging Workplan Allocations and Workload Intensification
Specifically justifying that our particular workplan cannot be fulfilled within our contracted hours requires that we quantify our workloads. The fact that many of us cannot is unsurprising, given the fragmented nature of our work, but it is critical to pushing back on work intensification.
UCU provides us with a calculator, see link below. This is not very user friendly so we do have an adapted version (see separate excel sheet)
SHU Branch Workload Calculator
Branch suggests we work in groups to quantify tasks against WPHs as its difficult and boring to do on your own. These calculations can then be used to justify ASOS action and to challenge workload intensification. They might also be helpful to us in our own efforts to prioritise our workload and strive towards some work/life balance!