Strikes stir the emotions. The solidarity of picketing, the anxiety of students missing classes, the anger of those who feel wronged enough to withdraw their labour. There are doubtless strong feelings behind the current University and College Union (UCU) industrial action to defend ‘defined benefit’ pensions. These varied feelings have been mobilized in a number of ways over the past few weeks, and this short post (building on some tweets here and here is an attempt to analyse a bit further the emotional politics of striking.
There are a number of distinct parts (both core and peripheral) of the strike action at play at any one time: the picket line, supportive demonstrations and rallies, teach-outs, the implied dissent, and the withdrawal of labour itself. A key aspect of the emotional politics of this strike can be seen in the confusion (both deliberate and unwitting) between a number of these elements.The Vice-Chancellor of The University of Sheffield, Professor Sir Keith Burnett, sent an email to staff where those on strike were characterized as ‘communicat[ing] the strength of their feelings through strike action’ (you can see an extract from that email in this tweet from Sheffield historian, Simon Stevens). This was not a hostile characterization, but it was a serious misunderstanding. It crystallised out some of the issues I’ve had with the strike and on the picket.
As others have pointed out in response to that communication, the point of a strike is not an expression of feeling, it is to disrupt the operations of the employer to force them back to the negotiating table. As Simon Stevens himself put it on Twitter: ‘A strike is an effort to rebalance the material interests shaping the employer’s behaviour by shutting down production and/or operations.’ But this material intervention seems lost, forgotten or at the very least undersold in the current dispute. The idea (often tacit) that ‘so long as you don’t cross the picket, you are not strike-breaking’ is at issue here. If you do work for the university at home, or in a coffee shop, or anywhere else on strike days, you are not striking. If you sit at home on a strike day, and edit an article to submit to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) on a strike day, you are not striking. So far, so orthodox.
The opposite side to this misapprehension is where emotions come in. It is related to the fact that universities increasingly have been seen in recent years as battlegrounds for free speech. The most recent eruptions are over the Prevent agenda and no-platforming; universities have of course for many years been associated with radical protest and demonstrations. These aspects, the expression of dissent, opinion and protest – often couched in terms of articulation of feelings – have become conflated with strike action. Picket lines superficially have many of the material trappings of protests: banners, placards, megaphones and chanting. But their object is quite distinctive from that of a protest. They exist to demarcate a strike area, to put the strike into a spatial idiom. Even if someone is ‘only’ crossing a picket line for ‘one meeting’ they risk signaling that they do not support the strike, regardless of their actual intentions.
We appear to be in a period of flux in how we think about picket lines, and there is real ambiguity about members of other unions, especially if those unions do not support (or are prevented from supporting) the picketing taking place. However, it is perfectly possible to (at least partially) mitigate the crossing of a picket – with stories across universities of people working who brought hot drinks and snacks out to picketers. I am much less sympathetic to people in UCU, often in senior, permanent positions, who choose not to strike because they don’t agree with the particular issue being foregrounded, or the particular tactics employed. If you choose to freelance when asked for collective action, I think you’ve got some hard thinking to do about solidarity. Saying ‘I don’t agree with this or that’ about the action, mistakes a collective agreement to withdraw labour (overwhelmingly voted for by members) for individuals having a protest. By framing the action in this way, protest is foregrounded, and the spatial and material disruption of the strike disappears. Sir Keith met with Sheffield UCU representatives on Tuesday – and was snapped holding an ‘Official Picket’ sign. However, he still committed this error, inviting UCU delegates into his office, which was across the picket line. They refused to cross, but met him later in a neutral venue.
So picket lines are not protests, and they are not about expressions of feelings: they are a spatial manifestation of the collective withdrawal of labour. Strikes are also material interventions that are undermined by all work, even when it doesn’t cross the picket line.” Well, so what? As I see it, this brings into focus the demand to reschedule teaching, which had previously been backed by, by many institutions, by a threat to deduct up to 100% of pay for each day teaching was not rescheduled. (Most institutions have backed down under public pressure on this particular point. A list of institutions not understood to have backed down on this point at the time of writing can be seen here). However, the fact that the demand was made at all is important, in both material and emotional terms. According to the view that mistakes strike action for an expression of feeling, once the feeling is expressed, there is no reason why the teaching can’t be done. It can be rescheduled (the logistical impossibility notwithstanding), because making the point was the point, rather than the withdrawal of labour. In other words: the supportive demonstrations, the protest, the signs, the placards have obscured the core of the strike, i.e. the withdrawal of labour.
But materially this matters too. Pay has already been, or will be, docked for the work not done, so clearly the employers are engaging on this material, financial level. This relation is in turn connected to the financial interests of students: they are paying their fees, so why shouldn’t they get the promised teaching? However, the employers do not follow through on this view of the financial politics of the strike; they do not, for example, propose to repay people for making up the work. They also (as noted) threatened to dock pay again for the refusal to reschedule. This only makes sense if the strike is transformed into a free-floating expression of dissent, of emotion, of feeling. But that logic doesn’t tally with pay-docking.
If the strike is an expression of feeling, then employers should not dock pay on strike days, and the demand to reschedule will become understandable. (The corresponding logic of holding a 14-day demonstration outside places of work is another matter.) On the other hand, if the docking of pay is legitimate as a response to the withdrawal of labour (and the withdrawal is put in spatial terms by a picket line), then the demand to make it that labour is arguably a challenge to the right to strike after the fact. Emotions and feelings matter hugely in this action. But they are not the point of the strike.
Chris Millard is Lecturer in the History of Medicine and Medical Humanities at the University of Sheffield, and book reviews editor of History of the Human Sciences.
This article represents the views of the author only, and is not written on behalf of History of The Human Sciences, its editors, or editorial board.
The featured image, ‘Penn[sylvania] on The Picket Line — 1917’ comes from ‘Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party,’ Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. There are no known copyright restrictions with this image. The original can be viewed at this link: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mnwp.160022