After the strike ends, education workers are probably

Choices:
A. not enough information
B. less overworked than before the stroke
C. paid more than they were before
D. less anxious than they were before
less anxious than they were before
It will come as no surprise to those working in the UK’s higher education (HE) sector that universities are currently suffused with anxiety. The University and College Union (UCU) has recently been in dispute with employers over proposed changes to the USS pension scheme, and the most sustained period of industrial action in the sector’s history has highlighted the fears staff have for the security of their futures post-retirement. Such unprecedented strike action needs to be situated within the wider context of a public sector undergoing transformation: while the concept remains contested, the influence of “neoliberal” ideas on universities can most clearly be seen in Success as a Knowledge Economy – the government white paper that preceded the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act – which states:
“Competition between providers in any market incentivises them to raise their game, offering consumers a greater choice of more innovative and better quality products and services at lower cost. Higher education is no exception.”
Yet what might “raising our game” mean for academic staff? The university has been described as an “anxiety machine”: the creeping marketisation of the sector along with pressure to recruit students (now “consumers”), increasing managerialism, and the implementation of processes of audit – such as the REF and TEF – to evaluate performance have arguably contributed to a progressively anxious landscape in which to labour.
In 2016/17, 34% of academic staff were employed on fixed-term contracts – a figure likely to be disputed by the UCU, since in 2016 it estimated the extent of casualisation in the sector to be closer to 54% once atypical contracts had been taken into consideration. In addition to pressures facing many staff in universities – such as time-management, meeting growing employer expectations, and the evaluation of performance – “casualised” contracts present particular challenges for those facing employment uncertainty: in a material sense, this can be a case of keeping up with regular payments for rent and bills, or providing for dependents; on a day-to-day basis, time is spent juggling existing contracts with job applications and interviews, whilst acknowledging that planning for the future often seems unthinkable – even farcical – in the face of the unknown.