Strike dates updated with 4 weekend dates

For the upcoming strike action the Open University pattern will include two weekends, These have been added where the existing pattern already had a Friday. Therefore the 'extra' dates will be Saturday 11th February, Sunday 12th February, Saturday 18th March and Sunday 19th March. See list of the national UCU strike dates below.

How does this work?

Staff who work the normal 5-day working pattern (or a part-time portion of the standard weekday work week) are not affected by this. You would not declare the extra strike days.

As overwork is one of the key issues in the dispute, we know that many academics and others work into the weekend doing research and writing. However that is not part of your formal working pattern, so you would not declare those days as strike days. (Remember you can always contact the union for individual casework support if your workload feels unmanageable.)

If you are scheduled to work at a Day School or teach a Tutorial on a weekend date that is one of the 4 strike dates above, we ask you to treat this as a strike day.

The vast majority of our members do not work 7 days a week so very few will be declaring 'extra' days. When this pattern was tried previously almost no-one at the OU did more than the total days of the original national pattern of action.

However, because a high proportion of our teaching events are at weekends, adding these weekend dates meant the strike action was more effective at the OU and our ALs were not forced to work unpaid on strike dates to prepare for weekend tutorials.

A reminder of strike advice to ALs will be emailed to members and is also available on our website, along with suggested out-of-office templates and notes to adapt for students.

National UCU strike dates

Here’s a list of all the 18 UCU national strike days – our branch is adding in 4 weekend strike dates, 11th and 12th February and 18th and 19th March (if you would normally work at the weekend).

• Week 1 - Wednesday 1 February
• Week 2 - Thursday 9 and Friday 10 February
• Week 3 - Tuesday 14, Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 February
• Week 4 - Tuesday 21, Wednesday 22 and Thursday 23 February
• Week 5 - Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 February and Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 March
• [No action week commencing Monday 6 March]
• Week 6 - Wednesday 15, Thursday 16 and Friday 17 March
• Week 7 - Monday 20, Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 March