Advice about the UCU strike

I don't work in the university sector, however my understanding is that non-teaching staff are in a different bargaining unit to teaching staff, and so legally are not entitled to walk out as such. However I would check with UCU in your workplace.
If you are in the same bargaining unit, and would be eligible for UCU membership, then you can strike and are legally protected, whether or not you are a member (although probably you would be best off being a member anyway).
Definitely I would advise against calling in sick, as you can be sacked for dishonesty. Whereas even if you were not in the same bargaining unit, and so have no legal protection for striking, you can just say it is against your principles to cross a picket line. Then if you were disciplined or sacked you could argue it was discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, which is a protected characteristic under the equality act.

I think the relevant union for your grade will most likely be Unison, I would say ask for advice from your local branch. I do know at least one uni admin worker who's felt pressured to cross picket lines because her Unison branch explicitly told her she'd be in breach of contract if she didn't, but I have also seen a post from someone saying that their HR department had advised that Unison members refusing to cross will not be subject to disciplinary action, so I think it's going to vary from uni to uni and quite possibly department to department.
Idk what libcom's policy is on cross-board linking, but there is a pretty active (5 pages so far) U75 thread on the dispute with contributions from various UCU members and non-teaching uni workers, so it might be worth asking for advice there... but ultimately I think it's going to come down to the situation at your own workplace. Good luck!

Yeah we have no problem with cross-board linking (as long as it is not to fascist websites etc)

that admin worker you know technically received correct advice from her union branch. However that doesn't really mean much: any strike action is technically a "breach of contract" (because your contract requires that you work). The normal employer response to this breach of contract is that they then do not pay you for the times you are not there working for them.

That's helpful that HR have specifically said other union members refusing to cross will not be disciplined. Craftwork I would check if that is the case where you are. Also more generally I would have thought that this would be the case for most public sector employers in the UK, that they would not penalise people for refusing to cross picket lines, other than by not paying them

FWIW, UK law stipulates that illness is to be self-certified for the first 7 days. They can't require a doctor's note until day 7. Again FWIW:

http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/n/m/G03_1.pdf

Yeah but chilli sauce this action is taking place over 3 weeks

If it's in FE it's only two days next week as far as I know? But it may escalate if there's no settlement. I have heard of workers being told they need a doctor's note if they call in sick on a strike day, whether that is legal is another matter.

Not sure it matters but while it's unlawful it's not a wildcat as such since the union is organising it.

I was in a similar position to you, classed as admin staff at a university and a member of Unison which represents my pay grade. I found out that I could be a member of the UCU - which quietly recruits any HE/FE staff outside of cleaners and security - and that being a member of the UCU was enough to join the strike*. That's what I've done and I've been on the picket from the start. I'll find out how my manager reacts next week.

* Though, employers can't ask you what union you're in, right?

I was working in a casual non-union job at a place where one of the unions was going on strike. Management said no one could have leave, sick, work from home etc. There was a small picket line on the day that wasn't actually engaging with anyone going into workplace. I asked if they were wanted people like me not to go in; they said yes so I turned around and went home. Management just assumed I was 'intimidated'. I wasn't paid that day but didn't face any comeback. Don't know if that's any help.

Thinking about it, that Unison advice is really unhelpful (I know, Unison being unhelpful, who'd've thought it?) in how it just says "liable to disciplinary action including deduction of salary". Like, surely any person, UCU member or not, refusing to cross a picket is liable to deduction of salary, the important question is whether employees who haven't been involved in the ballot are liable for extra disciplinary actions on top of that, which it's kind of frustratingly unclear about. Have you spoken to many of your colleagues, do you know if many of them are consdering not crossing or the like?

Good post from R. Totale.

For those who don't know me, I'm in the International Communist Current. We're against the union form of struggle. You can have fun reading our position on this here.

I include those details solely for background. My aim here is not to make a political argument around the union question, but to share my research on this question of protection in strikes.

This is because I'm in a similar situation to many people here: admin worker, not regrouped by UCU, nor in the pension scheme in dispute. Nor am I in any of the other unions. Regardless, I've been out on strike this week, and have participated in similar previous actions.

Technically, as long as the strike is a protected action i.e. all the right hoops have been jumped through, non-union members have exactly the same protection against dismissal as union members. This is explicitly stated here.

Members of other unions do not have this protection. If members of another union take action, then their action is unofficial and unprotected and you can be dismissed without recourse.

Even if you are in UCU, and you join the action not having been balloted, there is a potential question about whether the ballot itself is valid and the strike could become unprotected.

I've been unable to find a definitive answer to the question of where a non-union member who is not a party to the dispute would stand.

It's important to realise that even if a strike action is protected in law your employer may still dismiss you. Nothing stops them doing this - to get any kind of redress you would then have to take them to a tribunal.

No non-participating union will support you. I doubt even the UCU would support you if weren't party to the dispute and not included in the call to action. So you could quite easily be on your own. Even if you win at tribunal, it's unlikely you'd get your job back - orders for reinstatement are very rare.

Practical Law, part of Thomson Reuters, has an excellent section on strike law, but it's behind a paywall. Ironically, your university may have a subscription and allow you access!

You may find this article useful.

There's no question it's a potentially big risk for people in our position to respect the picket. I am fortunate to have the support of my family, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not nervous about the consequences.

Thanks for that - so when you've been in this position before, have there been any consequences? And have you managed to get any of your fellow workers in the same position to do the same thing?
The gov.uk advice is kind of ambiguous:

But then

So I guess it all comes down to whether they define you as part of the dispute or taking secondary action. Also I guess your own contract is kind of relevant, because it's a lot easier to get rid of a temp than it is to get someone who's on a permanent contract and has passed their probation.
There's also this, but it's very long and kind of makes one's eyes glaze over: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fil...
The local government lawyer site also looks kind of reassuring, I think:

But then that's all assuming they play by the rules, and I guess that there's not much to stop them suddenly deciding that they've noticed massive issues with your work being unsatisfactory or something similar the day after the strike and having a go at you for that.

doug is right, they aren't allowed to ask you questions about union membership or discriminate against you based on union membership. So as long you don't say that you are in a different union officially in regard to this strike, you should be ok. Or at least no worse off than those striking. But as has been said by quite a few others, employers don't necessarily respect the law, tribunals are har dto win, and winning one is unlikely to get you your job back but could easily get you blacklisted and could take a very long time, during which you are not paid etc.

Do you still have to pay a punitive fee for tribunals or did they get rid of them?

The government got smacked down in the Supreme Court on that one last summer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40727400 That was probably one of the highpoints of 2017 actually, at least from a UK workers' rights perspective.

Tribunal fees are gone (yay!), but like much of labour legislation: the guidance around participating in industrial action in your workplace if you're not in the union/not directly affected by the dispute is vague at best and contradictory at worse. It's no huge surprise that most trade unions choose to take the more conservative understanding of the law - but individual unions and union branches sometimes take a more militant line.

I got brought up on a disciplinary one time - not for refusing to cross and NUT picket line (I was a teaching assistant in UNISON and it was an NUT teacher's strike) - but for participating in a picket line on a dispute I was not party to. For UNISON to help me, I had to acknowledge I'd ignored UNISON's guidance on the NUT strike. It was the only way they'd offer me representation. On a side note, we kicked the crap of management on that disciplinary.

In any case, I think R Totale's advice is key: are there other folks in your workplace also planning on respecting the picket line? While I get there's an important point of principle, we don't need individual martyrs - that doesn't do anything to encourage people to respect each others' strikes in the future. If you can get a few other workmates on board, it goes a long way to protecting yourselves and building up wider confidence for future disputes.

If you can get people together, I'd suggest trying to find some way to act collectively in not showing up to work - all coming to work together and then refusing to cross the line collectively or all meeting up the night before to send off a similar email, etc, etc.

In the UK in the past decade or two I haven't heard about anyone being sacked for refusing to cross a picket line, and I'm aware of many cases where people have done exactly this, including agency workers. As others have said, your best defence is strength in numbers, so if you can get other people to refuse to cross with you this is the best option!

Also like people have said, union membership is confidential. Never tell your employer what union you're a member of.

Not 100% related to the OP, but since this is the closest thing we have to a general UCU strike thread, I've just spotted that Notes From Below (autonomist/operaist-type academic folks) have started doing a rank-and-file strike bulletin, might be worth printing a few copies for anyone planning to visit this week's pickets: http://notesfrombelow.org/article/university-worker-week-2

Over on the U75 thread, there's a poster saying their Unison branch has voted in favour of strike action - has anyone else heard anything about this?

3rd issue up now: http://notesfrombelow.org/article/university-worker-week-3

I've never heard this before. Are there reasons beyond the one described by jef costello?

As a general rule, I'd think it's usually sensible to try and give your employer as little information as possible, and doubly so when it comes to information that could be used to identify and single out workplace militants. Obviously that's not always possible (it's hard to stay anonymous when you're on a picket line), but I would have thought it's a good rule of thumb, no?

Also, just seen this University of London IWGB blog post, which has more on the question of non-UCU members respecting picket lines:

Obviously if you don't work at UoL, there's no guarantee that conditions there will be reflected in your workplace, but it's good to hear.

The SPGB comment on the UCU strike
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/02/why-i-am-striking.h...

Flier on the strike oriented to international students from Unis Resist Border Controls, plus Chinese version, see this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/acupuncturepics/status/970312474460385281

You have the right to join a strike organised by your union and the employer is not allowed to discriminate based on union membership. So if you are in the union striking, or not in a union then they can't punish you unless they punish all strikers identically. They are also not allowed to ask you if you are in a union that is striking or not. But If you tell them that you are in a union that is not striking then they have that information legitimately and can use it against you. I would simply never tell the bosses what, if any, union I was a member of. That said I missed the strikes at my work because I didn't realise until they day before and it was on my day off. Should have picketed all the same but I am in my first year and I think that counts as a trial period.

Bulletin for week 4 out now: http://www.notesfrombelow.org/article/university-worker-week-4

Also, from the UW bulletin, 3 demos planned this week:
Cambridge on Tuesday: https://m.facebook.com/events/171768213617431
London on Weds: https://m.facebook.com/events/1447160352079431
Brighton/Sussex/NCAFC national thing on Thurs: https://m.facebook.com/events/1797017697265896/