My Life At Work: Managing for the sake of managing

Submitted by Matthew on 5 February, 2014 - 12:20

Jack Murrow is a library worker in a large university.


The bulk of what I do is shelving, so it’s essentially a manual job, unlike the work of the library assistants and senior library assistants above me who are more desk- and office-based.

The library was recently restructured and my position was created on Grade 1 of the national payscale — before this the lowest grades at been Grade 2s. I think there has been more of a shift to part-time work; whether this is due to higher education funding cuts I couldn’t say; my university is pretty healthy financially.

I am quite atomised from the rest of the workforce, as someone who works part-time and weekends and does manual work separate from my colleagues.

The atmosphere is not bad — management are generally okay, although there is a tendency, I think more and more common in the public sector, to manage-for-the-sake-of-managing. This can involve calling people up on minor things and creating loads of paperwork so you can show how you “dealt with the issue” when you go for a promotion in the future. All our workplace jargon refers to “customers” which still feels jarring in a university environment.

Across the university there are three recognised unions, Unison, Unite, and UCU. The GMB also has members. Since our national pay dispute started, we’ve been having joint-union meetings which will hopefully start to discuss broader workplace issues. There’s also a Living Wage campaign which all the unions support.

Our density is very low across the whole workplace. There are so many different sites, schools, and jobs that it sometimes feels we have very few issues in common. The pay campaign is the one issue which obviously affects us all, which is why we’re trying to get as much mileage as we can out of it. My branch is relatively open (although we have “open branch committee” meetings rather than all members meetings, a common occurrence in my union or so I’m told), and we’ve got a handful of newish people putting themselves forward for reps training.

Any chance of changing the culture to one of a union workplace will only come through building up our base of reps, so at least we’re taking steps in the right direction.

Other entries in the “My Life At Work” series, and other workers' diaries

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