Comment by Simon Smith

is there typically a fee for joining an RSA? Ours doesn't have one - which may explain why I'm a member, even though I'm too stingy to join UCU ;-)

More seriously, I don't sense that people around me really see a choice between the two, and I hadn't considered that they might be competing until you raised the subject. On one level, however, it's inevitable that they do. Like all organisations, they construct a collevtive identity, and whereas RSAs support our specific professional identity as researchers, UCU encourages identification with a broader group of academic workers. Is that a point of conflict, or are we all happy juggling multiple identities nowadays?

Comment by Blanka Sengerová

Interesting set of comments and a good summary of the need to keep the RSAs alongside the larger/more traditional unions. My personal beliefs (I grew up in a communist country, at least for the first few years of my life) are such that I would never want to join a union, yet I think the RSAs have a useful role to play in staff development and that is something that I am very willing to support, financially and ideologically.

Therefore, I would say that I still haven't found any compelling reasons to join the UCU, yet I would be happy to join in with a local RSA, mostly for the social opportunities and personal development opportunities.

Don't get me wrong, when I compare the US and UK workplace (and of course my knowledge of the US is very much related to what I've heard from other people, which may well be biased), I do feel that here in the UK we have the better deal (decent annual leave, pensions, sick leave, not being able to be fired from day-to-day etc.). Maybe the unions have helped in some ways, but I think it's more about the philosophy of the European versus the American (and Japanese) work culture, and the general government attitude (even the UK conservatives are much more socialist than many of the US political parties).

Does this vaguely make sense?

Why do we need unions and research staff associations?

Comment by Simon Smith

Comment by Blanka Sengerová