This is my first blog for some time as I recently returned back to work after being signed off sick. One of the pledges I made to myself just before coming back to work was that, as a gesture to looking after myself and not getting ill again, I would only work 40 hours a week.

So, how do you fit 52 hours of work into 40?

You don’t.

My first week back and I’ve already worked 52 hours over six days, and this week promises to be more of the same. Now, I know what many of you are thinking: it’s part of the job to sometimes work long and unsociable hours, and you knew that when you ran/re-ran for election. But to me that doesn’t really cut it.

Let me be clear: I wouldn’t have invested 5 years of activism in NUS campaigns if I didn’t believe that students are important, and that students being dumped on by the government is wrong. But that doesn’t mean I should have to work myself to ill health.

It is the nature of student politics that for every action there are a score of commentaries: some agreeing with you in full or in part, others castigating you for selling out students (and in my experience there is rarely an in-between). And to an extent that is politics – political commentary for political gain.

But there is a line, which is all too frequently crossed in NUS. The phrase ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ can often be heard by NEC members. So I will let you into a secret, one that seems to escape delegates at conferences year after year:

The NEC work hard.

Shocking, I know. Almost unbelievable. But there isn’t a single member of the NEC who does not work more hours than they should, or who can remember what it was like to have ‘a week off’ (if such a thing truly exists).

The democratic processes come in as CM’s assess the nature and the quality of the work of NEC members, as is right and proper. But even the accountability structures are set up to be confrontational, rather than geared towards guiding the NEC or actually holding them to account.

For example, last year as NUS Wales President I received just under 50 executive questions over the course of the year, which under other circumstances could have been incredibly positive. Except that around 40 of those executive questions were from the same individual.

That person had a democratic right to ask me those executive questions. But it’s easy to guess how I felt each time I saw an email from that person with the subject: Executive Question.

All this leads me to say, simply, that the culture in NUS has to change. Yes, NEC should be held to account for what they do. Yes, NEC should work to carry out the mandates passed at conferences. And yes, NEC should expect to sometimes work long and unsociable hours.

But NEC should not be expected to work more than 40 hours a week without time off in lieu. NEC should feel able to take time off without expecting political attack. And NEC and CM’s must both learn that being a sabbatical means undertaking a specific job, not mortgaging your life and endangering your health for a year.

In solidarity,

JK

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