Pros
The salary and pension is quite good. The buildings are clean. You can often get away with doing very little work if you know some tricks.
Cons
I was made redundant on three separate occasions. My jobs were all fixed term contracts that were 'externally funded'. Just because you have a university contract does not mean you work for the university. Rather you work for the funding body and the university is just doing HR and providing office space. In my final two years there was not a single department meeting and only TWO office meetings. My manager was happy for people to work hard doing way more than their contracted hours but in five years he did not do one second more than his contact (he was always the first out of the door !). There was an incident where my manager was unhappy with something I had put on a website. He sat just yards from my desk. Rather than say anything to me he went on holiday during with time I received a mysterious letter asking me to attend a meeting. No clue was given as to what this meeting was to be about. I emailed a more senior manager and she ignored the email. The meeting was a total ambush with a member of personnel there. I was given on opportunity to prepare my defence or have a union rep present. When it came time to renew contracts several hard working people were made redundant (this was verifiable via detailed time sheets) while people who had produced hardly any work were kept on because they were then manager's 'friends'. One person who did next to no work and got a new contract calibrated by drawing gratify all over the office walls ! This person (a man in his mid twenties) had previously made racist remarks to a co-worker however his father had two meetings with the dean after which it was decided he would have his contract renewed and didn't have to apologise. His manager said that he was 'amused' by the situation !