Vol. 8 VOLUME 3 No. 2 No.2015 2 Sept August 2010
THE MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIAN CASUAL AND SESSIONAL ACADEMIC STAFF
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
NTEU win for casuals at Swinburne Meet the SuperCasuals #Securework tweet-up trends nationally Goodbye academia? Scholarly Teaching Fellows bring predictable work Letter from a casual tutor: Dear Lecturers... No $100,000 degrees! Education International highlights privatisation & precarious work
read online at www.unicasual.org.au ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
-INSIDE1
Job security is the issue for all – we are in this together
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The intangible value of postgraduate students
10 Scholarly Teaching Fellow roles improve job security
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No $100K degrees
12 Goodbye academia?
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#Securework tweet-up
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American path leads to casualisation
14 Postgrads, casuals and academics of the future
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Postgrad membership
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NTEU wins for casuals
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Meet the SuperCasuals
Letter from a casual: Dear Lecturers...
16 NTEU policy on job security in Australian unis 18 EI World Congress: Rise of casual and fixed-term employment on the agenda
Connect is a publication of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA). All Rights Reserved Š 2015. ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
Editor: Jeannie Rea Production: Paul Clifton Cover image: Andrew Li For information on Connect, please contact the NTEU National Office: Post: PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Phone: 03 9254 1910 Fax: 03 9254 1915 Email: national@nteu.org.au Web: www.unicasual.org.au www.nteu.org.au www.capa.edu.au The views expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors, and not necessarily the official views of NTEU or CAPA.
In accordance with NTEU and CAPA policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, this magazine is printed on 100% recycled paper: produced from 65% post-consumer waste and 35% pre-consumer waste.
Job security is the issue for all – we are in this together As we draw towards the end of this round of university collective bargaining, we are assessing our performance. In a hostile industrial and political climate, through good negotiating and effective campaigning, the NTEU has won salary rises, workload limits, career advancement clauses for general staff and in some places tightened the use of fixed-term contracts. Clauses on ‘payment for marking’ and other salary and conditions matters for casually employed academics have been strengthened. Most significantly, the NTEU has bound universities across the country to create nearly 800 positions that must be filled by academics currently employed casually. These teaching-focused positions will get some casual academics onto an academic career path. One of the first appointments in a revamped ‘teaching focused role’ (TFR) at the University of Western Sydney, Grant Bailey, says in this issue of Connect (p. 11) that he is enjoying the ‘predictable hours, pay and workload’. The new jobs are about moving from ‘precarious’ to ‘predictable’. The NTEU National Office is closely monitoring the implementation of Agreements as there is little point in improving clauses and then not holding management to them. We are particularly watching the filling of these new STF jobs, as well as the other new positions targeted for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. By closely, I mean ticking off each job as it is advertised and filled. This keeps the pressure on all of us – and we keep the pressure on the universities. The capacity to win conversion to ongoing of casual and fixed-term contract positions remains very difficult, but there are some Agreements where there are opportunities and the Union will pursue these, including through litigation if necessary. The last minute win at Swinburne, following our protracted campaign, includes a strong conversion clause for casuals which will lift the benchmark for other institutions (see p. 5). The NTEU has ramped up our focus on casual and fixedterm positions and staff following the commitments made at our Insecure Work Conference in Hobart last year. Whilst long term officials and activists – and casual members – are well aware of the ongoing efforts by the Union in making incremental improvements to sessional pay and conditions and to conversion, much of this activity has gone on alongside other Union activity. The change in approach is to make job security the central issue. Job security is always identified as a core concern by staff in ‘ongoing’ positions in these times of constant reviews, restructures and job losses. NTEU’s 2015 State of the Uni survey found one-in-two respondents were fearful of losing their jobs. Job security is what is wanted by the vast majority of casual and fixed-term contract staff. The comprehensive new policy position on casual and fixedterm contract employment to be considered by the Union’s
annual National Council meeting in October is titled ‘Job security in Australian Universities 2015-16’ (see p. 16). The message should be that we are all in this together. The collapse of secure employment in higher education is a disgrace. As access to university education has expanded and many more students are getting into university, the response of university managements and governing bodies is to put fewer resources into teaching. We are all well aware of the decline in government funding per student – and the Coalition Government’s plans to make a further 20 per cent cut and deregulate fees – but university councils are approving budgets with inadequate allocations to teaching. Casualising teaching has saved universities a fortune, enabling them to spend money elsewhere, not least of which is on senior management remuneration packages. The consequence for those in ongoing and contract positions has been higher teaching loads and constant tussles over academic workloads and eligibility for research time. This has ramped up competition between staff making collegiality a distant memory in some places. There are too few predictably employed academics left to perform the myriad academic activities expected as part of the role, including serving on committees, on professional bodies, community engagement, organising conferences, peer reviewing and journal editing and even participating in student progress committees. As Bettina Rösler points out ('Goodbye academia?', p. 12), some casual academics may get some payment for the latter, but generally have to do such activities in their own time and at their own expense. You would think that senior academics in university management would be more concerned about the deterioration of the academic profession, but there are a few who speak against the grain and point out the dangers inherent in the current practices. These colleagues are to be encouraged and supported. Those who just wring their hands and agree it is awful for the ‘poor casuals’ are no help at all. Casualised academics need decent conditions and secure jobs, not sympathy. There is not enough support, or even acknowledgement, of casual academics by other academic staff, even amongst union members. I am very aware that we have to do a better job of increasing awareness and solidarity amongst members. Matthew Hagel’s letter, ‘Dear Lecturers...' (p. 9) reminds lecturers how the rules and practices do not consider casuals very different circumstances. He also calls to extend academic freedom to casuals. Becoming actively involved in Union campaigns on campus is a great way of speaking up for yourself with the support and friendship of others. Get in touch with your local Branch(es), visit unicasual.org.au or send me an email. jrea@nteu.org.au
Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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The intangible value of postgraduate students The past year has been troubled by the spectre of twice defeated higher education reform, now an apparition which threatens to appear again at any moment, to frighten us out of our seats. And so far we are still waiting to see if the reforms will appear for a third time. But while this continues the issue of sustainable funding for higher education and research is not being addressed and the sector is increasingly distracted from other important challenges. A challenge currently faced by postgraduate students is that the Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) in 2015 is now below both the Henderson Poverty line and the minimum wage, at a rate of $25,852 pa. This benchmark stipend is no longer keeping pace with the cost of living, a situation which will potentially put postgraduate students who depend on it or an equivalent scholarship at a disadvantage, even financial hardship. But the challenge that this issue presents goes beyond financial hardship. When coupled with proposals to cut funding from the Research Training Scheme (RTS) or to charge fees on research degrees it shows an increasing level of neglect for the value of postgraduate students, and their contribution to the higher education sector. The place and role of a postgraduate student within a university is significantly different to that of an undergraduate student. During their research training a postgraduate will actively contribute to research and development at their institution, be considered as a colleague, and as a junior member of the universities research community. In essence they are an apprentice, learning the skills of research from professionals in their field to pursue a career in research. This contribution and the value of postgraduate students at a university can been seen through their involvement in activities including the writing of publications, teaching work, tutoring, volunteering on committees and participating in many other aspects of the institution. The value can be established by looking at publication counts, higher education sector employment data and higher education institution records. As an example the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimate in their report Research and Experimental Development, Higher Education Organisations that postgraduate students contribute over 50% of the human resources dedicated to research and development in the higher education sector. In response to this challenge the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) have launched a national campaign to demonstrate the value of postgraduate students. The Value Postgraduate Students #Valuepostgrads campaign is an initiative to both quantify and qualify the value of postgraduates to a university beyond a tuition fee and establish measures for their real value. But quantifiable data sets and statistics only provide part of the picture. A postgraduate student’s research contribution is also valuable, and their motivations for undertaking a degree are often not taken into account when talking about the importance of this contribution. Through #Valuepostgrads, CAPA is asking postgraduate students to respond to the questions ‘what will your research degree contribute?’, and ‘why is research funding important?’ then by sharing answers to these questions facilitate a national conversation about the value of postgraduate students and why addressing issues such as the APA stipend rate are so important. In an environment where resources are limited and funding for the sector is inconsistent it is more important than ever that we hear the voices of stakeholders like postgraduate student and ensure that their valuable contributions both tangible and intangible do not go unnoticed when reforms to the sector are proposed. You can find the #Valuepostgrads campaign online at www.capa.edu.au/valuepostgrads or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/valuepostgrads. Harry Rolf is the President of CAPA president@capa.edu.au M@CAPAPresident
Harry Rolf CAPA President
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 2
Semester 2, 2015
No $100K degrees
#Securework tweet-up
By Rob Binnie National Organiser
By Jen Tsen Kwok Policy & Research Officer
In the lead up to the next federal election, NTEU is running a campaign against the Coalition Government’s higher education changes. Pyne tries for a hat-trick The Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne still intends to bring his higher education deregulation legislation back to Parliament for a third time this year. The NTEU is preparing to defend our universities, ramping up our campaign and asking members, staff, students and the community to take simple actions to stop the legislation and the Abbott Government in their tracks. A dedicated website – no100kdegrees.org.au – is now up and running. The site informs readers about deregulation and funding cuts of our universities, and how they will lead to privatisation and Americanisation. The site provides background information on these important issues. By visiting the website, you can pledge to join the campaign and help out by offering to distributing flyers, posters, attending rallies or meetings, or sign-up to help out during election time. If you haven’t got the time to get directly involved in the campaign there are options of spreading the word in social media about the impacts of $100,000 degrees and how a 20 per cent funding cut will affect your local university.
Campaigning in key electorates In September, to support the campaign and send a clear message from our local communities, advertising will be placed in a number of key seats around the country. Sturt (SA), Page and Banks (NSW), Corangamite (Vic), Brisbane and Herbert (Qld) will see billboards sending a strong community message to the Abbott Government. Likewise, television screens in Darwin, Townsville, Lismore, Launceston and Adelaide will come alive with our message. Please look out for the TV ads and billboards and spread the word on your favourite social media site. Campaign activity will be occurring in each of these seats during this September and onwards. The NTEU is inviting members, staff, students and the community to help raise higher education as an issue in the lead up to the federal election. Join the campaign by signing up at no100kdegrees.org.au
The NTEU, Unicasuals and CAPA partnered with friendly social media organisations on Friday 17 July to host a national ‘tweet-up’ on the state of insecure work in higher education. The conversation was fast and furious, and a useful way to again stir the public pot about higher education workplace conditions. The hashtag #securework trended hot in Australia, making the top five Twitter topics at the time. There were a number of devastating stories, with insecurely employed academics from all around the country exploring their aspirations, disappointments and, in no uncertain terms, their frequent experiences of workplace exploitation. One staff member summarised the lack of autonomy and control over her career in a single phrase, ‘I think of career as a verb, not a noun.’ Others depicted academic life without basic university support, such as a desk, a computer, a work phone, or email or photocopying access between semesters. From the lack of paid induction, and lack of sufficient time to write courses at the start of semester, to unpaid marking, lack of support for conference funding, and the indefinite ‘income pause’ between contracts, #securework participants talked about more than just damaged aspirations, but lives, families and mortgages put on hold for the pursuit of an elusive academic career. The gender dimensions of this experience were stark. Robyn May confirmed that ‘reality often hits late especially for women who think if they do the right thing they will be rewarded’ and that ‘reward is usually only more casual work, more exploitation, less chance to develop research track record’. Many of the perspectives were framed by the brutal view that the ubiquity of insecure work was because that for far too many university managers, ‘hiring is a blunt cost calculation.’ It was also an unfortunate reality to hear that in lieu of the Union’s exclusion from inductions, many casual and contract staff did not receive basic information about their employment relationship, or even the existence of their Collective Agreement. The self-defeating lack of value that universities vest in their own ‘human capital’ reinforces the need to combat these unhealthy workplaces with greater solidarity amongst secure and insecurely employed university staff. A big thanks to our partners Casual, Adjunct, Sessional Staff and their Allies (CASA), the Research Whisperer, the National Alliance of Public Universities (NAPU) and the Council of Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) for making this possible. securework.org.au
$100,000 DEGREES? I WON’T VOTE FOR THIS
Check out more from the conversation as recorded on Storify: storify.com/JenKwok/securework-national-tweet-up We would love for you to add your own story and join in the national conversations: #securework #auscasuals #supercasuals FIND OUT MORE & JOIN THE CAMPAIGN
NO100KDEGREES.ORG.AU
Keep up to date with what’s happening in Australia by following @unicasual @thesupercasuals
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Entire class quits
American path leads to casualisation By Jen Tsen Kwok Policy & Research Officer
The US continues to prove that Australia should beware following down the ‘Americanisation’ path of privatised higher education, and the risks that this will produce poorer outcomes for students, staff and education in general. In May this year, the entire first-year class of Masters of Fine Art (MFA) students at the USC Roski School of Art and Design in Los Angeles announced they would leave the school on the grounds of unethical treatment. In previous years of the course, students had graduated with two years of teaching experience and very little debt. Arrangements introduced by the new Dean in 2015 meant that the course would not cover student costs, and furthermore that students would have to compete with each other for teaching assistant positions. The students refused to comply and resigned, claiming the Dean had acted unethically by breaking funding and curricular promises to students. Poor management of the issue by Faculty meant that by the start of September, only one student returned to class. The incident reinforces that Americanisation means casualisation. When two leading professors resigned their posts in 2014, due to the changes proposed by the new administration, their vacancies were filled by adjuncts. Since 2001, the proportion of adjunct faculty at USC grew to 75 per cent. In June 2015, Cathy Sandeen in The Conversation demonstrated that over the last four decades the composition of faculty in the US has ‘flipped’ so that now higher education institutions employ mostly adjunct or ‘contingent’ faculty (66.5 per cent in 2009). The incident also portrays that the American system frequently produces bad outcomes for students where course costs have become the primary rationale for educational provision. The MFA incident has occurred in the broader context that tuition fees at USC have increased 92 per cent since 2001. These bad outcomes commonly extend from escalating student debt to corporatisation of the curriculum. Compiled from reports in LA Weekly and The Conversation www.laweekly.com/arts/an-entire-class-of-usc-art-students-leaves-schoolafter-dean-pisses-them-off-5581808 www.laweekly.com/arts/uscs-once-heralded-mfa-program-opens-withonly-one-student-5972279 theconversation.com/wisconsin-controversy-with-fewer-tenured-positionswho-benefits-from-academic-freedom-43167f www.change.org/p/dean-erica-muhl-of-usc-roski-school-of-art-anddesign-must-resign-now
Postgrad membership By Rob Binnie National Organiser
Stemming from a motion at NTEU National Council 2014, a new category of membership has been created for postgraduate students. It is solely for postgrads who are not working in sector and otherwise not eligible to join the NTEU, and it is free. NTEU postgrad membership is modelled on successful student subscription schemes developed by other unions, such as the Australian Education Union where it has proved to be an effective strategy for establishing the Union as important and relevant to future teachers before they enter the workforce. Of course, the situation is not analogous as only some postgrads will choose or will be able to gain a position in the sector. And, as we are well aware, those jobs are very likely to be precarious in casualised academic teaching and/or fixed-term research positions. However, this highlights the importance for postgrads to understand the role of the Union in protecting existing employment rights and advocating and negotiating to improve job security.
Casual members are full members Full membership of NTEU is only available to those who have paid employment in the tertiary education sector. While those in casual or sessional employment pay significantly reduced fees, they are not lesser members in any way; they have full voting and representational rights and full access to all Union benefits. NTEU has put significant efforts into improving conditions for casual members. The last four bargaining rounds have resulted in significant improvements in pay (through increased loadings and rates and separate payments for marking). In the last two rounds we have made it a key focus to increase opportunities for conversion by creating more secure employment opportunities specifically targeted at casual academic staff, through the creation of Early Career Development Fellowships (ECDFs), and Scholarly Teaching Fellows (STFs). The NTEU will continue to improve conditions for casual staff in forthcoming bargaining rounds.
What do postgrad members get? Postgrads will have access to online publications, be able to become actively involved in Union campaigns, and can access a limited number of discounts. However, they cannot be represented by the Union and do not have voting rights. Postgrad membership is free and enrolment is a seamless, online process. To be clear, this membership category is for students who are not performing paid work in the sector. If a postgrad member gets a paying job at a tertiary institution their membership status will change and they will need to pay the appropriate fee to retain their association with the NTEU. If you have contact in your work with postgraduate students, please let them know that we are now able to offer them a taste of Union benefits. www.nteu.org.au/postgrad
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 2
Semester 2, 2015
Swinburne Agreement overturned
NTEU wins for casuals By Linda Gale Industrial Officer
Union members, including casuals, can take pride in the new Enterprise Agreement at Swinburne University. After a long struggle against an intransigent management, the consistent campaign mounted by the NTEU for improved working conditions for casuals has delivered real gains, including more opportunities for sessional academics to convert to ongoing jobs from 2016. In 2013, enterprise bargaining at Swinburne ran up against management opposition on some key conditions, including better rights for casual staff. Instead of continuing to negotiate in good faith, university management decided to put their version of an Agreement to a vote of all staff early in 2014, which they deliberately held during semester break to minimise the capacity for staff to talk to each other, and to the Union, before voting. Management knew that many staff would oppose the inferior deal on offer, so they invested heavily in a propaganda campaign, including offering one-off payments to voters if the ‘Agreement’ got up. Significantly, on the voting roll they included everyone who had been employed at Swinburne in the past 12 months, including people who no longer worked there, people who had only ever done a few hours genuinely casual work, people who had officially resigned, and more. Despite all these efforts, the ballot was carried by only a narrow margin, and certainly not clearly enough to be sure the result wasn’t influenced by the votes of those who should never have been on the roll.
NTEU challenged the result, and after a very long court procedure, the university’s dodgy Agreement was overturned by the Federal Court in July 2015. The court decision forced management back to the bargaining table, where the NTEU once again pressed the important claims which had remained unresolved nearly two years before. Intensive negotiations resulted in finalising on the broad terms of a new Agreement (of course there is tightening up of the wording still to be done before the agreement goes out to a vote of all current employees – including casuals). The new Agreement will include significant gains for casuals at Swinburne, including a conversion process stronger than most in the country, enabling many sessional staff to move to ongoing appointments, access to family violence leave and a commitment not to increase the overall use of casual staff. Below: Swinburne casuals campaigning for better conditions back in 2013 (Credit: Toby Cotton).
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Meet the
Super Casuals
At the start of 2015, NTEU launched SuperCasuals campaigns at a number of universities in Victoria. The Union has joined with passionate SuperCasuals to combat the widespread and gross exploitation of casual university staff. We know that together we have the power to improve the working conditions of casuals – and that’s what we are all about. The time has come for SuperCasuals – who we all know are talented and committed – to be treated with the dignity and respect that their work demands.
Initial meetings To begin with, NTEU held large open meetings of casuals at La Trobe, Monash and Victoria University. Hundreds of casuals turned out to these meetingS and voiced their frustrations at the exploitative elements of casual employment. Many of the stories were alarming and also deeply moving. At each of the meetings SuperCasuals en masse put up their hands and committed to joining campaign teams to create local movements of change.
The campaigns In the aftermath of the initial meetings the SuperCasuals teams devised a number of university-specific campaigns.
By Dr Dustin Halse NTEU Vic Division Campaigns Officer
M@dustinhalse
A campaign was launched at La Trobe to end the archaic system of paper timesheets and payslips. Casuals were spending hours of unpaid work chasing up carbon copy payslips and lodging multiple paper payslips. Just shy of 100 SuperCasual members collectively demanded that the university fix the mess. The action was a resounding success and now casuals have access to an efficient 21st century pay system. At Victoria University, a campaign has been launched to ensure that casuals are properly paid to undertake inductions; and, that casuals get their contracts on time. VU has been a hive of activity with BBQs, social events, rallies and petitions keeping the team
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 2
Semester 2, 2015
tremendously busy. SuperCasual membership at VU has nearly doubled in size this year and we think that a favourable resolution to the campaign is coming soon. At Monash University, a large group of SuperCasuals has decided to run a campaign to improve academic marking rates. The local SuperCasuals team has launched a claim and petition in collaboration with the student union. Dozens of new casuals have joined the Union and have demanded that Monash consult with casuals to develop thorough evidence based marking guidelines. The SuperCasuals campaigns have been led by local NTEU casual members. They are been bold examples of member driven activism that is producing real improvements to the working conditions of casuals. Connect talked to some of these SuperCasual leaders.
Jo Taylor, Victoria University I have been a casual academic, research assistant and publications assistant at a range of universities since 2001. I have also been the sole income earner in my family the entire time and while I love to teach I know first-hand the challenges that accompany insecure work. I first got involved in discussing casual issues with the NTEU in mid-2013. In the following year I joined the VU Branch Committee. In 2015 we started working on the NTEU SuperCasuals campaign with Dustin Halse. After holding an open meeting in February (attended by 60 casuals) we identified two issues at VU to focus on: the lack of a properly paid induction; and the delayed issuing of contracts, which saw many staff starting work each semester without a contract. During the year we have located and canvassed sessional staff, held social events and run stalls on campus to raise awareness of the issues. We have also nearly doubled our casual NTEU membership at VU. Casuals and sessionals, who are by the nature of the work quite isolated from each other, now know that there are things we can do about our working conditions if we work collectively.
Lachlan Clohesy, Victoria University Over the past couple of years I’ve been actively campaigning on behalf of my VU casual colleagues. A few years ago I witnessed the NTEU’s SwinSessionals campaign (at Swinburne Uni) and decided to approach the VU Branch with some ideas about how we could do similar things here. Since then we’ve run successful social events, held VU’s largest ever meeting of casual staff in early 2015, enjoyed some exposure in the media, and launched a SuperCasuals campaign based around contract and induction mess. A colleague and I were even invited to a University Council meeting where we put the issue of casualisation squarely before the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor. We’re also determined to see that the momentum we’ve built continues into 2016 and beyond.
Steve Pascoe, La Trobe University I am a PhD candidate and tutor in the History department at La Trobe Uni. Having worked as a casual academic for a number of years at various universities in Melbourne, this year I finally joined the NTEU and signed on to the SuperCasuals campaign to abolish paper-based time sheets and payslips. Being involved in the campaign was great and we have successfully changed the pay system for all casuals at La Trobe. This is a great outcome and will cut out the unpaid work involved in submitting the old paper timesheets. We have increased our casual membership by 50 per cent. I am looking forward to being involved in future SuperCasuals campaigns that are focused on improving the conditions of casuals. A growing group of casuals at La Trobe are campaigning to transform the frustration so many of us feel into concrete and lasting change. Only when we act together can we hope to effect real change! continued overpage...
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Luke Nickholds, Monash University I’m a casual tutor at Monash University where I have been involved in leading our SuperCasuals campaign this year. I enjoy the work that I do but many of the conditions under which I work are not great. I joined the NTEU because I wanted to unite with my fellow casual colleagues and fight for improved working conditions. When I see and hear the horror stories of many of my colleagues I am shocked and simultaneously motivated to take up the fight. At Monash we’re campaigning for a fairer marking system—in particular we are fighting for fair guidelines to be implemented. We have run massive open meetings and socials events, and held stalls with our student union friends. We have also recruited dozens of new members to the Union. A win for casuals on the marking issue at Monash is coming! www.supercasuals.org.au Top, left: Feeding the SuperCasuals at Monash. Top, right: SuperCasuals stall at VU Below: SuperCasuals Open Meeting at La Trobe. (Credit: Toby Cotton)
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 2
Semester 2, 2015
Want to get involved? We need passionate and enthusiastic casuals to join the SuperCasuals team in Victoria. If you are interested in finding out more, email Dustin Halse (Victorian Campaigns Officer) dhalse@nteu.org.au Alternatively, contact your local Branch Organiser and ask for their help. If you want to run a SuperCasuals campaign at your university then let’s do it!
Letter from a casual tutor
Dear Lecturers... By Matthew Hagel A casual academic in Australia since 2009
I am a casual tutor, who has worked in four universities in NSW since 2009. I am writing to share my experience and offer four suggestions for fellow casual and, particularly, full-time academics. Most lecturers I have worked under are aware of the increasing casualisation of Australian universities. At the same time, the practical effects on the education that casuals are delivering to the majority of students in this country remain unacknowledged or invisible to most full-time faculty and, obviously, to university authorities. These issues are important for full-time faculty to acknowledge and act upon because they are our direct supervisors and the people who directly decide our renewals every semester (an eternally mysterious process, which is a major problem in itself). I believe it would be productive to offer casuals and the lecturers hiring them four straight points; four practical instances where the neoliberalisation of the Australian educational system is truly lived. They might seem minuscule issues, but they are both daily experiences and consequences of a system that, as ABC’s 4 Corners reported, is in dangerous decline in terms of quality and purpose. So, for casuals and lecturers, here are four points you could discuss in your first meeting to set up the new semester with my additional comments provided beneath:
Clearly state and pay for student consultation times Time given to face-to-face student consultation must be fully and exactly accounted and paid for. If face-to-face consultation time is not paid for, then consultation should be restricted to email with very specific guidelines (i.e. students cannot write more than one paragraph and can expect only a very short reply). Or all student questions should be sent directly to the course convenor. One university where I have worked has the most ambiguous wording around consultation times that I have ever seen. There is a ‘choice’ between face-to-face and email contact, which is far from clear. The duty of consultation is vaguely mentioned in the enterprise bargaining agreement as included in the paid hour of teaching, without mention of percentage or timings. Many students demand frequent and long replies by email (especially about marking) stating they cannot meet in person. If they are not happy with the responses by email, they go to the school authorities or lecturers to complain that tutors are not giving them time, or worse.
a year, before taxes; is that middle class in Australia? I don’t know. I became a permanent resident 18 months ago), should also not be an issue in hiring and there should be no expectations of the same effectiveness of a full-time permanent employee with a much better defined workload.
Restrict the reading time needed for class preparation Weekly reading materials set by lecturers should be brought down to one mandatory article, maximum. If lecturers put in more than one reading/article a week, students don’t feel obliged to do them all or they choose different readings, and tutorials are much more difficult to run. Optimistic lecturers also keep adding readings through Moodle or Blackboard online systems. The point is that tutors have to read them all (which I always do, religiously, of course). This extensive time for class preparation, again, is not often specified, acknowledged or paid. Tutors also can’t solve the fact that students stopped reading in the 1990s (regrettable as that might be, but illiteracy is the price paid if the system wants to continue the exploitation of casuals).
Extend basic academic freedom to casuals Last but not least, tutors should be able to explain every one of these issues (or related ones) in tutorial times, to all students, especially if students are not happy that a tutor cannot meet with them or if they receive late marks. Fact: I let my students know all this and I was told by university authorities that it was forbidden for me to talk about casualisation in tutorial times. Academic freedom is usually guaranteed through bargaining agreements, but casuals are disposable, so our academic freedom doesn’t matter. My main point is that all these issues can be explained by and through casualisation. Students are directly affected by them. However, because these problems are not discussed openly, students are oblivious to the systemic problems in the higher education system and quite often complain and evaluate tutors badly at the end of the semester (unless we soft-mark – an endemic issue in Australia, and another by-product of casualisation). Tutors usually are the only faces that students see regularly and directly at university. Thus, we should be able to give an explanation to students for these issues, in class time. It is their education (and ‘their money’, in neo-liberal language).
Many universities have an ‘official’ two-week period for submitting feedback and grades, which lecturers demand consistently. This is a big problem for tutors who might have up to 10 tutorials; are not employed (paid) full-time; and who have outside lives as carers for children, etc.
I had no idea what else to do besides putting this in writing and then trying to discuss it with lecturers next time I get hired. If tutors would put together basic practical demands to lecturers and use roughly the same voice, all academics could acknowledge much further the most serious problem in university education today in Australia: casualisation and who exactly is paying the ‘price’. This is a problem that if not addressed in practical and everyday terms, Australian education will implode. Where? In our ‘small’ tutorial rooms, that’s where.
The number of tutorials taught by a casual in one or more universities (10 tutorials is around $25,000 a semester, or $50,000
'Matthew Hagel' is an NTEU member. This article was first published by CASA: actualcasuals.wordpress.com
Extend marking deadlines
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Scholarly Teaching Fellow roles improve job security By Susan Kenna Industrial Officer
Round 6 bargaining saw a claim from NTEU which was designed to improve job security for long term casual teachers. We have collectively won 800 new positions. Now we need to keep pressure on university managements to fill these new jobs. It is early days, but Connect spoke to two NTEU members who have recently been appointed to new Scholarly Teaching Fellow (STF) roles.
Benito Cao Benito Cao says that his main emotion on securing a Scholarly Teaching Fellow position in July was ‘relief’. He and his wife can now think about buying their own home after years of precarious employment. Benito has been teaching politics in Adelaide since 2002 after emigrating from Spain in 1996, and completing his PhD at the University of Adelaide in 2008. Benito was a casual tutor in Australian and International Politics and Sociology between 2002-2008 at the University of Adelaide, Flinders University and the University of South Australia (UniSA), became a casual lecturer at UniSA in 2008 and secured a fixedterm contract at Adelaide as a lecturer/course coordinator in 2009. Benito subsequently went on to 6 fixed-term contracts between 2009 and 2015. Benito’s career path is not atypical, particularly for teaching staff, and is exactly the type of ‘qualification’ required to be eligible for an STF position. During enterprise bargaining negotiations, Benito was aware that STF provisions were being sought at Adelaide Uni. He kept a keen eye on negotiations with a view to applying if NTEU were successful. Though Benito’s workload was 40/40 teaching – research split, he told Connect that he is ‘passionate about teaching’ and he knew these positions would suit him, without cutting off his future career options. Benito was successful in securing a position in late July. Though it is very early days, Benito thinks STFs are a sensible option, particularly for those like himself who wish to focus on teaching. He anticipates 10–20 per cent time for research but acknowledges future work allocation may depend on negotiating specific conditions with the Head of School, within the limits set by the enterprise agreement. Benito is very pleased that the Faculty appointed him at the highest level contemplated in the Agreement (Level B, Step 3) and kept his salary level, which was ahead of the entry levels under the Agreement. For the moment, Benito says he’s ‘basking in the glow’ of job security for the first time in his career.
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Semester 2, 2015
Grant Bailey
All up, Grant had three fixed-term TFR contracts; the first for 6 months, the following for 1 year and then a further 6 month contract. After NTEU publicised and agitated for our Scholarly Teaching Fellow positions, Grant took an interest, and negotiations at UWS resulted in agreement to create 50 positions under the existing nomenclature ‘Teaching Focused Role’, in December 2014.
Grant Bailey had an interesting work history before entering academia, working as a high school teacher and in law and education publishing. In all he has been teaching in the University of Western Sydney (UWS) Law School for six years, four of which were as a casual teacher.
These new versions of a TFR offer on-going employment for the first time. Grant achieved the only such role on offer in the Law School. Aside from providing job security, non-casual teachers in a TFR role benefit from a workloads clause which ensures limits on faceto-face teaching. They also have the opportunity to progress their careers and adopt a more balanced teaching/research role at a later date. Grant does not have a PhD and though he would be supported to undertake a doctorate, his TFR role provides certainty and recognition that a teaching-focussed career is a legitimate and rewarding option. ‘There are still an enormous number of casual teachers who desire a permanent full or part-time teaching role and the security that goes with these roles’ says Grant.
After teaching as a casual for about two years, Grant inquired about the Teaching Focused Roles (TFR) provided under the previous UWS Academic Staff Agreement. He was initially told there were no arrangements in the School for such roles. After another year of casual teaching, Grant inquired again and in 2013 was successful in achieving a TFR. Prior to the signing of the 2014–2017 Agreement, the TFRs did not provide on-going work. However, Grant at least achieved a fixed-term contract which provided paid leave and meant he was no longer a totally ‘precarious’ casual teacher. These roles also provided the option for conversion to on-going work.
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Already Grant and his partner are making decisions that were previously out of the question, as they are secure in the knowledge that Grant has on-going work. For example, Grant’s wife (who also works in the Law School) recently took long service leave at half pay as the couple decided that Grant’s secure income gave them the freedom to do so. Grant is aware that each Department or School will adopt a different approach to looking at TFRs, but in the mean-time he is enjoying the ‘predictable hours, pay and workload’, and he hopes that the NTEU will continue to promote these roles.
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11
Good
bye
academia? By Bettina Rösler
The semester is long over; yet, I am spending some time every week answering student emails regarding grades or additional feedback for assignments. There seems to be an expectation of me to be eternally available for any potential issues relating to the particular units I taught. Students request more feedback on assignments or new unit coordinators require details from last term. The problem here is the fact that I am not on anyone’s payroll and I am not getting paid for the time I spend responding to emails. I am a casual academic and I am not alone. More than half of universities’ academic staff are only casually employed (Bexley, James & Arkoudis, 2011); these already high numbers of casual academics are increasing (Rea, 2014) and I personally know at least a dozen highly qualified and competent early career researchers that struggle under precarious work conditions. Just like many others, I have recently completed a PhD and am since fighting to make a living. Every term I have to renegotiate work contracts, which involves weeks of uncertainty and sometimes no secure contract until well into the semester. After an already long ‘income pause’ (i.e. semester break, which is even longer and more daunting over summer) any further income delays are likely to test my credit card limit. Receiving a salary for about 26 weeks a year is simply not sustainable. I am in my midthirties, still sharing a flat (OK, I live in Sydney) cannot afford a car and have not had a holiday in over a decade. I could not even get a credit for a new computer. Twice every year I seriously consider going on benefits because I am afraid I will not be able to pay rent. Biannually, I am thrown into deep existential debates on my position in this, in my opinion flawed, system and what I could do differently. How can I improve my chances and further my career? But it is very hard. Half of the year I overcommit to make up for the time I am not teaching. Finding suitable in-between research assistant gigs is rare and generally does not match up with the semester dates. This has affected my social life and also my mental state. Sadly, this is likely to affect many casuals’ teaching quality (Clohesy, 2015). While I am putting a lot of effort into tutorial preparation, I always feel I could do so much more. I could run a blog or Facebook group for the students; I could find much more additional material; I could help develop and improve the unit content and incorporate some of the students’ feedback. Unfortunately, casuals are rarely given the opportunity or platform to do so – let alone get paid for it. As a casual academic paid time will always have priority over other (potentially more career-furthering) activities. This is a huge
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problem for casuals as an important part of an academic career consists of in-kind contributions in form of journal issue editing, articles or book reviews, sitting on boards and committees, chairing conferences and so on. I simply do not have the time to properly develop my research profile. I cannot attend conferences as they are too expensive and I have no affiliation for potential funding. The lack of affiliation is often additionally problematic in terms of grant applications. Moreover, there is very little time left for substantial writing between teaching, marking and job applications. Applying for academic positions is tedious and almost a fulltime job in itself. Numerous highly complex criteria need to be addressed. Besides, in the current job climate it can be a very depressing activity. Not only are there very few permanent and/or full time positions available, in my area in particular there are just so many highly qualified young academics out there. If you get an average of 100 applicants for an academic positions, obviously the one with the most closely aligned research background, experience and most publications will get the job. There will always be an (almost) perfect candidate with specialised skills, which makes any other applicant’s transferable skills seem redundant. Unfortunately, my research area is one of the perhaps least funded with hardly any suitable jobs available. Even securing suitable casual teaching can be a challenge. While there are so-called eligibility lists and casual staff registers, hardly any unit convener or coordinator ever seems to look at those. Most jobs are shared via connections. And these can be hard to establish. I have made connections to various unit coordinators who praised my work and loved my initiative. Yet, many of them are only casually employed themselves, thus in no position to re-employ tutors for another term. Another problem with this ‘system’ is the fact that in some cases the most convenient staff option, i.e. the nearest available casual, may not be the most suitable person for the job. Not everyone has the necessary skills to teach, let alone run a unit. However, for casual employment this does not seem to matter too much. Many of these eligibility lists or casual staff registers have strict selection processes in place, including complex applications and interviews, and it is frustrating to know that no one is really taking your skills and experience seriously enough to even consider your application. Understandably though, most overworked and often casual unit coordinators simply do not have the time to look at long lists of potentially more suitable applicants. Most unit planning is dictated by student enrolments, which puts unit coordinators in an impossible position. They cannot offer jobs until enrolments are finalised and often need last minute tutors. Besides, many
universities appear to prefer parallel tutorials as most students prefer certain times over others. This means tutors cannot get three or four tutes in a row; rather two different tutors will have to cover the parallel session. Moreover, many schools do not want to have tutors taking on too many tutorials as tight marking deadlines may not be met. Further, many universities are conscious of the hours casual tutors work due to their right to seek conversion to permanent employment if employed on a regular basis. Consequently, I often end up teaching various subjects in a number of schools. I have been a casual or sessional academic for more than two years now. I have been doing everything from teaching to research assistant and admin. I love teaching but hate the work environment. So much I am seriously considering saying goodbye to academia. It all feels like a really bad catch 22 from which I cannot escape. I see many senior academics toil away. And while most seem to enjoy dedicating their entire lives to research, this does not work for everyone. And I increasingly think it may not work for me. Should it really come down to a choice between working 70+ hours weeks on tenured track vs casual academic precarity? I believe that there needs to be an option in between – solid teaching positions for highly qualified people who appreciate a decent work/life balance. References Bexley, E., James, R. & Arkoudis, S. (2001). The Australian academic profession in transition: Addressing the challenge of reconceptualising academic work and regenerating the academic workforce. Melbourne: Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Clohesy, L. (2015). The Casualisation of Academia: impacts on Australian universities. The AIM Network. http://theaimn.com/the-casualisation-ofacademia-impacts-on-australian-universities/. Rea, J. (2014). University work becoming more precarious. Connect, 7(2). p. 7-8. http://issuu.com/nteu/docs/connect_07_02. University of Western Sydney (2011). UWS Code of conduct: Guide for academic and professional employees. www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0006/189951/Casuals_Guide_for_Academic_Professional_staff29.9.11.pdf.
Bettina Rösler is a casual researcher and university tutor. She has completed her PhD thesis ‘Reimagining Cultural Diplomacy through Cosmopolitan Linkages: Australian Artists-in-Residence in Asia’ at the Institute for Culture and Society (UWS) in 2015. Bettina has also completed master degrees in English Literature/ Cultural Studies at TU Dresden (Germany) and in Translation Studies at Auckland University (NZ). This article original published at the Research Whisperer: theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com Above: Melbourne University (Credit: Paul Clifton).
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
13
Postgrads, casuals and academics of the future
When the NTEU announced a new postgraduate membership category, there were some perplexed responses as to how would this differ from casual membership, particularly when casual members were sometimes postgrads. Whilst this was readily explained as the distinction is whether one is in paid employment, it was not the end of the discussion. In the following invited article, CASA co-editors Kate Bowles and Karina Luiza reflect upon what they describe as ‘some testy discussions on social media on the benefits of union membership for casual employees.’ Is there an assumption inherent in the new membership category that there will be future employment for postgrads in the higher education sector, which is in stark contrast to the reality that there are few jobs and they are more likely than not to be in casual teaching or fixed-term research? NTEU’s ongoing challenge is to be the Union for all working in higher education.
The new NTEU membership category for Australian postgraduate students – free, but with limits to benefits – confronts a puzzle in the case of postgraduates employed as academic (or other) casuals.
By Karina Luzia
M@acahacker
At first glance, this puzzle looks easy to solve: the NTEU’s advice to those who are both postgraduate and casually employed is that they must opt for full ordinary membership. This isn’t free, but there are reduced rates for those who work insecurely, depending on projected annual income: below $10,000, above $10,000 or above $20,000. So for a relatively modest cost ($55 per year for the lowest paid or those who are unemployed), academic casuals have access to the full range of union member benefits available to their salaried colleagues.
By Kate Bowles
M@KateMfd
In an email sent out to casual members, the NTEU explained that the motive behind adding postgraduate membership is that many of Australia’s 350,000 postgraduates ‘will one day become academics’. The advice that casual and sessional staff should continue in ordinary membership suggests the new campaign is thinking about how to include postgraduates with no employment experience in universities at all. But the reality is that focusing on these postgraduate students as those who will one day become academics sidelines both the postgraduates who are already working as in these roles now, and all the casual employees – whether postgraduate or not – holding out the hope of also becoming Australia’s ‘future workers of the sector’, but not in insecure work.
Venn diagram of early career identity For postgraduate students who teach and/or are research assistants, having to identify to the NTEU in terms of their intermittent employment rather than their year-round enrolment status isn’t just a matter of costs and benefits. This is the Venn diagram of early career identity: not all casuals are postgraduates (but many are), not all postgraduates work casually (but many do), and so in the expanding middle are those juggling both. They are developing their research career under increasingly stringent deadlines for completion of their candidature, while paying their bills or building their CV with casual university work. Moving them into one circle rather than another ignores the reason why the circles overlap in the first place. In this overlap zone, postgraduates who work already confront many practical frustrations. At many institutions, for example, postgraduate students have one email account and are
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attached to one institutional budget line, and then are required to fire up a second account or more, attached to another budget, with different levels of authorisation and access to things, for their teaching or RA work. Many job numbers may be involved. Postgraduate students who are casually employed toggle these settings continuously in their everyday lives, as they move from their research to their casual job/s and back again. Most academics struggle to balance these aspects of their careers, but those with secure employment aren’t required to log out of one identity and into another to do so, let alone pack up their things and shift to a different office (or to a coffee shop) to meet with students, fill out a timesheet, access a separate email account or log into a different printer. And the Venn diagram problem in this case is also markedly seasonal, unlike annual union membership. Why should a fulltime postgraduate who takes on a single class commit immediately to the same level of union membership as their supervisor? And what happens when the postgraduate isn’t employed? This problem of off-season status and identity is a problem for casually employed university staff in almost every corner of their professional lives. It persists because neither universities nor unions have found a good solution to the problem inherent in casualisation itself: that it’s not a promise of future employment. Indeed, when some Enterprise Agreements go out of their way to underscore that prior employment is not grounds to expect ever to be employed again, then choosing to identify as a worker rather than a student is quite challenging. (For example, see clause 3.6.38 of Macquarie University’s Academic Agreement which says ‘A casual staff member will not have any expectation of continuing employment’.)
Academics of the future This category confusion, and the practical problems it causes, is a symptom of universities and unions both grappling with the way short-term on-demand hiring has become a normal means of staffing Australian higher education. This reality is entirely at odds with the vision of becoming a securely employed academic that is key to the institutional pursuit of HDR students. So it’s slightly uncomfortable to find the NTEU apparently promoting the same career vision, when this is a mirage comprehensively disproved by the data on PhD completions in relation to secure jobs available. And we’re not suggesting this is sinister; it’s just that both universities and unions are having to adapt rapidly to the many and varied impacts of casualisation on their own future sustainability. These aren’t trivial concerns. So when the new postgraduate membership category was promoted, we had questions for the NTEU, and there were some testy discussions on social media on the benefits of union membership for casual employees. We are union members, and we’ve followed many conversations among US adjunct activists on this question. We know from their situation that it is tough to achieve sector-wide gains wherever unionisation remains patchy or uncoordinated. In the US, individual adjuncts who speak out against their working conditions without a union at their back do so at much higher personal risk; isolated and fragmented grassroots initiatives have no secure home; and activism has limited capacity to grow. We’re continually reminded of the benefits of working in a small sector in which a national academic union has its boots squarely planted under the negotiating table.
this may have something to do with the way that membership recruitment has added casual and sessional staff to general membership without thinking about inclusions or services that address their situation specifically. Taking a quick run through the member purchasing benefits, for example, we have to say that some of the inclusions – cut-price airline lounge membership, discounts on dining and ‘lifestyle gifts’ – pitch at those on above-subsistence incomes. But there are some discounts, particularly in terms of computer purchasing, that would also be valuable both to postgraduates and casual employees. And there’s an opportunity here to think about negotiating services that would be specifically useful to those who have the fewest institutional career development resources. This leaves traditional union member entitlements, including legal services and advice, the opportunity to vote on union matters, and the one that stopped us in our tracks: the right to take industrial action. For workers who are hired and laid off seasonally, the opportunity to strike is really the chance to juggle a grenade with the pin out. In a saturated labour market, it is very difficult to prove that not being rehired is the result of anything other than there being a better applicant than you. This is why many academic casuals who are already worried about the impact of student evaluations or complaints, or of speaking up in even a whisper about their working conditions, hold the view that ‘protected’ industrial action in their case has some degree of irony. So it’s not the case that this isn’t a valuable protection, but it’s one that needs to be communicated with sensitivity to what makes casualisation casual in the first place.
Tensions and solidarity These conversations are all genuinely difficult, given the increasing tensions between the hope of solidarity and the fears engendered by the intensifying competitiveness and stratification of higher education work. There are highly privileged university employees who reap the benefits of resources, promotion, perks and performance bonuses of many kinds; and at the other end of the same profession, for no good reason, are those whose hours and rates of pay – whose livelihoods and practical hope of becoming academics of the future – are treated instead as operating costs to be shaved down to the bone. In these circumstances, the costs and risks of solidarity are very unevenly experienced. And yet the benefits to all of having a robust union presence on our campuses aren’t just a matter of cheap movie tickets or individual value for money; solidarity is a bigger and more complicated goal that has to be approached very creatively in these circumstances. If we’re all to gain from having an experienced and effective academic union negotiating future conditions of employment, then we each have a reason to stay in the conversation and ensure that what’s specific about casual university work is kept at the forefront of their thoughts. We can all also do better at recognising, and categorising, the shifting identities at play in our universities.
Targeting membership benefits
This is the best way to ensure that member benefits and bargaining priorities developed in the past or designed around employment permanency are made more appropriate to all the academics of the future.
Nevertheless, there are casually employed staff who don’t see the benefit of NTEU membership, even at the modest sticker price, and this is a complicated problem to address. Our instinct is that
CASA is an independent online space for casual, contract, adjunct and sessional staff and their allies in higher education. www.actualcasuals.wordpress.com.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
15
NTEU policy on
job security in Australian unis
The NTEU’s annual National Council Meeting is attended by elected delegates from all NTEU Branches and meets in October in Melbourne. The Council makes the policy and establishes the priorities of the Union for the coming year. Following the National Insecure Work conference last November, the NTEU National Executive agreed to prioritise job security and the issues facing insecure workers. The following comprehensive position will be put to the Council to ensure that prioritising action against casualisation and fixed-term contracts is at the top of the agenda for all levels of the Union.
Priorities for 2015-16 NTEU determines that the priorities for the 2015-16 year are: 1. In enterprise bargaining: a. Actively pursuing those elements of the Union’s bargaining agenda which are relevant to job security and to the rights of employees in insecure work. b. Ensuring that all members are aware of the links between excessive use of insecure employment modes, the loss of security of continuing employees, and excessive workloads. 2. In industrial and organising work: a. Aggressively monitor and implement all existing employment rights of employees in insecure work (e.g. separate pay for marking), as well as broader entitlements affecting job security more generally. b. Branches and Divisions, in cooperation with the National Office will actively engage members around targeted enforcement campaigns, especially on behalf of fixed-term staff employed contrary to the terms of collective agreements, and contract research staff and casual staff in relation to all of existing employment rights. This will include consideration of appropriate litigation strategies. c. Engage members, particularly those in insecure employment modes, in campaigns highlighting the inappropriateness of management practices. 3. In public policy and advocacy: a. Continue to make job security issues a central part of the Union’s work, and to emphasise wherever appropriate the links between job security, academic freedom and educational and research outcomes, and proper use of resources within the sector. b. Ensure that issues relevant to job security are, as far as possible, included in the content of the Union’s federal election campaign. c. Use all appropriate forums to reinforce how the funding models that facilitate job insecurity threaten the quality of teaching and research.
Dimensions of job insecurity Job security has been in gradual decline in Australian universities since at least the early 1990s. Casual employment has risen by around 94 per cent since 1996, such that few would disagree with the claim that a majority of teaching hours are now delivered by low-paid insecure casual employees. Fixed-term contract employment has grown significantly during the same period, rising rapidly before the making of the Higher Education Contract of Employment Award (HECE) in 1998 followed then by a sharp decline in the wake of that Award, a large increase under the effects of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs)
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from 2005 to 2010, and a stabilisation in light of the re-regulation of fixed-term employment in the fifth round of bargaining. Barely one-third of employees in higher education now have ongoing employment. This decline has been influenced in part by external factors. First, the decline in funding per student from the federal government has placed increasing financial pressure on institutions, and driven the unbundling of large amounts of teaching work and its allocation to cheap hourly-paid casual staff. Second, the changes in the way research is funded has led to a much higher proportion of the workforce being funded by short or medium term contestable research grants. However, these changes cannot be used to explain the growth of insecure employment types. Compared to most industries, universities have remarkably stable income streams and very stable and predictable workforce needs, even in most areas funded by research and similar grants. There is therefore no defensible reason for the present extent of fixed-term and casual employment. Existing practices reflect a deliberate management policy to transfer risk in the employment relationship onto employees, to create a fearful and compliant workforce, and to disregard the serious damage to the sector caused by the excessive use of insecure employment forms, which threaten educational quality, academic freedom, and integrity in research and institutional administration. Moreover, the threats to job security are not limited to the excessive use of insecure employment types. Australian universities have been subject to wasteful and destructive rounds of so-called reviews, restructuring and redundancies on a scale that far exceeds any objective circumstances. Most so-called redundancies in higher education are a sham. In only a small number of cases is the work no longer required, yet between 1 and 2 per cent of the continuing workforce are targeted each year. These sham redundancies are either a crude attempt to dismiss people and replace them with cheaper employees doing the same work, an opportunity to remove targeted employees with no effective due process, or simply a means of intimidating the workforce generally. They are also a scandalous waste of public money – NTEU conservatively estimates that the cost of targeted sham redundancies in recent years has averaged well in excess of fifty million dollars. The retrenchment of so many continuing staff in an industry with a relatively stable revenue stream, fairly stable and growing demand, a growing workforce and a huge ‘buffer’ of non-continuing employment, can only be explained by an incompetent or ideologically captured managerial caste. The use of ‘redundancy’ to deal with perceived performance issues is a practice close to corruption but is widespread. Not only does it deny employees’ rights to fair process based on evidence, it provides a positive incentive for poor performance. The NTEU does not support redundancy being used in this manner.
The excess workloads across the sector – reflected in the excessive workloads of many academic staff and widespread working of unpaid overtime by general staff – cannot be divorced from job insecurity. Fear of job insecurity is a necessary management tool to enforce these practices.
NTEU responses to insecure employment NTEU has a strong record of representing employees in insecure work and of improving their conditions of employment while at the same time seeking to provide access to more secure employment forms. NTEU’s predecessor unions led the way in establishing early and relatively generous award-based redundancy provisions as well as provisions to prevent the misuse of redundancy in the face of employers indicating in the late 1980s that they would resort to compulsory redundancies in ‘rare and unusual’ circumstances. Moreover, NTEU’s predecessor unions established award-based procedural protections for academic and general staff in relation to misconduct, unsatisfactory performance and ill-health retirement. These were and remain important protections. However, they did not prevent the significant growth in non-continuing employment which in part was aimed at subverting the entitlements available to continuing employees. In the mid-1990s, NTEU sought improved Award rates of pay for casual academic staff but met with only limited success. On the other hand, the Union did achieve the regulation of fixed-term employment and severance pay for some non-renewed contracts through the HECE Award (1998). This led to a sharp increase in continuing employment at the expense of fixed-term employment over the following years. NTEU successfully negotiated new award entitlements to general staff casual conversion in 2002, along with increases in the casual loading for academic and general staff. More importantly, in the third and fourth rounds of bargaining, NTEU negotiated limits on the use of casual employment at many universities. Before these had a chance to be effective however, the HEWRRs prohibited effective limits on the use of insecure employment, which led to a sharp rise in insecure, especially fixed-term, employment. NTEU has now achieved the reinstatement of the ‘HECE’ provisions at nearly all universities, and the casual loading has been increased to 25 per cent. At the same time, especially over the past decade, employers have used redundancy provisions in aggressive ways not conceived of at time they were formulated, backed up by an unfair dismissal law which encourages the use of contrived redundancies. This means many staff have no effective protection, and provides no incentive for the employers to treat procedures for consultation about workplace change with formulaic contempt.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
17
EI World Congress
Rise of casual and fixed-term employment firmly on the agenda By Jeannie Rea NTEU National President
The German education union, GEW, has developed the Tempino Manifesto to use in agitating their national government to legislate against fixedterm employment in higher education. GEW is optimistic of success as they appeal to the government's commitment to tertiary education, already illustrated in winding back tuition fees and expanding places. But the familiar story is that student numbers have increased, but not state or federal funding to universities. GEW, which represents teachers from primary to university, has focused upon the lack of career paths for young academics and long term ramifications this will have for Germany’s research and development. The development of the manifesto was a tool to organise amongst fixed-term academics. Conferences and national days of action have brought people together and now the contract academics are lobbying politicians. GEW President Marlis Tepe described this campaign at a roundtable on 'Fixed-term to fair employment in further and higher education' moderated by New Zealand Tertiary Education Union (NZTEU) President Dr Sandra Grey, which was held at the 7th Congress of Education International (EI), held in July in Ottawa, Canada. Dr Elizabeth Lawrence, President of University and College Union (UCU) spoke of the UK higher education union’s ongoing project to mobilise casualised academics and build solidarity with their other members. UCU use the language of 'hourly paid academics', in a political environment where precarious work is as prevalent across the workforce as in Australia. And, not unlike Australia, they also have a government intent on impoverishing workers and smashing workers’ rights. 'Zero hour contracts' have been proliferating in colleges and universities. These are contracts which tie academics to an institution, but there are no set working hours or commitment to offer any work. Dr Lawrence was adamant that the role of the Union is to improve the working conditions of casuals, not just to 'to document the miseries'. The NTEU spoke of our experience in organising with and for casualised academics. While the particular history and employment regimes of Australian casuals differs when compared to the non-tenured and adjunct academics in, for example, North America, the similarities in both the employment experiences of insecure workers and the impact upon quality of learning and teaching was widely understood.
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Outside of the extreme situation in North America, Australia along with the UK and New Zealand appear to have the most casualised academic workforce. In much of rest of the world, including the developing world, tenurable and secure academic positions are still expected for PhD graduates embarking upon an academic career. However, this is increasingly confined to public universities and colleges. In the Asia and Pacific region employment at private higher education providers is most likely to be casual or short term contract. NTEU also drew attention to the rapid rise in fixed-term contracts in research work, which other unions covering researchers noted was also an emerging issue. NTEU pointed out that the difference we were finding was that fixed-term contracts often do not even run the length of a funded project anymore. Other unions undertook to investigate whether this was the case in their countries. Consequently, with the Canadian, German and French unions, NTEU continued to raise the implications of fixed-term research contracts on the floor of the Congress in speaking to motions on privatisation, commercialisation, academic freedom, climate change and rights to research. EI World Congress brought together almost 2,000 delegates from over 400 affiliates of the 32 million strong global union federation. Most of the delegates were school teachers, but unionisation and affiliation to EI of higher education workers has exploded over the past two decades, thanks to the efforts of NTEU and other more established higher education unions.
Privatisation and commercialisation Commercialisation and privatisation in and of education will be at the heart of EI’s agenda for the next four years. It is a 'threat that poses great harm to the greatest enterprise of our society: quality public education', said EI President, Susan Hopgood in her closing remarks. 'We leave here united, ready to fight against the scourge of private enterprise in our classrooms.' Over the past 15 years of the UN Millennium Goals, many millions more children now attend primary school and many more are going onto secondary and tertiary education. Yet over 50 million children are still not at school. While mass education is recognised as necessary for economic growth and societal stability by social and economic conservatives, the grip of neo-liberalism has meant that this access to education has not come with the levels of public investment required to ensure children have the best opportunities to succeed. Across many countries, while access has increased government investment per student has declined or not kept pace with rising costs.
Whilst advocating the freeing up the market in education, neoliberals have also cynically advocated regulation to advantage private companies over public providers and even subsidising private schools and colleges. NTEU is very familiar with the issues of government support of private competition in TAFE, and of the Coalition’s ambitions for higher education, but we were not so aware of the extent of the incursion of transnational companies into school education. With crowded classrooms and underpaid teachers in public schools, these companies have created a market in ‘low fee’ private schools. Cynically trading on parents desire to do the best for their children, families are paying substantial proportions of their meagre wages to send their children to these schools, further draining the public system but not necessarily increasing their children’s opportunities. This is happening in the United States, but also in developing countries where mass school education is still in development. Further trapping parents, these schools are often tied to only using products produced by related companies, including learning materials and assessment regimes. For example, EI has taken up the American education unions' campaign against Pearson, known to academics as an education publisher (see #TellPearson on Twitter). With the decline of the textbook market, Pearson is now focussed upon setting up and supplying schools, grabbing control over education systems and content. They are selling the curriculum materials and testing programs which determine which curriculum materials are next required. Discussion and debate around these issues of privatisation and commercialisation was a major feature of the Congress and underpins EI’s principle campaign Unite for Quality Education. The NTEU delegation also participated in a meeting organised by our Canadian hosts, Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), a federation of further and higher education unions, to compare and discuss current strategies and campaigns. www.ei-ie.org/congress7/en/ National President Jeannie Rea recently contributed an article to the journal of CAUT affiliate OCUFA, who produced a special edition on organising insecure workers in higher education: www.academicmatters.ca/2015/06/organizing-against-thewidening-gap-in-academic-job-security-in-australia/ Above: A speaker at EI World Congress in Ottawa (Credit: Gabriel Castro-IEAL).
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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