Delegate profile: Bill Pascoe

It’s sad to see all that the union movement has achieved eroded over the last 30 years, especially when it’s taken hundreds of years to fight for what quality of life and fair working conditions we have. It’s time to turn things around.

I work in digital humanities and so my work is both academic and professional, but I am employed as professional staff. I began working with my current employer – the University of Newcastle – in 2002 in a full time ongoing role, but I was put on a contract just before I was due for long service leave. For almost 10 years I have been working de facto full time, in multiple casual and contract positions, often in three to five jobs at once, all on different terms, from a few days to a year.

The work is often needed before the University can process appointments and after end dates set according to the needs of book-keeping. The reason given is that it is grant funded, but so many other jobs exist to support research, and the University would not exist if there was no research. If I say a project is underfunded, they say that’s all that’s in the budget, so I haveno choice but to accept it or be out of work. I always have more work that I can do yet I’m always looking for more.

Because I don’t get a job if we don’t get grants, I’m incentivised to win grants. As professional staff I’m not allowed to put my name on grants, so sometimes I find that I conceive the grant, write the grant, do the work on the grant and am rewarded with another threat of unemployment, while the academic whose name went on the application is rewarded with points towards promotion.

One year, I contributed at least $3 million of value to the University and was rewarded with the mere opportunity to apply for a $5,000 internal grant to make up the shortfall in days of work until the end of the year. The only thing keeping me here is my love for the work itself, in spite of everything my employer does to stop me doing it!

I can only fit a few examples of many problems here. What is written in policy and Agreements has little correspondence with reality and amidst the chaos there is no way to keep track. Recently, it turned out the University owed me $20,000 in wage theft, out of around $6 million they owed to staff overall, which I wouldn’t have known if not for a review prompted by the Union’s vigilance.

I’m now on a one-year contract. A sixmonth or one-year contract used to be the minimum anyone would accept in IT. Now it is a welcome reprieve. But my main concern is that this situation, which is bad for the worker, bad for the organisation, and counterproductive to the work that needs to be done, doesn’t happen to others.

It seems ridiculous that the Union and the University struggle over nuances in full time workers’ conditions when casuals are so desperate, when casualisation and gig work is on the rise, and when full time workers might find themselves casualised at any moment.

The very day I write this, two of my colleagues have lost their jobs in yet another restructure. It’s because problems like this are systemic and threaten all of us – and the institution – that individual negotiations are not a solution. We need unions and what they represent: collective action.

Good working conditions mean a good standard of living for everyone, and they keep the economy afloat.

It’s frustrating to hear people say, ‘We don’t need Unions now because times are good.’ and then ‘Times are bad, so the unions can’t ask too much.’ When times are good, we are in a good position to bargain for fair conditions.

When times are bad, we need Unions to fight more than ever to keep those conditions.