NUACHT
May 04 2021
The Plight of the Postgrads Unpaid, unsupported and under immense pressure – What’s happening now? by Neasa Gorrell At the beginning of the 20/21 academic year, Postgrad Research Students at NUI Galway formed the Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG in response to the exploitative guidelines set out in the NUI Galway Guidelines for Research Degree Programmes. These guidelines require postgraduate research students to undertake 120 hours of unpaid teaching work per year for three academic years. Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG sent a letter to NUI Galway President, Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, the Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris and Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, stating that the conditions of the guidelines are “exploitative and unjust.” In light of this, Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG stated that “we have no option but to make it clear that we do not recognise any expectation of unpaid work as legitimate.” Further adding, “We hereby declare our intention to refuse to carry out any work which is not remunerated at the existing collectively bargained rate.” At the time, the group got media attention and support from NUI Galway Students’ Union, but we have to ask ourselves; what has happened since? Are Postgrad research students being supported? Speaking to SIN, Postgraduate Research Officer Seb Bierema said,; “Nothing has changed; all of the same problems still exist. The one thing the university has done in terms of negotiating things was to set up a working group led by the Dean of Graduate Studies, with representation from the Students’ Union through the Postgrad Research officer. Apart from that, the other group members are made up of staff from all of the colleges in the University.” Although things seemed hopeful with the establishment of a working group, this was not the case; as Seb explained, “The first step of this working group was to collect data within the University in order to see the scope of the problem, so to see how many students are working without pay and how many hours they are having to work without pay. We would then compare it to other Universities in Ireland and potentially to those in Europe to benchmark where NUI Galway stands compared to everyone else. Yet, this alone has not been achieved.” Bierema accused the University of implementing “stalling tactics” and not keeping track of the scale of the problems facing Postgraduate studentsl “This (working group) was set up roughly six months ago at this point, and the longer it goes, the more it seems like a stalling tactic.” Despite submitting several FOI (Freedom
of Information) requests to determine the extent of the problem, to both the University and the individual Schools and Departments, they all responded stating that the “data did not exist” according to Seb, to which he added, “So they are just not keeping track of the scale of this at all.” This seems somewhat is implausible, as the University and departments should have some information available about which classes or modules Postgrad research students are lecturing or tutoring in, especially considering there is somewhere in the range of over 700 postgrad research students at NUI Galway. Seb added that for his Sociology and Politics course, his entire class signed a letter and submitted it to the University, stating that they will not be doing the work unless they were going to be paid. In that singular case, they were successful. Seb also revealed that postgraduate students in the Mathematics department who tried to do the same and managed to negotiate their unpaid working hours to be reduced from 120 hours to 60 hours.
On the universities logic behind enforcing the unpaid work, Seb stated that NUI Galway argues that “As a PhD student, you are learning to be an academic. So, the logic is that (through unpaid work) you are learning to teach.” However, he pointed out the many ways in which this is flawed. “There is barely any support made available for students to learn how to teach, and another thing that makes us question their argument is that the University ends up relying on unpaid teaching through the Postgrad research students; they wouldn’t be able to deliver as many classes if it wasn’t for PhD students actually doing the teaching.
Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG stated that “we have no option but to make it clear that we do not recognise any expectation of unpaid work as legitimate.” On this, he added, “They may well be using the argument that the unpaid work is for our own good because we’re learning, but at the same time, they are definitely benefitting from that process as well.” With regards to the stipend and the scholarships offered by the University, Bierema added, “The amounts offered by these scholarships have not increased since they were set up more than a decade ago, and obviously, in the meantime, the cost of living in Galway has gone through the roof. So, now, we have a whole bunch of students spending half of their stipend on rent. Many are struggling to get by so often they need part-time jobs so that they can afford to keep studying, and on top of all of that are still expected to do unpaid teaching work.” The Students’ Union Officer criticised the “insane” workload that is placed upon PhD students and said that conditions faced by Postdoctoral students are setting them up for failure; “The sheer amount of pressure on PhD students due to this entire workload is insane. The data showing the number of students dropping out before completing their research is on the increase. Considering we are in the middle of a pandemic; research is really difficult. We don’t have access to the college or to the spaces where we’re carrying out our research, and then you add the financial pressure on top of this – so mental health-wise, it’s almost as though we’ve been set up to fail.” For more information, or to support the Postgraduate Workers Alliance NUIG, you can find their accounts online at @pgwanuig on Twitter and ‘Postgraduate Workers Alliance – NUIG’ on Facebook. To contact that Postgraduate Research Officer email su.pgresearch@nuigalway.ie
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Diary of a week at the WIP (Washington Ireland Programme) By Órla Masterson This week I had the privilege of joining a WIP forum online to discuss issues which may arise in our (hopefully soon to be) post Covid-19 world. The WIP (Washington Ireland Programme) promotes leadership and personal development through debate and discussion. As their website states, the programme is founded on a key principle of supporting leaders committed to building a future of peace and prosperity for the island of Ireland. Last month, their April Forum was held online and focused on issues surrounding the core theme ‘Sticking Together, staying apart Social Cohesion in a post Covid era’. In preparation for the forum which was set to take place over four days the forum organisers ensured all participants were well informed on the upcoming topic. They encouraged us to select one of the proposed themes on which to focus for our time working with the forum. This would allow participants to be separated into different groups in order to work together and cooperate on solutions for their theme in question. Having read through the preparation material, I selected to focus on Theme One: ‘How might we best support at risk groups facing high levels of unemployment during the next financial crisis post Covid?” We also were sent some inspiration material such as images of volunteer work which took place during Covid to encourage ideas which we reflected on in our first forum meeting. While everyone is starting to feel tired at the prospect of Zoom calls, the forum was designed to ensure engagement and promote participation amongst attendees. I logged onto Monday’s first call after what felt like the Monday-est of Mondays, not knowing how exactly a forum of almost 80 participants were going to work together to collaborate on new ideas for social cohesion. However, the organisers had ensured this first workshop focused solely on inspiring participants and facilitating discussion to allow us to get to know each other. Using MURAL (an online collaborative whiteboard), we were able to create sticky notes and shared poster boards to discuss certain issues. This interactive platform even allowed for a digital ‘walking debate’ with light-hearted statements such as ‘Pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza’ (it does!) to more serious issues like ‘people who aren’t vaccinated shouldn’t be allowed to travel internationally’. The walking debate allowed us to express ourselves and hear the opinions of others, perfectly establishing relationships and respectful discussions which would prove helpful throughout the week. Tuesday and Wednesday’s forums focused on innovation. Our group was helped along by our facilitator Margaret who divided us into groups of three or four to work on our ideas. Members of each group proposed ideas and then provided feedback to each other in a ‘round robin’. This allowed us to narrow down our focus area. My group chose to look at the arts, and technician workers in particular, who have been badly impacted by the Covid pandemic. Our group all agreed that it has been frustrating to see the treatment of arts workers, so we wanted to tackle the absence of a unified group to represent workers in this sector. We proposed a cooperative called TechEIRE to represent this at-risk group of workers and also to allow them to diversify their income streams through ad-hoc work within the organisation. Thursday was pitch day, in which we came together put forward our ideas and listen to the innovations of other groups. Four groups in total spoke on the theme of supporting at risk groups, while four others spoke on the theme of continuing goodwill post pandemic. Using google slides to bring to life the ideas, each group had clearly considered the long-term benefits of their projects and the specific people who would benefit from the initiatives. It was remarkable to see the development of ideas in just four days from inspiration to pitching. The next WIP forums will take place in August and September later this year, and I thoroughly recommend anyone with an interest in social issues and developing their own initiatives to apply to take part! For more information visit: https://wiprogram.org/
