Senate Committee Report exposes 'deeply concerning' insecure work crisis in our sector

NTEU casuals’ testimonies act as inspiration

Having led the charge against systemic insecure employment in our sector for many years, NTEU members should feel a sense of vindication reading the Senate Select Committee on Job Security’s Second Interim Report, released on 19 October.

This official Senate Committee Report outlined the impacts of the widespread systemic use of insecure employment by public universities. The report relied heavily on detailed written evidence provided by the NTEU National Office and in-person testimony from National President, Dr Alison Barnes, and several rank-and-file casual NTEU members who spoke first-hand of their experiences of insecure work in public universities. The NTEU submission also included personal stories written by NTEU members, detailing the deep personal impacts of systemic precarious employment on their lives. As Dr Alison Barnes said:

'Only one in three jobs in our universities is permanent or ongoing. That means that the vast majority of our teaching, research and professional support services are undertaken by workers who are not permanently employed.' Paul Morris, a casual academic and NTEU member, told the Inquiry about the impact that repeated short term contracts have on his life:

'It creates anxiety, which persists as a matter of course in my everyday life and intensifies each Christmas, when I again become unemployed …Leaving me wondering whether I'll be picked up again in three months time.'

The Committee confirmed the NTEU’s long held arguments that the systemic use of casual employment for core teaching is not only inappropriate, but that it has become a business model for universities, with the Committee finding that:

'...the increase in casualisation over the last few decades is not a result of the seasonal nature of the university semesters; it is a feature of cost-cutting and the corporatisation of the sector. Insecure workers are cheaper and easier to get rid of, and, over time, exploitative workforce practices such as piece rates have become the contractual norm.'

And that:

'The consequences of insecure working arrangements threaten the sustainability of the higher education sector'

The report also found that:

• The systemic use of casual employment had deep implications for the lives of staff and the capacity of universities to deliver quality education.

• Universities had used casual staff as a financial buffer during COVID (ceasing their employment more rapidly and at a much higher rate than non-casual staff); and

• Underpayment of sessional academics is widespread in the sector and worsened during COVID-19.

The Committee noted that while representatives of university management had only provided arguments for maintaining the status quo, the NTEU had presented various solutions, including more appropriate paths to permanency, transparency in reporting, obligations linked to funding, and ending piece rate payment regimes.

The Committee concluded that, considering these findings and insufficient efforts by government, universities, and their industry bodies to address these issues, policy reform and correction was long overdue.

It recommends that:

• The Australian Government urgently develops a new National Higher Education Funding Strategy for the period 2021-2025.

• The Australian Government provides temporary additional funding to universities to restore jobs and rectify the damage inflicted upon the sector as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and funding cuts, until the new Higher

Education Strategy has been developed and implemented.

• The Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment works closely with universities, workers, experts, the NTEU, and relevant sector bodies, to design a system of casual and fixed-term conversion that would be appropriate for the higher education sector.

• The Australian Government requires all universities to provide a more detailed report of their staffing composition to the Department of Education.

• In light of the widespread wage theft in the Australian Government-funded higher education sector, that the Government legislates improved rights of entry for all registered trade unions.

In his speech supporting the report, Labor Senator Tony Sheldon said:

'If the perpetual insecurity wasn’t enough, academics are paid inadequate piece rates, which leave them with pay well below the Award. Our universities are built on insecure work and wage theft, two issues which so often go hand in hand.

'This is an unacceptable way to treat the people who are driving innovation and research in Australia, and who we entrust with educating our next generation.'

Senator Sheldon highlighted that the epidemic of insecure work didn't happen by accident: 'The 8 years of rising job insecurity and record low wage growth, is a choice by the Morrison Government. Minister Cormann said himself in 2019 that it is a deliberate policy of this Government.

'But there is no escaping these truths. The Australian middle class no longer has the secure job and living wage that once defined it. There will not be an economic recovery from COVID-19 without a wage recovery. And there will not be a wage recovery without secure jobs.

'The Australian Government, as a major employer, and major purchaser and procurer, has the power itself to fix these issues. And if this Government won’t do it, we need a Government that will.'

The Senate Committee’s recommendations are a boost for our long-standing campaign against insecure employment and presents an opportunity for us to keep this critical issue on the public agenda. This is particularly important given there will be a federal election sometime in the next 6 months, and the Union is working to secure key reforms, not only in terms of secure employment and funding reform, but also targeting overly zealous corporate university managements, who have shown they cannot be trusted to simply do the right thing on their own.

Kieran McCarron, NTEU Policy & Research Officer