Stop making excuses for casual conversion

Mary Quigley University of Adelaide

Earlier this year, changes to the Fair Work Act were made, which for the first time provided a (nonetheless still vague) definition of a casual employee and a more clearly set out pathway towards conversion to permanent employment. The initiative to make these changes was presumably, at least in part, a result of concerns about the high percentage of casual workers across many sectors, in combination with growing concerns about COVID-19.

At face value this change in legislation means fairer work conditions for long term casual employees and an opportunity to avoid ongoing casual employment in work situations whose nature clearly is not casual. Casual workers who have been in ongoing, regular employment for 1 year or more are able to make a request to become a permanent employee.

Noteworthy is that there was never anything stopping casual employees from doing this previously. What has really changed now is that the employer is obliged to make contact in writing regarding their intention to either make an eligible casual employee permanent, or to give them their reasons for not converting them.

However, there are a lot of loopholes in this new initiative that mean in reality, very little has changed for casuals, except perhaps that they have been made slightly more aware of their disadvantaged position. If an employer sends a notification that they do not wish to make a casual staff member permanent, which they can do ‘if there are reasonable grounds for them not to’, the employee is not able to apply for conversion for at least six months.

In sum, the changes to the Fair Work Act mean that employers now have to justify perpetuating casual employment, but are given a very broad selection of potential ‘reasons’ for not making employees permanent ‘based on facts that are known or reasonably foreseeable’. The changes made, in essence, if anything take yet more power away from casual employees because they allow employers to openly justify their reasons for keeping employees casual and simultaneously disable casual employees from applying for conversion for six months once they have received a notification.

Of course there are always avenues for appealing decisions made but these kind of actions require a lot of time and resources which many casual employees do not have at their disposal. Further, as long as casuals remain casuals they are at risk of losing their employment and so are also likely to hold back on any undertaking that may threaten their future employment.

Recently at an Australian university, a series of generic emails were sent out to casual staff in response to these changes to the Fair Work Act. The first of the series was a very brief message that stated, ‘We are required to give you a Casual Employment Information Statement.’ A link to a PDF information sheet about the changes to the Fair Work Act and casual conversion was then provided.

The email carried an undercurrent of resentment, as if to say ‘we are only sending this to you because we have to’ and did not provide any comment or additional information about what this actually meant in terms of ongoing employment at the University.

This correspondence was followed by another email sent to casual staff which served as the obligatory written information of the University’s decision about casual conversion. It is fair to say that it was clear from the beginning, with the very vague guidelines of ‘reasonable grounds’ for not offering casual conversion, that the university would be able to divulge some legally acceptable reasons to not offer their very large pool of casual staff permanent employment.

Surprising, however, was the tactless, robotic tone of the correspondence. Nowhere in the correspondence was there an acknowledgement of the work carried out by casual employees, a thank you, a ‘we appreciate your contribution to our enterprise’. Not a single word along those lines.

Perhaps such statements would not work in favour of the argument currently being put forward in the letter, that all casual employees are completely superfluous to the university and are likely not to be needed in the very near future. Or perhaps it is simply a genuine reflection of the undervaluing of the role of casual staff within the university – who at many universities make up close to or more than 50% of the workforce.

The correspondence informed casual staff that the university had conducted an assessment to determine if it is required to offer conversion permanent employment and that the outcome of that assessment was that the university will not be offering conversion. It then provided a list of its ‘reasonable grounds’ for this decision.

Teaching work is confined to teaching terms. Conversion would require the university to provide work outside teaching periods in the academic calendar that the university does not require or need you to undertake.

Teaching work, however, is most certainly not confined to teaching periods. Just like the claim that a school teacher’s work does not continue outside of teaching terms would clearly be false as teachers are also required to plan, update course materials, develop new materials and consolidate materials between semesters – so too are academic teaching staff, casual or otherwise.

The university might claim that this work is only allocated to full time staff, however, the reality is that this work is carried out by the staff that teach the courses. If year after year a single course is being taught by the same casual academic staff, they are the ones who ultimately put in this work outside of the teaching semester.

Even if they are given assistance from full time staff, because the full time staff are not the ones teaching the course, there is only so much work that they are able to alleviate. As the situation currently stands, casual staff frequently carry the load of the full time staff members but simply do not have their work recognised and are not reimbursed for it.

Causal staff are also faced with a choice to ‘volunteer’ to invest their time outside of teaching terms into improving the courses that they teach, or to continue teaching their courses without being able to make the adaptations and improvements that are necessary to keep courses current and of high quality. The result is either choosing to work for free, or choosing to present oneself in a negative light to future students, teaching a course that is in desperate need of changes and updates which no one is willing or able to take the time to make.

Conversion would require the university to provide duties such as scholarly activities or research that the university does not require or need you to undertake.

The university in question was in fact required to create a defined number of scholarly teaching positions throughout the duration of its current Enterprise Agreement, but as yet it has not met this quota. Its agreement within the Enterprise Agreement to create these positions indicates that there is a need for scholarly activities to be carried out.

Where there is a course being taught, there is a need for course planning. The limited number of current full time academics already struggle to carry out any research during the teaching semester because of the heavy teaching load. The semester breaks are their chance to conduct research.

However, this means that current full time staff do not have time left over to update courses. Resultantly, courses remain the same, unimproved, unedited, year after year, simply because the casual staff that teach them are not given the opportunity to update, improve and properly plan for them, despite the fact that they are the ones who teach them year after year.

Casual teaching is carried out for a specified period of time, for a specific task, or for the duration of a specified season. Conversion would require the university to provide continuing employment in circumstances where the work is limited in nature.

The teaching carried out by any teacher, casual or full time is always conducted for a specific period, e.g. Semester 1, Semester 2, Summer School, Winter School. Part of the motivation for school or university holidays, as well as offering students a convenient break, is allowing teachers to plan for and prepare their course content.

This is the same for schools, teaching takes place in Term 1, Term 2, Term 3 and Term 4, yet school teachers are not regarded as ‘seasonal workers’. The work carried out by casual academic teaching staff continues year in and year out. We see the same casual staff teaching the same courses at the university for years on end. But the university continues to claim that the work is irregular and seasonal.

The work is not limited in nature, in many cases the necessary work is simply not being done, or it is being done as an act of ‘good will’ by casual employees, or by full time staff being forced to work unpaid overtime. Frequently, full time staff express the difficulty in being forced to take holidays but not finding the time to take them. Full time staff are frequently over loaded with work and unable to take the holidays they are legally obligated to take, often resorting to working from home during their ‘holiday’ time because they are ‘not allowed’ to come into work at that time.

The work of course planning as well as their research simply needs to be done however it is not plausible for them to do both within reasonable working hours. Full time staff are expected to do the work that the high percentage of casual staff members within the department are not allowed or ‘needed’ to carry out, as well as the work for their own course planning and research.

Planning a course that one does not teach themselves is a great task. One must initially develop a strong understanding of what is in the course itself and what is in need of change. It is often difficult to know what needs to change without having taught the course. Thus the causal staff member is again required to more or less outline the changes that need to be made, of course unofficially and out of the goodness of their heart and their desire to ensure quality learning within the course that they represent.

Often the work of outlining changes is almost as much as that of simply making them. Then the full time staff member must make the changes and send those through to the casual staff member who is actually teaching the course. Again the casual staff member is implied in the process but their work goes unrecognised.

Teaching requires autonomous planning and such processes deny casual staff that autonomy, or attempt to take it away and give it to other staff members whose time is not paid for on an hourly basis. Course development is a natural part of working in any teaching role. To take this away from casual staff and to say that their input into the courses they teach is not needed or required is to deny them their autonomy as fully qualified, knowledgeable, experienced and creative teachers. As long as a staff member is teaching, regardless of their status as casual, contracted or permanent, the complex work of teaching and planning remains the same.

The impression that comes across from the university’s approach to academic teaching is that it is something insignificant to be tacked onto research that essentially requires no planning, no updates, no adaptations and no academic thinking following the initial setup of a course. This seems to ignore the fact that a central source of revenue for the university is in fact its students who attend these courses.

The university simultaneously claims that its courses are designed to offer the highest levels of learning and knowledge to students, who then should be well prepared to enter the workforce. Yet the university’s approach in appointing a large percentage of casual staff to carry out teaching only activities and not allowing those staff to develop their courses at all outside of the teaching semester instead reflects a desire to maximise profits and minimise costs, rather than a commitment to developing and maintaining high quality learning.

It seems that the university has noticed that many casual staff are willing to complete this work without payment and without open complaint because of their dedication to and passion for their field of study. The silence of many casual staff is motivated also by a fear of losing work due to a lack of performance, which would be the case if they did not make the necessary changes to their courses outside of the semester. In some cases, courses can scrape by with minimal adaptations.

Many courses run the same tests year after year, giving students assignments with no adaptations, implying additionally a lack of quality control and a high probably of cheating, and course results that do not actually reflect the true quality of learning. Courses need to be kept current. Material needs to change and be flexible. There is currently no space for this work to be done in the university’s workload model.

If the casual staff who carry out this majority of in-semester teaching were allowed to continue their work outside of the semester, we would see drastically improved, updated, versatile courses instead of the same content being presented to students on repeat for years on end.

The casual teaching currently being carried out will cease to be required or will be performed by another staff member.

This ‘grounds’ for not offering conversion is a mysterious one. It is unclear when this teaching will no longer be required, what the reason for that change might be, nor is it clarified who the other staff member carrying out the teaching will be. Many departments have only a handful of permanent staff, that is one or two permanent staff, versus perhaps five or six casual staff.

One can be fairly certain that the full time staff, who are already stretched in attempting to keep up with their workload, are not in a position to take on the hours of all of the current casual teaching staff. Even if they were to neglect all of their research, which would require an adaptation of their employment contracts, they still would not be able to cover all of the courses taught by casual staff in their department. It is a physically impossible task. There are too many courses. Many courses run parallel. Full time staff are not capable of being in two places at the same time. Stating that the work carried out by casuals will be carried out by another staff member seems like a unfounded claim at best, and at worst a misdirected threat to casual staffs’ future employment.

Additionally, the statement that the work carried out by casual staff members will ‘cease to be required’ is also questionable. In many cases, the courses being taught by casual staff members have literally been running for decades. Courses which have consistent student numbers will suddenly cease to exist! On the contrary, the existing pattern of work for casual staff would strongly suggest that the courses will continue to run exactly as they have been over an extended period of time. In the next point below, the university appears to justify their reasoning for their prediction that casual workers will no longer be required.

It is anticipated that the student load will drop, thus there is likely to be reductions in the workforce required in your area. The university is reviewing its operations and there will be a significant reduction in staff numbers. There is uncertainty in relation to the future of your role.

Making a blanket claim regarding course numbers and sending it to casuals across the university is unreasonable. It might indeed be the case for courses with a high percentage of international students, due to the current situation with COVID-19, but it is certainly not the case for all courses at the university. In fact, some areas of the university have seen an increase in student numbers and retention rates since COVID-19.

This correspondence had one simple message to convey: casual staff at the university are disposable and are not valued. They should be thankful to have been given any hours at all. Yet casual university staff are the backbone of the university. They are the ones who keep the university running, albeit at minimal cost.

This correspondence was sent out en masse to casual staff without any personalisation or review of individual roles within the workplace. There were no considerations of ways to adapt employment structures to make a fairer and more functional workplace for all employees.

Full time academics who carry out teaching duties as well as their research are paid around $120,000 per year. They are entitled to paid holidays, sick leave, carers leave, maternity leave, and they receive almost twice as much superannuation as casual employees. Additionally, they are entitled to pay increases over time. Casual staff on the other hand who carry out the same teaching hours as full-time staff (albeit not carrying out research) receive around $40,000 per annum, with none of the additional advantages such as sick or holiday pay.

The discrepancy in pay and in stability provided by being granted a permanent position is not equivalent in any way to the differences in work being carried out by employees on casual versus permanent contracts. There is a huge majority of teaching related work that is simply not being done or is being done by either casual or full time staff as part of what is in effect for both parties unpaid overtime.

Casual staff at the university have not been given a fair chance to reasonably apply for conversion to permanency, despite the ongoing nature of their employment. The correspondence sent out to casual employees implies that the university would be in a position to function without issue without any of its casual employees in the coming semester. However, this would mean losing a very large percentage of its workforce whilst still offering a majority of the same courses.

Such a scenario is both unlikely and unreasonable. There is an impressive lack of team spirit on the part of the university and a complete disregard for the important contributions to the university made by casual staff. Of course the university does not wish to acknowledge these contributions because in doing so they would have to face the dilemma of actually paying casual staff properly for the work that they do at the university. ◆

Mary Quigley is a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide