Short memory, they’ve got a short memory

Jeannie Rea Victoria University

The second interim report of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security wrote that there has been 'insufficient efforts by government, universities and industry bodies to address the underlying systemic causes for the prevalence of insecure work in the sector.'

The Select Committee also opined that the higher education sector would have trouble remaining competitive and maintaining excellence without increasing employment security. Having listened to evidence from casually employed staff and the NTEU, they also acknowledged the adverse impacts upon insecure workers. And they offered up a set of recommendations to address, in particular the super-exploitation of sessionally employed academics as revealed in the wage theft scandals.

However, what seems to be missed in calling upon all parties for due diligence and greater efforts to regularise employment, is that 'the prevalence of insecure work in the sector' is no accident. There have been ‘insufficient efforts… to address the underlying systemic causes' because the government and universities have knowingly and purposefully created the problem.

The casualisation of university work has become so normalised that it seems to have been forgotten that it is the result of government funding policies and university councils and managements’ budget and industrial decisions. It did not just start to happen and then get out of control.

But now we have reached the stage where Vice-Chancellors and other senior executives wring their hands in faux despair about the crushing of early career academics' dreams. But in making their way to the top they have usually gone along with cutting academic workforce budgets and backed increasingly harsh Enterprise Agreements.

They have contributed to creating a three tier academic workforce – the increasingly diminishing teaching and research academics in ongoing positions, then the ‘teaching focused’ next generation and at the bottom the reserve army of the casually employed doing most of the face to face (or zoom) work with the students. Now they dare to complain about impacts upon the student experience, quality and the integrity of the disciplines. And all they can offer are more metrics, surveillance and disrespect with a few awards for ‘good’ teaching dangled before academics.

Back in 1990s, most sessionally employed academics were PhD students and graduates seeking academic careers as well as industry professionals bringing in their expertise. It was still an exploitative system and remuneration did not match actual work and quality of work. Put crudely, the NTEU’s approach was try and ‘price out casual work’ by increasing the casual rates until it became cheaper to offer a part or full time position.

The NTEU had also sought to stop contracts where ongoing work was available, which had been a hallmark of academic employment with academics spending a career anxiously moving from one contract to the next.

We still see this in research jobs, where the loophole of external funding allows for contract employment. But this is exploited by university managements who have research staff (academic and professional) continually seeking contract renewal even where there are actually ongoing projects and funding.

So whilst universities argue that they are forced to make the decisions to casualise work because it is cheap – and in doing so admitting that they know that they are ripping off the staff from whom they then expect extraordinary levels of high quality work, and even institutional loyalty. But it is not just about being cheap and ruthless.

Universities do decide how to allocate their budgets, and even in the COVID crisis many have chosen to look after the ‘company’ in seeking surpluses, while leaving the bulk of students staring into the screen (if they have their camera on) reliant for any contact with ‘their’ university with a sessionally employed academic, who most likely does not even get the emails explaining what is going on to tell students.

But it is even more calculated. In higher education, in TAFE and across the workforce casualisation is used to de-unionise and intimidate the workforce. Every casually employed colleague who is prepared to stand up for their rights to decent wages and conditions should be flanked on all sides by those in more secure jobs.

But they are not as the securely employed keep their heads down while quietly complaining about workloads and surveillance and when can they take their leave. Universities are particularly good at divide and conquer – as academics are responsible for employing sessional staff and to do so in a way that keeps within the budget. So they do.

Our challenge is to force university managements to stand up to government and stop complying with every new demand for more acquiescence. University managements should be refusing to operate on inadequate funding. Instead, in 2014 the Vice-Chancellors (all but one) supported deregulating undergraduate fees as the solution.

For the bottom line is that we have, on a world scale, particularly underfunded public universities. The Howard Government cut university funding with barely a whimper from university bosses, and despite the preparedness of staff and students to support universities managements to fight back.

What did the university managements do? They negotiated for more attractive international student visas so that more international students would come – and subsidise the education of domestic students. While paying big money these students have also found themselves in big and fewer classes with mainly casually employed teachers. And they are also super exploited in their own casual jobs. And in March last year, the Prime Minister told them to 'go home'.

And that is how we got into the mess we are in. The ‘underlying systemic causes’ are actually political decisions, which have been forgotten.

That Labor parliamentarians are now expressing concern about the casualisation of the university workforce is to be welcomed. Yet ALP policy is still only about restoring university funding cuts made by the Morrison Government. We need to organise and demand better. Short memories do not help.

Jeannie Rea was NTEU National President 2010–2018, and is an Associate Professor at Victoria University

Title thanks to Midnight Oil