Vol. 4 VOLUME 3 No. 2 No. 22011 August August 2010
AN NTEU & CAPA PUBLICATION FOR CASUAL AND SESSIONAL STAFF
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
Smart Casuals NTEU’s new casual staff handbook is tailored to your workplace
Insights into the attitudes of casual academics Staff survey results You can’t raise a kid on a casual income The invisible risks of casual work Faking it Is being a casual a state of mind? Merit, mentors and a mission A chat with children’s author Mark Carthew
Why I’m A Member Sue Monk, UQ We’ve got the NACC Meet the NTEU’s National Academic Casuals Committee
Fixing pay rates at FICT How
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collective action reaped serious rewards
ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
-INSIDE1.
Bargaining for improvements for casuals
8.
Faking it: is being a casual academic a state of mind?
2.
Research Workforce Strategy unveiled
10. NTEU staff survey results
3.
New Smart Casuals handbooks
4.
We’ve got the NACC
6.
Fixing pay rates at FICT
7.
Why I’m a Member: Sue Monk
12. You can’t raise a kid on a casual income: the invisible risks of casual work 14. Merit, mentors and a mission: children’s author and casual academic Mark Carthew
Cover image by Andrew Li Connect is a publication of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA). All Rights Reserved © 2011. ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
Editor: Jeannie Rea Production: Paul Clifton Original design: Andrew Li For more information on Connect and its content please contact the NTEU National Office: Post: Phone: Fax: Email: Web:
PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 (03) 9254 1910 (03) 9254 1915 national@nteu.org.au www.unicasual.org.au www.nteu.org.au www.capa.edu.au
The views expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors, and not necessarily the official views of NTEU or CAPA.
In accordance with NTEU and CAPA policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, this magazine is printed on 100% recycled paper: produced from 65% post-consumer waste and 35% pre-consumer waste.
Bargaining for improvements for casuals One of NTEU’s 2011 national priorities is the effective implementation of our Collective Agreements (aka EBAs or Enterprise Bargaining Agreements). As many casual staff will know, these Collective Agreements were achieved through hard and long negotiations, and, at many universities, concerted industrial action. So now we have them, let’s make them work. Particularly significant in this round of bargaining was the Union’s commitment to improving the lot of casual staff. Across the country our Agreements include a range of improvements including increasing the casual loading, limits to casualisation and real opportunities for career development. The outcome has been the glimmerings of a more serious approach to the casualisation of academic work. While university managements agree that casualisation should be limited, and that they should be employing and encouraging early career academics, only a few have demonstrated much commitment to converting sessional staff and to recruiting new academics. However, when confronted with more expensive sessional staff, suddenly, there is more preparedness to listen. Early career development positions are included in a number of our Agreements and provide a more secure pathway to an academic career. However, the touchstone and visible issue is separate payment for marking. Having to pay the real (or close to) costs of marking costs real money, rather than getting away with the entirely discredited notions of payment only for that outside of ‘contemporaneous marking’, or that the rate for each class hour includes an hour of preparation and an hour of correction. If marking wasn’t an onerous activity, both in terms of time and judgement required, then why would academics be so obsessed by it? Marking is hard; assessing papers and exams means making decisions about students’ futures. It also means confronting the effectiveness of your own teaching. While this is recognised for academics in ongoing positions, sessionals are usually expected to just get on with it, often without any guidance or support.
In a recent National Union of Students survey, students complained that they were not getting enough feedback on their work to know where they are going wrong and how to improve their performance. Not surprisingly, ongoing academics under constantly increasing workloads despair of giving the students the levels of feedback they would like. For sessionals it is impossible to provide thorough feedback without forgoing potential income. Time spent on marking is their own time and often done after their last pay from the university. So payment for making is a symbolic and real issue. It does make employing sessionals quite a lot more expensive. Some university departments have complained to the Union that they cannot afford to do this and have to cut back on numbers of classes and sessionals. Yes, they may do this to ensure they implement the Agreement. But no, they should not just acquiesce and cancel classes and increase class sizes. While we all know that the basic problem is that there is not enough base funding per student, university central managements also bear responsibility for the cancelled classes and unemployed casuals. Universities are increasingly starving their faculties to pay for other parts of the universities. While this makes sense when spent on direct support of students and their learning, it makes no sense to students and faculty staff when the money is absorbed in capital adventures and commercial fantasies, as such spending is characterised by cynical and weary staff. I know it is often hard for sessionals to speak out to their supervisors and Heads of School, but you must investigate and calculate whether you are being paid properly for marking. You should enlist the help of your local Union branch, your delegate and NTEU members amongst your sessional and ongoing colleagues. Sometimes, we all need to be reminded that our success as a Union is measured by our support of our most vulnerable and exploited colleagues.
Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President
www.unistories.org.au
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Research Workforce Strategy unveiled to weary (& wary) sector ‘We don’t want to be like 100 years ago, mendicants at the tables of the research-powerful countries as they were at the time.’ Professor Ian Chubb, Chief Scientist of Australia
In mid-April, the Government unveiled its much-anticipated (and 5 months overdue) Research Workforce Strategy (RWS). Held in the halls of Parliament House, Minister Kim Carr presented $1.2m of new spending from the Government, and reminded the sector that there had been a 34% increase in funding since the Howard years. While the sector is grateful to have emerged from the dark ages of 1996–2007 for research funding, many are concerned that there is still not enough funding to effectively develop new researchers in Australia. Certainly, the increases noted over the 2009 Budget were welcome, but the sector as a whole is still underfunded, and cuts to the ALTC and much discussed cuts to the NH&MRC worry a weary (and wary) research community. The current Base Funding (Lomax-Smith) Review will most likely find that the sector calls for more funding for coursework students, but with austerity Budgets like the one expected in 2011, the situation is grim. Two of the initiatives announced included work to attract and retain female and international researchers, which is a great strategy for investment in our future. It is well established that female academics may commence as an early career academic, but tend to leave by mid-career, leaving the vast bulk of senior academic as disproportionately balanced towards men. International academics should also be invited to be part of the community, to ensure the rich and diverse academia that Australia deserves. Funding was also provided to CAPA to investigate disciplinary differences in the experiences of research students. We will be running a series of focus groups and surveys in the second part of this year to investigate out-of-pocket-expenses to students in research higher degrees, as well as differences in the experiences of supervision, collegiality and academic independence. Keep an eye on our blog for more information in coming months. This will be an investigation lead by CarolAnne Croker, our new Policy and Research Officer. Whilst the RWS may not have given the sector what it was looking for, it has called for a review into the Research Training Scheme, and this will incorporate the information CAPA will be gathering over the coming months. We’ll keep you posted on what’s happening there.
John Nowakowski, CAPA President John Nowakowski is a PhD student at the University of Sydney. He can be followed on twitter @janek85, or via the CAPA President’s blog, capapre.wordpress.com.
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SmartSm art C a suals Casuals Smart Casuals 2011 The ultimate handbook for casual academics– customised for your university! By Paul Clifton NTEU National Publications Coordinator
The NTEU’s popular handbook for casual academic staff, Smart Casuals, has been revitalised for its 4th edition. This time, we are producing a separate customised version for each Branch, reflecting the different pay and conditions resulting from differences in Collective Agreements.
NTEU HA NDBOOK FOR CAS SESSION UAL AND AL ACAD EMIC ST AFF AT A NU
NTEU HANDBOOK FOR CASUAL AND Download your local version from the UniCasual website STAFF AT ANU SESSIONAL ACADEMIC at www.unicasual.org.au/smartcasuals. The handbook contains useful background information; the Union’s stance on casual employment and what we’re doing about it; helpful analysis of the rights of casual staff; and lots of practical advice from your letter of appointment, to how to get paid on time, to your University’s pay rates. There’s also a handy checklist of your rights and responsibilities. Smart Casuals is essential reading for anyone trying to survive as a casual academic in the Australian university system. Smart Casuals www.unicasual.org.au/smartcasuals Please note: Not all Branch customised versions will be available immediately. Contact your local Branch office for information or keep an eye on the website.
www.un icasual.o rg.au
www.nte u.org.au/a nu
3 www.unicasual.org.auread www.nteu.org.au/anu online at www.unicasual.org.au
We’ve got the NACC The National Academic Casuals Committee By Michelle Rangott NTEU National Industrial Officer
New members have recently been appointed to the NTEU’s National Academic Casuals Committee (NACC). Membership of the Committee is drawn from casual academic NTEU members from across the country. The NACC was originally formed in 2007. Its purpose was to help develop and oversee the Union’s national campaign to achieve better pay and conditions for casual academic staff. Committee members played a key role in formulating the Union’s claims in preparation for the last round of enterprise bargaining. Enterprise Agreements negotiated by the Union have achieved higher pay for casuals with an increase to the casual loading and the inclusion of separate payment for marking.
Early Career Fellowships have been developed to provide career opportunities and more secure work for long term casual academics in many universities. These improvements were won by the Union due to the activism and commitment of our casual members. The Union recognises the need to consolidate these gains and to implement a nationally coordinated campaign to ensure that all universities are meeting their commitments to provide better pay for casuals. We need to continue our fight for more secure employment for casual staff. Our new Committee members will continue to provide feedback on the implementation of the new provisions in our Enterprise Agreements as well as working on the development of new claims for the next round of enterprise bargaining. We welcome our new and returning - members of the NACC!
Sharni Chan University of Sydney & Macquarie University Sharni is a researcher at the Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney and a PhD candidate at Macquarie University. Previously a researcher at the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW, she has also worked as a tutor, shelf-stacker, guest lecturer and research assistant at UWS, USYD, and Macquarie. During a marking strike against unfair treatment of casuals in her department, Sharni was inspired to join the Union. She was a delegate to the NTEU National Casuals’ Conference in 2007 which established some of the key casual claims won in the last round of bargaining. Sharni is keen to ensure that casuals will benefit from what has been won and to continue the fight for decent work and job security.
Chris Elenor University of Western Sydney Chris has been teaching as a casual academic in the College of Business at UWS for five years and also tutors at the Badanami Centre at the University. Chris is on the UWS NTEU Branch Committee and represented the interests of casuals in the last round of enterprise bargaining which, though protracted, won significant gains for casuals. Halfway through the life of the Agreement many of the gains, such as the Casuals Working Party, Career Development Fellowships and teaching focused positions are yet to be implemented. Chris is looking forward to contributing to a national focus and strategy by the NTEU to reduce the extreme precariousness of academic casual work in the next round of enterprise bargaining.
Joan Whittier University of Tasmania Dr Joan Whittier has been employed as a contract or casual lecturer and tutor in the School of Medicine at the University of Tasmania since mid-2005. She previously was a full-time Senior Lecturer in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland. At both institutions she has taught health science students aspects of Human Biology, including gross and microscopic anatomy and physiology. Her research interests are in the areas of reproductive biology and endocrine biology of native animals. She lives on a small farm with her family in rural Tasmania.
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Neville Knight Deakin University Neville is a casual academic staff member working in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. He has been a member of the NTEU’s National Academic Casuals Committee since 2009 and is also a member of the NTEU Deakin Branch Committee. Having worked for 25 years as a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University, in 1999 Neville decided to retire and has worked at Deakin University as a casual ever since! Neville’s motivation for being a member of the Committee was to work to see casuals get a better deal. Part of this commitment has included Neville’s membership of the NTEU enterprise bargaining team where he helped to negotiate a new set of principles for the fair payment of marking as part of the latest Deakin Enterprise Agreement. One of the great challenges in being a casual is the difficulty in networking with others. Neville sees great potential for the Union to play a role in overcoming the sense of isolation that many casuals can feel.
Clare McCarty Flinders University Clare’s first teaching position was as a contract teacher. She quickly realised that contract teaching was cheap for the employer, insecure for her and prevented learning continuity with the students that she taught. It was then that Clare commenced work with the Australian Education Union to at best remove, and at least reform and reduce, all forms of insecure work. Clare has been employed in the university sector for five years, enduring the same working conditions as when she started teaching. Clare sees great benefit in the new Enterprise Agreement at Flinders University as it provides for separate payment for marking and the opportunity for conversion to sessional fixed term positions. This is, however, far from the end of the story. There is now a need for strong and nationally-backed organisation by casual, sessional and permanent staff members working through the NTEU to see that the new conditions in the Agreement are implemented at the workplace.
Alissa Macoun Taylor University of Queensland Since 2007, Alissa has worked as a tutor and research assistant in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. She has been an active Union delegate as well as the casual staff representative on the NTEU UQ Branch Committee. Alissa is also finishing her PhD thesis on settler discourses about Aboriginality in justification of the Northern Territory intervention. Casuals are often overlooked and exploited, and casual work is inherently insecure. One of Alissa’s main objectives is to ensure that casuals are paid for all the work that is done, to have the resources and facilities needed to perform at a high level, as well as pathways to more secure employment.
Catherine Taylor University of Canberra Catherine is a Pinterrairer woman from Tasmania and has worked in the university sector for nearly nine years – and has been a member of the NTEU for all of that time. For the last three and a half years, Catherine has been at the University of Canberra and is currently undertaking a PhD in Pain Management. Catherine joined the NTEU because she believes that staff have rights and need a collective voice to defend them. Catherine’s decision to be a member of the National Academic Casuals Committee is due to her commitment to ensuring that casual staff members are not forgotten within the University and that it is through the collective strength of the Union that casual staff can work together to pursue better career pathways and professional development opportunities.
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5
FIXING
PAY RATES AT
FICT
By Josh Cullinan NTEU Victorian Division Industrial Officer
A group of NTEU members at Swinburne University of Technology’s Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies (FICT) have shared in almost $50,000 of back payments. The money is part of the settlement of a dispute which resulted in all classes being paid as tutorials in 2010. It is a massive win for NTEU members and all sessional staff.
‘
We don’t just work for the money of course. There is still a lack of adequate facilities to do the marking or having meetings with students, and job security is a major issue... I’d encourage casuals especially to join right now. I realised we can work for better conditions for casuals... And I’ve seen that we can win!
’
Ruchi Sembey, Swinburne University
Numbers = action In 2010, NTEU was approached by several members from FICT who were concerned that, for classes of over one hour, staff were not being paid properly for the hours in excess of the first hour. Members gave detailed policies for sessional classes to NTEU staff. The policies made it clear that, after the first hour was paid at the built up tutorial rate, each subsequent hour was being paid at the single ‘other academic duties’ rate. This affected well over 100 classes a week. NTEU members were angry that this had been going on for some time, but were concerned that being identified by management as a ‘trouble maker’ could be a bad career move. Nevertheless, they met with their NTEU delegate and NTEU industrial staff to decide what could be done. Past experience had not been positive and the Union knew the cost of fixing the underpayments was going to be massive. The first step was to give other sessional staff the opportunity to join the Union: this would ensure there were a critical number of members before approaching management. Similar action was being undertaken at the Faculty of Design where sessional staff recruited over 20 colleagues and this encouraged members within FICT.
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Once a number of staff had joined the Union and were willing to make the claim, NTEU raised the issue with management. It was clear it would cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to fix the issue, but the Union’s position was clear. NTEU agreed to participate in a consultative process for 2011 and beyond to assess classes and make decisions about whether they were ‘walk-in, walk-out’ laboratory practical classes or not. If they were not, they would be paid as a tutorial for all hours worked.
Creation of ECDFs FICT was the first faculty at Swinburne to implement the Early Career Development Fellowships (ECDFs) and appointed two staff to these positions in late 2010. Sessional members remain concerned about the number of sessional staff at Swinburne University of Technology and are exploring ways of extending the ECDFs and implementing conversion arrangements where possible. Pictured: FICT sessional staff Ruchi Sembey and Bjoern Stuetz
WHY I’M A MEMBER Sue Monk University of Queensland
H
aving recently been appointed on a fixed term contract at the University of Queensland (UQ), one of my roles is as a Course Coordinator with responsibility for employing casual staff, a situation which has led me to reflect on my own experience working as a casual over several years both at UQ and Griffith. It was while I was undertaking my PhD that I started my academic career working as a casual tutor and research assistant in the School of Education at UQ. At the end of my PhD, I moved across to Griffith University, developed a course and then worked as the lecturer and tutor for that course for the next four years – still as a casual. I absolutely loved the work and enjoyed working with my colleagues. The only problem was that I was not officially recognised as the course convenor. I performed all the duties yet couldn’t use this in my CV as Griffith University does not allow for casuals to formally take on the position of course convenor. One of the biggest downsides of life as a casual is the lack of recognition for the work we perform. The bulk of teaching and marking seems to get done by casuals; a situation which I believe comes as a shock to most students, who want us to be on-call to answer their email queries 24 hours a day. From my own experiences, and from the many stories I heard from other colleagues, I believe casuals are the most vulnerable members of the university workforce. Yet you can feel helpless and very exposed if you attempt to seek some form of redress. Some years ago I experienced a situation that would have left me without work and income at a moment’s notice; it seemed as if the severity of this situation hadn’t even occurred to the person responsible. Even though I was very nervous about my options, and worrying about jeopardising future work prospects, I decided to organise a union meeting for casual staff. It was the best thing I could have done. Not only did casual colleagues turn up, but also continuing staff who were interested in hearing about our issues. Even some days later, other staff members who didn’t come to the meeting contacted me to congratulate me on taking the initiative and offer their support. Rather than feeling isolated and vulnerable, I felt the exact opposite. There were some very practical gains that happened as a result of that meeting, including more work for other casual staff and a better relationship between the different staff members within the school, many of whom did not know about the specific problems that casuals were experiencing. It can be easy as a casual worker not to see the relevance in joining the Union, but I think that one of the best achievements in this latest round of enterprise bargaining has been the NTEU winning separate pay for marking for casual staff. This goes a long way in addressing the shortfall between the work that is performed as casuals and the work that is paid for. Belonging to the Union is not simply a matter of wages and conditions but recognising, valuing and supporting the work we do which feeds directly into the academic life of the university.
Sue Monk is an academic in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and an NTEU member.
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FAKING IT Is being a casual academic a state of mind? Dr Inger Mewburn School of Graduate Studies, RMIT
A couple of years ago, I was surprised to find out that a work friend, whom I had assumed was a continuing staff member, was a casual like myself. The reason I made this mistake was that she acted just like all the other full timers: she had her own office, attended all the staff meetings and seemed to know everything that was going on. She was always ringing me up to find out if someone was available for a last minute class, so I figured she was some kind of course coordinator. This ‘fake it until you make it’ approach clearly worked in her favour. While I relied on a precarious range of contacts to get my teaching hours for the semester, this more savvy casual got the pick of the teaching assignments because she was at the meeting where the year’s work was divvied up. It was – to put it mildly – a surprise to find out that all this permanence was only appearance and that she had no more job security than I did. We both worked on 3 month cycles, getting through the lean times as best we could. I was naturally curious and asked how it was that she became so embedded in the life of the department. She said, somewhat nonchalantly, ‘Oh, I’m never invited to anything. I just turn up to all the meetings’. I must have looked perplexed at this because she regarded me pityingly and added: ‘You do realise you are a staff member right? It’s called a Staff Meeting – why wouldn’t you go?’ I have to admit I felt a bit like an idiot. For nearly a decade I had been teaching, sometimes up to 25 hours a week, a lot of that in a single department, yet I never consciously thought of myself as a ‘staff member’. When I was a casual it was difficult to tell people at parties what I did. I never said simply ‘I’m a university lecturer’; instead I would
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launch into a long explanation of the structure of higher education employment landscape in order to put a context around the ad hoc collection of roles I played at different institutions. I felt more like an odd job man than a teacher – someone who filled the gaps and made sure that the roof didn’t leak. I didn’t see myself as contributing to the intellectual life of the various universities where I worked. There was both freedom and imprisonment in this state of mind. At times I relished this ‘outsider’ status, especially the ability to watch the politics from a safe distance, but, to be honest, a lot of the time I felt marginalised and depressed. It was easy to feel like I just didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. My attitude to the full time staff was complex. While I liked, and was friendly with many of them, I spent most of my time with other casuals. I was definitely one of ‘us’ and not one of ‘them’ – or, as I came to think of it in my mind, Management with a capital M. Sometimes Management seemed to make what I thought were stupid decisions. So it’s not at all surprising to me to read the recent report compiled by the Union on casual employees’ attitudes to Management, which showed that they have little confidence in university management: how confident can you feel about a bunch of people you never meet? I should add that I consider myself one of the lucky ones. After over a decade of a casual existence, I finally secured a permanent job. Ironically, after working at my institution in one capacity or another since 1996, I only have a couple of weeks of long service leave accrued. I could relate strongly to the comparison Thomas H. Benton shared in the Chronicle recently on between surviving a plane crash and getting a permanent job after 20 years of effort: ‘I suppose I also felt something like survivor’s guilt. Given how many qualified candidates there are for every academic job,
hardly anyone can claim to have ‘earned’ tenure so much as ‘received’ it through a series of fortunate accidents…’ Through a series of ‘fortunate accidents’ I can finally feel like a staff member. Of course, the position I hold now is totally outside of my original discipline, but if there’s one thing I learned while being a casual it was to be flexible and make the most of any opportunity. By a quirk of fate (or so it seems) I find myself in a central unit and have membership on several committees. So I guess I am in the business of Management, sort of. At least I am in the position to see it being done on a daily basis. Do I feel happier with my lot? Am I more satisfied with Management now that I am so close to it? Well yes, of course. Partly because I now ‘get’ how Management is done around here. What seems misguided from the outside looks totally different from the inside. One thing I was never privy to when I was a casual is the kind of compromises that must be made to get things done. There is usually a good reason why a decision is made – even if I don’t agree with it. In addition, now I know many of the people behind the decision making personally. I know that these people are usually intelligent and capable. I believe they are doing the best they can, often in difficult circumstances. If I had been like my friend, who felt empowered to attend staff meetings, might I have felt more confident about the directions pursued by Management? Might I have felt better if I had known them better and understood how to get things done? Perhaps, but I don’t think this is the point. Until casual staff members can really think of themselves as staff members relationships with Management will always be filled with tension. Dr Inger Mewburn blogs at The Thesis Whisperer, thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com
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NTEU 2011 University Staff Survey
INSIGHTS INTO THE ATTITUDES OF CASUAL ACADEMICS By Jen Tsen Kwok NTEU Policy & Research Officer
Earlier this year, NTEU commissioned a survey of over 2200 university staff. Almost one fifth of these respondents were academic staff (both members and non-members) who were either employed casually, were classified as Early Career Researchers (ECRs) or received their higher degree qualifications in the past 7 years. Considering that individuals who fall into these two groups largely represent the future research and teaching capacity of the sector, there were important opportunities in consolidating their views. The survey results provide an insight into the sectoral and professional concerns of the next generation of academics and researchers.
Who runs this institution? Though a majority (62%) of casual academics and ECRs confirmed they were happy with their employment in the sector, the results highlighted perceptions that universities are badly managed, and workplace change is poorly implemented. Less than a third had confidence in the senior management of their institution (32%). Over half stated that they were not consulted before change occurred in their work area (54%). Almost one half also stated that change was not handled well at their institution (49%). Given that almost another third were ‘unsure’ (5%) or ‘did not agree nor disagree’ (27%), we can conclude that confidence in institutional leadership was low. Moreover, almost 9 in 10 (86%) saw university leadership (in the context of the management of university staff) as an important sectoral issue in the next five years. Four in 10 of the total (41%) saw it as ‘very important’.
Job security and academic freedom The survey delivered important insights into the importance of job security. Overall, 97% saw job security as important or very important, with two-thirds (63%) considering job security as ‘very important’. These results strongly correspond to sectoral data that clearly show the massive employment ‘churn’ that occurs in the early stages of academic careers as a major concern. Another key issue was the protection of academic freedom. Over two-thirds said protection of academic freedom was ‘very important’ (69%) and another 34% saying it was ‘important’. 95% also thought that the independent contribution of universities to public debate was significant. The interest in academic freedom extended to other responses, such as academic professional interests. 94% said that the freedom to speak about their area of expertise was important, and 88% said that publicly commenting on the sector and their institution was important. For non-members freedom to speak was noticeably lower on 84%. Survey results also suggested a tie between job security and notions of intellectual freedom. More casual academics and ECRs thought job security was important if academic freedom was to be preserved (88%) than those who thought a reliance on casual staff was unfair and put pressure on the workloads of other staff (65%).
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‘
These results show that casual and early career academic staff – most of whom hope to obtain or maintain secure employment in the sector – are feeling the stresses of university and broader policy change. Increasingly there is a disjuncture between the everyday work that staff do – teach, research and engage in service – and current policy directions. It will be important to focus much more closely on academic workforce development in encouraging new academics to believe that the sector is the right place for them to build a career. I closely watch the newer staff around me and worry about the personal stress they feel during the local implementation and effects of new policy decisions – for example the ERA and new teaching workloads policies. While many of these new agendas have the potential to improve quality in the sector, we need to do more to mitigate the effects on the most junior and often insecure staff. It is up to the more established generation of academics to do some of the advocacy work on behalf of, and with, casuals and early career academics. Otherwise, I for one will find it harder and harder to convincingly persuade promising Honours and PhD students to try to build a university-based career when precarious casual work remains their dominant pathway.
’
Associate Professor Ariadne Vromen, University of Sydney
Public institutions not knowledge factories What do Australians expect their universities to do? It was clear that research, research training and equipping students with specialised professional skills were important. Nearly all ECRs and casual academics thought universities were meant to contribute to Australian R&D and train the next generation of workers (99%). In relation to the purpose of universities, 97% stated that government had a responsibility to invest in higher education to fund core activities, rather than requiring universities to rely on other sources of funding. The level of support for public funding was high compared to union members and nonunion staff.
Future concerns The survey asked questions about key sectoral issues in the next five years. Amongst ECRs and casual academics, autonomy and academic freedom again ranked high. 94% considered the protection of academic freedom and intellectual autonomy to be ‘important’ or ‘very important’. 96% said the same for autonomy in the workplace.
Surveying the future of the workforce
Table 1: What do you consider to be the importance of the
Very important
following roles performed by universities?
Important
Building and maintaining closelinks with the private business sector Maintaining independence from government Supporting and developing rural and regional communities Providing skills that match the needs of the Australian economy Offering student support services like housing, sports facilities and assistance with skills like essay writing Providing opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds Providing independent contribution to public debate Educating students for high skilled jobs Protecting and promoting academic freedom Training the next generation of researchers and academics Contribution to research and development 0%
20%
40%
60%
Table 2: What is the relative importance of the
80%
100%
Very important
following issues to universities in the next 5 years?
Important
Introduction of the student demand driven model Lifting the number of Australians with a bachelor degree by 2025 The retirement of academic staff Implications of the ERA assessment exercise
Results from the survey suggest that ECR and casual academics have strong ideas about what the university is meant to be. While universities are imbued with the capacity to do amazing things, these are founded upon important principles and values. Academic and research productivity within the university setting is tied to purpose, autonomy and secure employment. The survey highlights that the interests of ECRs and casual academics will be better placed where they are based on principles that sustain their capacity and passion to work in the sector.
The casualisation of staff in the university sector University leadership* Finding career structures for casual and sessional academic staff Rising student to staff ratios The recruitment of new academic and research staff Protecting academic freedom Intellectual autonomy Ensuring that staff have secure employment The work life balance of university staff Workloads and occupation stress 0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
*in the context of management of university staff
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YOU CAN’T RAISE A KID ON A CASUAL INCOME The invisible risks of being a ‘non-standard’ non-standard worker
By Sharni Chan Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney
Many of the damaging experiences of university casuals have been made public in recent critical research. Brown, Goodman & Yasukawa (2006 and 2010) exposed the disrespect, misrecognition and underpayment of work done by casuals working in a ‘city university,’ and many casual academics – like myself – were heartened by their sensitive portrayal of the hidden costs of our daily work, particularly by academics who are also engaged with the struggle to improve conditions for casuals. Hobson, Gar & Jones (2005) have also revealed the exploitation in the ongoing battle for intellectual property rights for casual research staff; yet, meanwhile, several key reports such as the RED Report (2008) have demonstrated that universities are increasingly dependent on cheap academic labour to deliver core university functions. This article raises some of the invisible consequences of long term casual work in the university, and briefly highlights some new contours of precarious work in contemporary society where new bodies are getting caught up in the ‘risk shift’ (Rafferty & Yu, 2010) from institutions to individuals.
Casuals in higher education In the case of universities, the divide between those who have access to basic employment entitlements and those who don’t is immediately apparent at the workplace level. But this divide continues once everyone has logged off in the evening and flows over to create very different life experiences and narratives for people who must negotiate precarious working lives. While casuals buffer university managers against the risk of unstable income streams, this risk is transferred directly into the everyday lives of these workers. For instance, one of the major risks casual staff face is that although we are skilled workers, we regularly experience bouts of unemployment (as though it is some kind of disease we could ever possibly inoculate ourselves against). Yet casual staff are typically unable to access employment benefits, because these (meagre) benefits are structured to those for whom unemployment is an unanticipated gap between permanent positions, rather than the systematic unemployment that is typical of casual academic work. For all the talk of middle class welfare in Australia, if you don’t have permanent work then you are on your own. Universities shift risk back on to society and society shifts it right back on to individuals so that if we are not constant managers of risk, like one of my interviewees Therese, we can find ourselves resorting to rationing out pasta spirals to survive the Christmas break. So for those who intend on sticking it out in the industry, we can’t actually inoculate ourselves against unemployment; it is not only a structural feature of the economy, but also a standard feature of seasonal academic work. But we can and sometimes do attempt to
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Semester 2, 2011
inoculate ourselves against exacerbating these risks. In my study of highly skilled casuals, workers mediated the risks of precarious work by adapting their life ways – for example they creatively negotiate insecure housing, live with no access to credit, subsist on low consumption life styles, adopt ‘bulimic’ work patterns and they delay family formation until the last possible opportunity. This privatised risk, once fully absorbed into the life ways of casuals themselves, is hidden in the workplace and invisible in social policy and social attitudes which still perceive precarious work as primarily the province of the low skilled. So I share some of these stories not because I think casuals need more researchers to tell them about their own experiences, but rather because the social invisibility and denial of risks that we carry within our own bodies and lives is unspoken and is therefore a source of injury in itself (Deranty, 2008).
Challenging for change Traditionally, casual work is associated with youth or transitional labour markets, or with women’s tenuous labour market attachment, and it is overwhelmingly associated with so-called low skilled and low paid work. However, there are a few voices within academia like Iain Campbell (2000) who are now starting to point to a change in the dynamics of precarious work. While still in the minority, the change these researchers highlight is that the greatest increases in casual workers are now amongst workers in highly skilled occupations and amongst men working full-time hours. What is striking about this growth is that highly skilled casual workers – like casual academics - face new experiences of stress and suffering that stem from being ‘nonstandard’ examples of non-standard workers. The most obvious is that highly skilled workers I have interviewed are not primarily working in casual jobs because they are balancing work and family. What seems to be overlooked is that in the experiences of these workers, casual work is not part of an imperfect strategy to balance work and family life; rather, casual work is a major barrier to having a family at all. Delaying family formation is a key strategy that these workers use to mediate the insecurity of precarious work; it is necessary for them to stay mobile and weather the ‘bulimic’ work patterns and intermittent income of casual work in the university.
Effect on family life In 1907, the Harvester Judgement enshrined in Australian labour history the principle that employers should pay workers a living wage. At that time, the idea was that a man’s income should be enough to support a wife and a few children, which of course was then used to justify the lower wages of women workers. The underlying idea though – that work should provide a living wage – has been fundamental to the Australian concept of what just pay requires, and is now being undermined by aggressive labour market deregulation. So, while women still earn on average less than men, and while women are still more likely than men to take time out of work to care for very young children, the movement of precarious work into non-traditional groups means that traditional breadwinners are now also experiencing precarious work. This is a new attack on the Harvester principle; as one of my interviewees, Greg commented: ‘You can’t raise a kid on a casual income’. And while institutions have gained flexibility through casual labour, it is individuals who bear the risk. For the professional men in my study, precarious work undermined their ability to perform the role of breadwinners in their families. For some men such as James this came at a substantial cost: As far as family goes, I did have a family and that ended a couple of years ago. And one of the contributing factors, if not the contributing factor, was the fact that I couldn’t get any stability in terms of work. The price has been paid so to speak. There were other men who wanted to have children but were delaying family formation while they wait for their educational
investment to pay off. For them, the risk of employment insecurity was too great to consider having children and for some this was clearly a tension in their relationship. This meant that men in their late thirties and early forties were actively putting off their child rearing until they had secure work. When asked about his intentions to have children, Rowan makes his situation clear: I think that has got to be my wife’s decision because it really is a decision about when she is going to take her time, about her career and her future and what she wants to do but I don’t think she is willing to make that decision until I have full-time work – she has actually said that… Yeah, I think having some permanence for me, for some period of time is going to be the key factor. Because we will need to rely on that income... And not a casual income because last semester I taught and I ended up with $9,000. So yeah, it can’t be casual, it has to be something that pays fairly. Although casual work is portrayed as an imperfect way in which women can balance work and family, my research found that casual academic women between the ages of 34 and 40 were also negotiating the risks of precarious work by delaying family formation. Apart from the general lack of employment security, this decision was also a private consequence of institutional decision making which distributes other ‘goods’ of employment such as paid maternity leave, sick pay, carers leave and right to return to permanent employees but not to their casual colleagues. All workers, regardless of their skill level should have access to better family friendly provisions. But there are some features of this that affect professional employees in particular ways because they are generally already much older by the time they gain their qualifications and get established in the workforce. The provision of maternity leave was partly in recognition that extended periods of study and training required by professional women left them only just gaining entry into the profession at a time which also coincided with the prime years of family formation. In order to retain women in the sector, unions negotiated generous maternity leave which in some metro universities equates to 6 months at full pay or 12 months at half pay. But for long term casuals of both genders, long periods of insecure work are added to this equation leaving a very small window in which workers can begin to establish a family should they desire. This strategy exposes them to greater and greater risks as biological clocks become dominated by the pressures of precarious work. If we add to this that casuals cannot access credit in the same way permanent employees can, and that many fear discrimination in the rental housing market, we see that households and individuals are absorbing the costs of the instability created by universities exploiting the use of casual labour.
References Brown, T., J. Goodman & K. Yasukawa (2010). ‘Academic Casualisation: Class Divisions in the University’. Journal of Industrial Relations 52. Brown, T., J. Goodman & K. Yasukawa (2006). Getting the best of you for nothing: Casual voices in the Australian academy. National Tertiary Education Union. Deranty, J.-P. (2008). ‘Work and the precaritisation of existence’. European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 443-463. Hobson, J., G. Jones, et al. (2005). ‘The Research Assistant: Silenced partner in Australia’s knowledge production?’. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 27(3): 357-366. Rafferty, M. & S. Yu (2010). Shifting Risk, Work and Working Life in Australia: A Report for the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney.
Sharni Chan is a casual academic at the Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney. Her interviews with high skilled casual workers come from her thesis ‘Casual cultures: the everyday lives of precarious workers’ and is part of the Precarious Work Societies research cluster at Macquarie University. All names that appear in the text have been changed.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
13
MERIT, MENTORS & A MISSION FOR MARK By Carol-Anne Croker CAPA National Policy & Research Officer
What makes a successful highly respected and award winning children’s author and primary school teacher embark on a PhD and career change in mid -life? These and other questions I asked of Dr Mark Carthew from Swinburne University, Faculty of Higher Education, in our recent interview over a glass of Aussie red ... or two. Mark and I both began our PhD journey at Swinburne in September 2006. Mark has now completed his PhD by artefact and exegesis, with the print run of his anthology of children’s rhymes, Can You Keep a Secret? Timeless rhymes to share and treasure, and accompanying CD, sold out in Australia before his graduation ceremony next month. But what makes a full-time employee of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development leave secure employment to become firstly an APA award recipient, supplementing his student stipend with author tours, ongoing book publishing, writers; festival appearances, sessional e-tutoring and then upon completion of his Doctorate, accept a fixed-term contract position as a level B academic with no promise of tenure? It all seems to be summed up by two words: MISSION and MENTORSHIP. Both Mark and I began our PhD journey at the same time, by responding to the confidence in us held by our mentors for our academic ability but also recognising that matureaged PhD candidates have much to offer the Academy, as scholars and faculty members. Mark and I are only slightly older than the average candidates commencing PhDs in Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, often returning to study after successful careers and looking for the stimulation and intrinsic rewards a PhD can offer. ‘I remember after doing my Graduate Diploma in Music Education I was looking to doing a Masters,’ says Mark, ‘and Professor Barbara van Ernst, AM – by then a colleague and friend – knew I was an established children’s author and she knew about the Writing Department at Swinburne and the Practice-Led Research PhD model.’ ‘I was very happy being a teacher’, Mark told me, ‘but the line between being a children’s author and a teacher was becoming increasingly blurred and the opportunity for combining my children’s writing with practice-led research was something that was emerging as an exciting part of my contribution to education and practice.’ What Mark was about to discover is that the life of a PhD student is definitely not 100% appealing in every respect. The tension and strain of beginning a new career in what he called the ‘Labyrinth’ in his first academic journal article (Text , 13(1), 2009) was definitely not as easy a transition as he had expected... ‘Part of my motivation was just moving into a creative environment, not that teaching isn’t creative of course... but the synergies between language and literature are very clear, very real and I’m sure that somewhere out there, there is an academic job somewhere doing precisely that. That would be my perfect job.’ Yet the quest to establish oneself in the university sector as a creative practitioner is not easy for numerous reasons, particularly the financial sacrifice made by PhD students and casual academic tutors, as a personal financial investment in their professional development and much
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Semester 2, 2011
longed for future academic careers. ‘Going from being a leading teacher on a reasonable salary to a student’s life… and if I could get a scholarship, together with some other income it might – just might be do-able, even knowing that there would be financial hardship.’ Despite the obvious financial hardship and belt tightening by Mark and his family, the scholarship did not provide the relief anticipated with a three year period for completion. Mark, as many full-time students working as sessional tutors (and as a practising writer) do, survivied by extending his candidature for four years which required living on virtually no income for the final six months after his stipend extension ceased. Mark conservatively estimates that over the course of his candidature his family have invested $200,000 in forgone wages to support his creative and academic mission. In 2011, Mark remains positive about the future ‘with the opportunities arising to broaden out the discipline parameters of what is now academic work.’
Mark’s newest book, ‘Witches Britches Itches & Twitches’ will be release soon. For more information, visit markcarthew.com.au
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