Vol. 8 VOLUME 3 1 No. 2 April 20152010 August
THE MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIAN CASUAL AND SESSIONAL ACADEMIC STAFF
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010
Have you considered applying for an STF? NTEU Insecure Work Conference
VOLUME 3 No. 2
Christopher Pyne is ignoring the $100K elephant in the room
August 2010
10 handy tips for surviving sessional employment Are you a SuperCasual? Casual academic teaching and the insecurity continuum Insecure work is damaging our research effort Casual academics talk about online teaching
read online at www.unicasual.org.au ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
-INSIDE1
Insecure work endemic across higher education
10 National Insecure Work Conference
2
Caught between reform and the budget bottom line
13
3
Award review: An opportunity to lift the safety net
14 10 handy tips for surviving sessional employment
4
Insecure work is damaging our research effort
15
5
Have you considered applying for an STF?
16 Christopher Pyne is ignoring the $100K elephant in the room
6
Become a SuperCasual!
8
Research staff: the other half of Australia’s universities
18 Precarious academic campaigns in the US: Struggle within the struggle
9
Casual academic teaching and the insecurity continuum
NTEU survey: Casual academics talk online teaching
Why I’m A Member: William Mudford
20 Organising casualised academics in Canada: Fairness for contract academic staff
Connect is a publication of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA). All Rights Reserved © 2015. ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
Editor: Jeannie Rea Production: Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance: Anastasia Kotaidis Cover image: Andrew Li For information on Connect, please contact the NTEU National Office: Post: PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Phone: 03 9254 1910 Fax: 03 9254 1915 Email: national@nteu.org.au Web: 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.
Insecure work endemic across higher education and research
The morning after the Australian Senate voted down (for the second time) the Abbott Government’s higher education agenda of fee deregulation, funding cuts and public subsidisation of private providers, the CEO of Universities Australia was bemoaning the outcome. While she should have been demanding greater government investment in universities, she argued that without deregulation universities would not have the funds to address issues like large classes, inadequate student support … or insecure work. That last one surprised me, as I was not aware that the Vice-Chancellors were campaigning for the Government’s higher education agenda because they wanted to address the problem of insecure work in universities. This sudden concern is unfortunately entirely at odds with the track record of university managements fighting the NTEU every step of the way as we argue for improved job security. At our National Insecure Work Conference in November last year (see p.10), NTEU made the commitment to increase our focus upon insecure work. Our renewed commitment does not arise out of a lack of past action by the NTEU as we have a consistent record of tackling insecure work. We have industrial awards limiting the use of contracts, we have won conversion clauses and we have succeeded in getting better remuneration and conditions for academic casuals in our Agreements. We have focussed specifically upon the plight of casual teaching staff and contract research staff. By the end of the current round of university bargaining we should be close to our goal of creating 1000 new academic teaching positions (Scholarly Teaching Fellows, see p.5). These will start to provide jobs to some of the thousands of casuals wanting an academic career, but we will have to keep the pressure on management to start appointing people into these jobs. We will also have over 600 targeted positions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, another mandatory claim in this bargaining round. We must ensure that these jobs are filled and are secure. It is an indictment upon our employers that the NTEU has to be constantly vigilant to ensure that new Enterprise Agreement clauses are implemented, and also that existing industrial rights are not undermined. An example of this undermining is the implementation of the win in the last bargaining round on payment-for-marking. It is a hollow victory if you are expected to mark student work at
impossible and arbitrary rates, as was reported in the NTEU survey of the online experiences of casual academics (see p.13). An insecure workforce constantly worried about retaining employment and getting the next contract suits employers keen to rundown working conditions and union rights. Insecure work is therefore an academic freedom issue. Precarious employment makes it harder to be critical, to undertake risky teaching and research projects, or to tackle the hard issues. Academic casuals often have no say in what or how they teach. For fixed term researchers, there is pressure to stick to the safe projects and increase the likelihood of the next grant. The latest Department of Education data shows that the number of casual academics increased another 3.4 per cent between 2012 and 2013. The casualisation of teaching is the most monstrous type of insecure work in higher education and impacts upon tens of thousands of casual academics and their students. However, our Insecure Work Conference also focused upon the massive growth in fixed term contracts for researchers, who are mainly academic but also general/professional and technical classified staff. While we blinked, the proportion of research-only academic staff has blown out, and four out of five are on fixed term contracts. Often contracts do not even run the length of the research project (see p.4). There is also noticeable growth in casual and contract general and professional jobs, further to those backfilling colleagues on leave or project funded positions. There are some pretty interesting constructions of ‘project’ funding for consistently required work, but where an ongoing appointment is not made. There is also the increased preference for limited term contracts for senior roles, which contributes to the timidity of senior staff in contesting controversial decisions. When we were planning the Insecure Work Conference we asked delegates to identify their category of insecure work. Many reported that they have worked in all three categories. For me, this confirmed that our Union must focus upon all types of insecure work in higher education, as precarious employment is endemic and is creating a generation of workers, whose ‘lives are on hold’ (as the ACTU titled their report on insecure work). Do get more involved – contact your local NTEU Branch on campus to find out what is happening. You will find others with similar issues and interests and together we can organise and make a difference. jrea@nteu.org.au
Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
1
Caught between reform and the budget bottom line For a second time we have seen the Federal Government’s Higher Education and Research Reforms (HERR) Bill rejected by the Senate, with even less support than it received the first time around. For the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) our attention will now turn to the 2015–16 Federal Budget, preparing ourselves for any ‘surprises’ that will likely be in store. We will be paying close attention to research and research training funding, both of which have struggled to gain a foothold in the national debate centred around university fee deregulation, with the exception of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) funding crisis (#Ncrisis) which propelled research funding momentarily into the national spotlight. But NCRIS is not the only source of research funding at risk. In the 2014–15 Budget, $173.7 million in funding for the Research Training Scheme (RTS) was flagged to be cut from 2016. The RTS is to research students as NCRIS is to researchers. The RTS funds cover both direct and indirect costs of research training at a university. Direct costs may include the salary of supervisor(s), provision of work environment for candidates, desk space, information technology (IT), library, phone and parking, research materials and/or laboratory space and equipment, assistance with conference fees, travel and printing costs for dissertations. Indirect costs may include discipline specific training for candidates and supervisors, counselling, career advice and other services conducive to research training. The RTS is already known to be underfunded by an average of 27%, according to a report on the full cost of research training by Deloitte Economics in 2011. A reduction in funding could widen the gap to as much as 33%, affecting the training of one in three postgraduates. Of further concern is $139 million in funding for Future Fellowships which is set to be discontinued following the HERR Bill’s recent defeat in the Senate. Research funding is in a precarious situation, caught between the Budget bottom line and higher education and research reforms, the need for commitment to consistent and adequate public investment is being deferred and ignored. This funding uncertainty will constrain Australia’s research workforce and its ability to meet current and future challenges. In January 2015, an article by Ronald J. Daniel published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United State of America highlighted a number of ongoing trends in the biomedical sciences where key grants are becoming less accessible to young early career researchers and the average age at which a researcher receives their first major grant has been steadily increasing over the last decade. These trends have persisted despite repeated recommendations to make funding more accessible to early career researchers in the US. In Australia, this challenge is illustrated by the case of Danielle Edwards who recently wrote in The Conversation about her trials and tribulations as an early career researcher and her decision to turn down a DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award): Short-term contract faculty and adjunct positions are increasingly common in Australia amid consistently declining funding rates for universities since the Howard years. Universities aren’t growing. Faculty are retiring and not being replaced, yet class sizes are increasing. Furthermore, university positions are rare, especially for couples, affecting recruitment of women. These trends are symptoms of the crisis faced by the research workforce where limited resources are competed for by an increasing number of researchers. If institutions are unable to engage new talent, to update and renew their aging workforce then the capacity of the research workforce to meet current and future demands will be severely diminished. Whether the Government follows through with cuts to research funding or not in the wake of the HERR Bill’s defeat remains to be seen, but the stage is now set for round three of the higher education and research reform debate. Postgraduates and researchers alike must continue to make our voices heard in the wake of #Ncrisis; we must ensure that research and research funding remain important issues and receive the attention which they deserve. Harry Rolf is the President of CAPA president@capa.edu.au M@CAPAPresident
Harry Rolf CAPA President
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 1
Semester 1, 2015
2015 Award Review
An opportunity to lift the safety net for casuals By Linda Gale Industrial Officer
NTEU is pursuing several improvements to casual conditions in a federal review of Awards that will be run in the Fair Work Commission during mid-2015. The NTEU will need to present evidence in support of our claims, including authentic voices from the workplace, so we are looking for members to assist us in our case.
How do Awards affect my conditions? Pay and conditions for all staff are regulated by an Enterprise Agreement at each university. These Agreements operate above a ‘safety net’ of conditions set out in Awards which are regularly reviewed by the Fair Work Commission. One such review is currently underway. While these decisions will not flow immediately into your working conditions, they will lift the floor against which all future Agreements will be tested.
Professional & Discipline Currency Allowance NTEU is seeking a new allowance to compensate casual academics for time spent maintaining their professional and discipline currency. At the moment this is generally only recognised and paid for if it is directly required preparation for a particular lecture or tutorial, and no proper account is taken of the time academics spend keeping up with developments in their field or even just keeping up with voluminous employer policies.
ICT Allowance
Can you assist us in supporting our claims for casual staff? Have you worked in Australian universities as a sessional/casual academic for 2 years or more and can talk to us about: • The time you spend maintaining your professional and discipline currency. • The costs of maintaining personal ICT systems and equipment that you use for work? If so, please send your name and contact details in an email to awardreview@nteu.org.au.
Conversion Linked to claims being run by other unions for the conversion of long-serving casuals, NTEU is seeking a provision requiring the conversion of a proportion of casual work to more secure forms of employment, increasing the number of non-casual opportunities available and the overall level of job security.
Many casuals (and other staff) are expected to use their own computer, internet and phone connections for work purposes. NTEU is seeking a new allowance to contribute to the cost.
vol. 56, no.
Published by NTEU
Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.
AUR is listed on the DEEWR register of refereed journals.
1, 2014
ISSN 0818–8 068
AUR
Australia n Unive rsities’R eview
AUR is published twice a year by the NTEU. NTEU members are entitled to receive a free subscription on an opt-in basis . If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive AUR, please email aur@nteu.org.au
www.aur.org.au read online at www.unicasual.org.au
3
NTEU Research Staff Survey
Insecure work is damaging our research effort By Ken McAlpine Education & Training Officer
In September last year, NTEU conducted a survey of research staff employed in universities and medical research institutes. More than 700 researchers – academic and general staff, union members and non-members – completed the survey. The results reveal serious problems facing Australia’s research workforce, and threats to the effectiveness of Australia’s research effort. In demographic and statistical terms, the respondents were quite representative of Australia’s research workforce. Only 17% of respondents had ongoing employment (more than in the actual workforce), while 76% were on fixed term contracts and 8% were hourly paid. General staff made up 20% of respondents. The classification profile of research-only academics was also significantly lower than for their teaching-and-research colleagues, with 60% employed at Lecturer or below. This reflects the absence of promotion opportunities, where staff are classified according to the funds available rather than their real academic standing. General staff were classified only a little higher than their non-research colleagues, which is surprising considering that PhDs (24%) and Masters Degrees (20%) were very common. The most glaring indictment of existing practices is perhaps found in the fact that 83% considered that there was ongoing work they could do at their institution. Respondents were also asked to describe their work in the following terms: A. My skills are pretty much limited to the narrow field of this current research work
B. I have generic or broad research skills which are readily transferable to many different projects
3%
44% 53%
This conclusion is amplified by responses to questions about the negative effects on fixed term staff of this form of employment (see table 1).
Connect // Volume 8, no. 1
Significant
Some
Planning for a family
32%
26%
41%
Kid’s schooling
14%
16%
70%
Partner’s job
24%
29%
47%
Carer responsibilities
22%
25%
53%
Mortgage
40%
31%
30%
Rental accommodation
17%
20%
63%
Immigration status
Semester 1, 2015
None
7%
3%
90%
40%
30%
30%
Career development
51%
32%
17%
Intellectual property
16%
21%
63%
Promotion
Income Security
72%
21%
6%
Job Security
78%
18%
4%
Vacation Planning
33%
36%
31%
Stress and other health issues
42%
38%
20%
Ability to speak up in the workplace
33%
32%
35%
Fear of reprisal
25%
29%
45%
Table 2: Problems for workplace created by level of fixed term contracts
Somewhere between A and B
This would suggest that the current practice of having over 90% of staff in precarious employment does not accord with the actual work being performed, and that a fairer and more effective way to organise the workforce would involve, at an absolute minimum, having more than half the researchers in ongoing jobs and transferring from project to project as grants come and go.
4
Table 1: Negative effects on fixed term staff of this form of employment
Significant
Some
None
Don’t know or n/a
Shortage of staff to supervise research students
20.22%
29.16%
19.53%
31.09%
Workplace instability
41.86%
37.07%
7.93%
13.13%
Workloads
38.65%
35.35%
12.38%
13.62%
Collegiality
20.36%
38.10%
28.20%
13.34%
Leave Planning
16.51%
31.09%
32.05%
20.36%
Productivity
23.50%
40.98%
19.81%
15.71%
Staff training
22.60%
34.52%
21.64%
21.23%
Other survey results found that all staff (not just those on fixed term contracts) considered that the level of fixed term contracts created problems for their workplace (see table 2). NTEU will be using the survey results to inform industrial strategies, and the Union’s policy and lobbying work. www.unicasual.org.au/surveys/research_staff_survey_2014 Research staff members interested in seeing the full survey results should contact Ken McAlpine, kmcalpine@nteu.org.au
What has The Research Whisperer done lately? You may already know that RW is dedicated to the topic of doing research in academia. We’re here to help and encourage, and in the last few weeks, we’ve talked about: • The process of writing a good, simple research methods section. http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/ writing-research-methods • The connection (or lack of it) between research and policy, and how to address it.
Have you considered applying for an STF?
http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/ research-and-policy/ • The perilous state of university staff who are paid by the hour. We wanted to write something to support National Adjunct Walkout Day in the USA. It is tough out there. http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/ the-tyranny-of-the-timesheet/ • How everybody feels that they can ‘do’ social science, and why this isn’t a great idea. This guest post by Yolande Strengers generated a lot of comment and discussion http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/ reclaiming-social-science/ • The importance of deadlines, and how to meet them http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/ deadlines/
CASA: a voice for casuals Casualisation affects everyone in higher education, not just those dealing personally with casual employment. At CASA – actualcasuals. wordpress.com – we want to put those affected by casualisation front and centre. We are keen to hear not only from those in casual employment but also those who make decisions about casualisation, and those in secure employment trying to find good ways of engaging with their precariously-hired colleagues without further exploiting their gifted time. CASA was built to support making the realities of casualisation visible. At its foundation is recognition of the many people on short-term and hourly-paid contracts in universities and their contribution to the core business of higher education – teaching and research. We want to help ensure that their experience and constraints are acknowledged and counted in the ways that universities talk amongst themselves and about themselves to government, to the public, and to their current and future staff and students. You’re welcome to join us! Kate Bowles and Karina Luzia casualcasa@gmail.com
By Susan Kenna Industrial Officer
By the end of this round of bargaining, about 900 new on-going and fixed term Scholarly Teaching Fellow (STF) positions will have been created in the sector, to replace work previously performed by casuals. The STFs were a key claim by the NTEU to try new ways of slowing the rise in precarious (and often long-term) sessional teaching jobs. These positions have different nomenclature at different universities, such as ‘Teaching Fellows’, ‘Teaching Scholars’ and convertible and amended forms of the ‘Early Career Academic Fellowships’. All are designed to replace work currently undertaken by casual academics with either fixed term roles (often convertible after 3 years), or on-going roles. Almost every university Enterprise Agreement now requires the creation and filling of a specified number of STF positions. Eligibility is restricted to people currently in insecure employment in Australian universities. Entry levels vary from A to B3 (or C in the case of University of Canberra). If you have (or have submitted) a PhD in your field, you should consider applying for one of these roles as they emerge and at least enquiring about opportunities at your or another university. In most cases, NTEU has an active role in implementing and monitoring these new roles and in some instances, such as at Curtin University, we have NTEU representatives on selection panels for the STF roles. The University of Sydney Branch achieved a ‘best practice’ STF clause, with the creation of 80 continuing positions over the life of the Agreement and a commitment to maintaining at least 80 positions whilst the Agreement is in force. The positions are filled by competitive, merit based selection. Successful candidates are appointed at Level A and are eligible for promotion. The workload allocation for the STF positions at Sydney University includes 20% for research and scholarship. STF or equivalent positions achieved at all universities include a workload allocation for a minimum period devoted to scholarship, with a handful providing for scholarship and research. It’s worth noting that where there is an option for fixed-term STFs, the Union has insisted that these fit within the limits of the current fixed term categories of employment. If an STF position appeals to you and you have any queries, please call your local NTEU Branch office.
actualcasuals.wordpress.com #AusCasuals
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
5
Are you a
Super Casual?
By Dr Dustin Halse NTEU Vic Division Campaigns Officer
M@dustinhalse
In my first year as a PhD candidate at Swinburne University I was invited to teach an introductory undergraduate unit in political and labour history. It was an exciting opportunity that I seized immediately. To be entrusted with guiding inquisitive young minds in their nascent academic pursuit was an empowering experience. Throughout the course of my PhD studies I taught a range of politics and history subjects. I was lucky to have a number of great supervisors, all of whom were good union members. I was supported and encouraged; paid on time; and, to a certain extent, given the freedom to decide how many hours I wanted to work. In sum, I was tremendously fortunate to have an empowering and positive employment experience. And yet, as I observed the conditions of my fellow casuals, I became increasingly unsettled and alarmed. It became apparent that my experience was non-typical. A large proportion of casual academics were struggling to survive the unpredictable churn of precarious employment. Very quickly I began to comprehend the insidious and calculated manner in which the tertiary education sector exploits committed and talented casual academics. This realisation prompted me to join the NTEU at the end of 2011. Before long I was standing with other Swinburne NTEU activists and staff demanding that the rights of casuals be respected. At the beginning of 2012 we surveyed academics and became aware some casuals were being paid up to two months late. A common indignation emerged and a ‘Late Pay’ campaign was launched. Soon The Age and The Australian got wind of the story and helped to expose the flagrant exploitation of casual academics to the wider community. The Swinburne NTEU campaign mobilised casual academics in an unprecedented fashion. A casuals delegate community was formed and dozens of casuals joined the campaign and the Union. ‘Sessional Survival Stalls’ were held and pressure acts conducted.
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 1
Semester 1, 2015
Swinburne NTEU activists stood resolutely together in calling for casuals to be paid on time. Within a matter of months the University admitted that there was a problem and the late pay mess was fixed. Following from this victory the Swinburne casuals team continued to campaign and soon secured payment for the time casuals spent completing previously unpaid induction modules. So significant was the success of the campaign that it won the ACTU National Workplace Campaign of the Year Award. It is a clear demonstration of what can be achieved when activists and campaigns staff roll up their sleeves and fight to win greater working conditions for casual academics. At the beginning of this year I was privileged to be appointed to organise and lead the casuals campaigns team in Victoria. We hit the ground running and the starting point for the Victorian SuperCasuals team was to hold mass meetings of casuals across five universities. As we stopped to listen to the concerns of casuals we were angered but sadly not surprised by what was being communicated. It is the personal stories of the casual academics who stood up to speak at these meetings that patently reveals the negligent core of casual work. Scores of casuals across multiple campuses voiced that they are routinely paid late. Pause for a moment and imagine what it would be like to have next to no money to buy groceries at the local supermarket? Now imagine how the stress would be compounded if you had a partner and children to support. Many casuals expressed that to simply survive they were drawing down upon their savings and maxing out credit cards. Others are taking out high-interest personal loans and going to relatives in order to pay utility bills. Too many casuals are thus finding themselves suspended in a state of near constant poverty. A general outrage was also expressed at the quantum of unpaid work performed by casuals. University departments are saving significant sums of money by refusing to pay casuals who are required to attend staff meetings or complete compulsory online training modules. Marking rates are very often not nearly adequate.
Class sizes are now so large that casual tutors and lecturers are swamped with emails from students and have to respond after their working hours have concluded. Casuals are cheap and provide the flexibility craved by university management. They are paid by the hour and can have their working timetables changed at any moment. Indeed, most casuals nervously wait until just prior to the commencement of a semester to find out if they even have job! Campaigns have now been launched at four universities in Victoria to fix a number of the problems associated with casual work. The SuperCasuals team believes that casual academics should be paid on time and that they should be paid for the hours of additional work they perform each fortnight. We believe that the superannuation discrimination should end. We believe that casuals should have access to properly paid induction courses and the facilities and services needed to carry out the job. Above all, we believe that casuals should not be treated as a residual class of employees. Casual academics are talented, committed, passionate and hard working. They care deeply about their profession and want to see the very best for all academics. Will you support the most marginalised group of workers in our sector? Now is the time for action. If you are a casual academic and want to find out more about what the NTEU is doing to support casuals, visit us at: www.supercasuals.org.au www.unicasual.org.au You can also follow us on Twitter @thesupercasuals
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Research staff: the other half of Australia’s unis By Miranda Cumptson Monash University
M@mirandacumpston
Recent publicity around the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) highlighted the 1700 staff whose contracts depended on the renewal of funding. This funding is now secure, but only until the same deadline next year. What was not highlighted is that this kind of insecure employment is not unusual. Quite the contrary, most of Australia’s university-based science and medical researchers are supported by short-term grant funding. Australia’s research grant system supports an entire industry: whole teams and programs of work over decades, patching together funding for researchers, students, administrators, technicians, statisticians etc. On average, researchers spend 38 days putting together one NHMRC project grant application – that’s over 600 years of full time work for every NHMRC project grant round. With success rates of under 20%, that’s a huge waste of productivity each year. Alongside this structural problem, there is a second issue in the conditions under which research staff are employed. Many university teaching staff (notwithstanding the issues for casuals) have continuing appointments with good conditions, including superannuation well above the national standard, severance pay and merit-based promotion. This is not the case for full-time researchers, who face the prospect of spending their careers under conditions designed for temporary fill-in staff. Many researchers leave the sector, going overseas to bigger funding pools, or to industry, government or NGOs. Depending on your institution, there may be further inequities between different categories of staff, including between academic and general/professional staff, ‘research’ classified staff and others, and staff funded by grants and other sources (this can become particularly confusing where a person is funded from multiple sources). It is quite possible to have staff from all these categories within a single team, with different access to superannuation, career salary horizons, transition to continuing status (or bridging support for gaps in funding), and professional development programs. These inequities are all the more frustrating because they are unnecessary. It is also common for staff to be unaware of these differences, as the definitions and implications of employment categories may not be defined in the Agreement or easily found in policy documents. As a union, how should the NTEU address these issues in a positive way? Firstly, we should lobby to address the inequity of employment conditions and for the explicit inclusion of category definitions and their implications in Agreements. Differences in conditions which have no rationale should be removed. We could argue for equitable conditions such as superannuation, severance and professional development for researchers. Further, we could seek more continuing or bridging positions for researchers. At a national level, the NTEU should continue its involvement in campaigns such as ‘Discoveries Need Dollars’, which saw unprecedented numbers of medical researchers protesting federal funding cuts. While funding is one aspect of this debate, changes to the structure of funding could make a real difference. Research funding should be quarantined from political budget debates. The length of research grants could be increased, to reduce uncertainty and the amount of time spent on applications. Funding conditions could include criteria addressing the stability of employment. Such proposals are not new, having featured in past policy proposals (for example, in the 2013 McKeon Review of medical research funding). In some ways, the research workforce is in a strong position: we produce work that the universities value. If we stopped, they would notice. As union members working together, tangible progress in addressing these issues is an achievable goal.
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Connect // Volume 8, no. 1
Semester 1, 2015
Casual academic teaching and the insecurity continuum By Robyn May Griffith University
My PhD research contributed to uncovering and understanding the extent and breadth of the casualisation of academic work in Australia’s universities. Using data from the Work and Careers in Australian Universities Survey, and through analysis of UniSuper data, it was established that around half of the academic workforce, by headcount, is employed on an hourly rate basis. That same survey data also revealed the extent of fixed term contract employment amongst academic staff, particularly at the lower levels and amongst female academic staff. While both forms of employment are inherently insecure, casual academic employment represents one end of what can be seen as a continuum of insecurity:
Casual hourly paid
Fixed-term
Conversion provisions
Casual employment is characterised by an absence of normal entitlements associated with employment and a shifting of the risks of employment from employer to employee. The employment of casual academic staff allows the university to manage the fluctuations in student demand, and the volatility in the broader funding environment. It has been essentially the way universities have managed the growth in international student numbers since the early 90s. For the individual casual, however, it often means little training and support for their work, limited superannuation and poor wages and conditions. For PhD students and early career academics, casual employment has a negative impact on their capacity to publish. As one casual who I interviewed for my PhD research noted, ‘casual work makes it impossible to plan a life’. Another observed that casual work made people ‘feel bad about themselves’. She told me that she did not refer to herself as an academic even though she held a PhD and worked more than full-time hours, as a casual academic juggling a number of different jobs, in the three years since graduation. Whilst a fixed term position offers more security and better conditions than a casual position, it is still inherently insecure. Our aim should be to move work along the continuum such that conversion to ongoing employment is possible. Many casuals teach the same subjects year in year out. They, and the students they teach, deserve better. Robyn May’s PhD research investigates the casualisation of academic employment in Australian universities. It was part of a larger ARC linkage project based at the department of Employment Relations and Human Resources at Griffith University, led by Professor Glenda Strachan.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
9
In opening the NTEU’s National Insecure Work Conference last November, as National President, I said:
Insecure Work Conference
‘This is a very important conference for the NTEU because we are making a very public declaration that this union will not ignore the rise in precarious work in our industry. This is not a statement made for effect – it is a commitment.’ This was repeated at the end of the conference and taken on board by the NTEU National Executive who met the next day and undertook to coordinate a national action plan incorporating feedback from Divisions and Branches on current activities and priorities for 2015. Divisions have now developed plans, dedicating staff and resources to organising amongst academic casuals and fixed term contract staff. These plans have picked up many of the concrete suggestions made at the conference. Initiatives range from Victoria’s grassroots organising ‘SuperCasuals’ campaign to establishing a national contract research staff reference group to consider specific items towards developing enterprise bargaining claims.
Who came to the Conference? By Jeannie Rea NTEU National President
Almost every NTEU Branch was represented and the delegates had to come from one of the target groups of academic teaching casuals; contract research staff; or project and other fixed term staff. This was not an open conference, but one where the endorsed delegates from each Branch now have the authority to report back to their Branch Committees on the conference and to recommend what they think their Branch should do next, for and with their precariously employed colleagues. The conference, though, was live streamed with a number of NTEU members and others joining through this platform. An active and critical Twitter conversation was maintained throughout.
10
Connect // Volume 8, no. 1
Semester 1, 2015
Participants reported back that they gained a lot from both the highly informative speakers and by the experience of meeting with others precariously employed like themselves. They also learned of both the differences and similarities across types of insecure work in higher education and research. Delegates nodded knowingly to the presentations by researchers (often also precariously employed) who explained the magnitude of the problem and also the impacts. They cheered the reports from activists on campaigns and networks that have spearheaded actions within and alongside the NTEU. Delegates worked hard in the action oriented workshops to come up with recommendations on where the Union should now focus activity.
Ongoing campus based action Delegates emphasised there are many ways that the Union can be actively pursuing issues and be visible at a campus level advocating for precariously employed staff. Many Branches have worked for many years assisting casual academic staff with not only information about their rights, but also picking up issues like under and late payment, and access to facilities and training. The bargaining claim for payment-formarking originated in protestation from casuals that the supposed inclusion of marking in the casual pay rate was a nonsense. That marking remains underpaid was further confirmed in recent NTEU research, blogs like CASA and by conference delegates.
Expose and stop free labour Academic casuals emphasised that the Union must continue to focus on increasing secure jobs, but also on the pay and conditions of current casuals. Success at a campus or university level in changing university policy and practice is not enough as the changes must be implemented. Casuals do need to organise, but they must get support also from their more securely employed colleagues. The invisibility of casual academics and the wilful ignorance of their exploitation is not excusable from union members.
Two messages resonated around the conference – there are no grounds that justify being paid and treated differently to the worker next to you, and we must expose and stop free labour. These conclusions are most apposite as free labour by university staff in more secure jobs is keeping our universities running. This was the theme of the NTEU’s video for Go Home on Time Day, which coincided with the conference. But going home on time is not the issue for academics and professional staff employed for a few hours a week or for a few months with no or few employment benefits. They also put in hours and hours of unpaid and totally unrecognised time often using their own equipment and power at home. For staff in the third category of non-research fixed term employment, the issue of invisibility is particularly pertinent. These people are doing all sorts of jobs in the library, to facilities, to IT, to administration, to education development, but universities can get away with employing them on fixed term contracts as soon as they can categorise their job as being part of a project. Some projects are real and short term funded, but others are not, especially when viewed through the eyes of someone continuously employed on fixed term contracts doing pretty much the same job.
Insecure work becoming the norm A key message for union members is that precarious work has grown dramatically in higher education. One in two university jobs is now casual or fixed term and four out of five new jobs in the last decade are casual or fixed term. Over 80% of teaching only staff are casual and over 80% of research only staff are on fixed term contracts. The sector has grown and new jobs are mainly insecure, but at the same time secure jobs have been turned into insecure jobs. Over the past decade the NTEU has exposed the casualisation of teaching and has popularised understanding of the impact on casual academics, students and the quality of university education. It is now widely agreed to be a problem, but university managements continue to refuse to address it and fight the Union continued overpage...
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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when we negotiate for more secure jobs. However, by the end of this current bargaining round, we should have established about 1000 new teaching jobs. As was recognised at the conference, we now have to get those jobs filled!
Contract research
Highlights of Insecure Work Conference Panel presentations
The big surprise, to the sector and to some at our conference was just how prevalent fixed term contracts had become in research work for both academic and professional staff. For example at Queensland and Monash now there are more research-only than ‘teaching and research’ academics and up to 80 per cent of these are fixed term. The NTEU has campaigned in and outside of bargaining periods for improved conditions and conversion of fixed term research positions, but there is now consensus that we need to prioritise this activity. While we were not watching closely enough job security has collapsed in the research sector in and outside universities. In the lead up to the conference as well as surveying academic casuals about online work, we also surveyed NTEU members in fixed term research (see pages 4 & 13). Conference delegates agreed that there are lots of individual issues that quickly become collective matters with a just a few conversations with colleagues. The crass reality is that fixed term staff are very vulnerable to be employed on all sorts of conditions just because the university can get away with it because no one has complained. The staff affected are reticent because they want another job.
Current Trends in higher education employment Dr Robyn May, Griffith University; Dr Kaye Broadbent, Griffith University; Paul Kniest, NTEU Policy & Research Coordinator.
Insecure work in higher education employment in context Tim Kennedy, National Secretary, National Union of Workers; Malini Cadambi, Campaign Director, Higher Education, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), NY; Dr Sandy O’Sullivan, ARC Senior Indigenous Researcher, Bachelor Institute.
Organising for change Linda Gale, NTEU Senior Industrial Officer; Dr Kate Bowles & Dr Karina Luiza, CASA; Professor Rhonda Small, La Trobe University contract research campaign; Dr Claire Parfitt, University of Sydney Casuals Group; Josh Cullinan, Swinburne casual campaign.
Policy, funding & industrial settings
For more information go to the conference website which includes the program, videos and the presentation slides of the speakers, as well as the online casual and contract research survey reports.
Professor Aidan Byrne, CEO, Australian Research Council; Professor Michael Hamel-Green, Victoria University; Dr Jonathan O’Donnell, The Research Whisperer.
www.nteu.org.au/insecurework2014
Workshops
Above, L–R: Karin Stokes (CQU); Luke Nickholds (Monash); Professor Michael Hamel-Green (VU). Photos Paul Kniest.
What are the issues? What is the biggest immediate issue and medium term issue affecting participants?
What needs to be done? Introduced by Dr Jen T Kwok, NTEU Policy & Research Officer and Ken McAlpine, NTEU Education & Training Officer, speaking to the findings of recent NTEU surveys on casual academics and contract researchers.
How are we going to do it? Developing plans and actions.
All presentations available online:
www.nteu.org.au/insecurework2014 12
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NTEU survey
Casual academics talk online teaching By Jen Tsen Kwok Policy & Research Officer
M@NTEUNational During July and August last year, the NTEU undertook a survey of casual academics asking about their experiences teaching online during first semester. The intent was to find out how changes in teaching expectations, specifically the increasing use of ‘blended learning’ and the shift to totally online delivery are shaping the employment conditions of casual and fixed-term higher education academic teaching staff in Australia.
undertake online teaching, and especially assessment tasks like the marking of essays. • Lump sum payments (per marking period or per student) are an inequitable payment method to recompense academics because it cannot reflect the actual time taken to provide quality feedback, and is based upon an arbitrary (sometimes nonsensical) assumption about how many words can be marked per minute. • Payment for online marking of essays rarely accounts for administration tasks including uploading comments, changes or printing essays, as well as problems with the software system.
The decision to undertake the survey came from listening to the many casual academic NTEU members who have provided narratives about the ‘invisible’ workload attached to online teaching roles, whether the subjects were taught online or as a component of blended learning. A similar survey, undertaken by COCAL/UALE in North America, of academic adjuncts’ experiences of online teaching found not only high levels of exploitation, but also concern over their control over their work, as well as intellectual property and freedom implications.
Key findings include:
• Sessionally employed staff are paid the same rate per hour regardless of class size, student cohort or complexity of the subject matter, whereas these are factors included in workload models for full time and fractional staff. • Marking is paid on ‘piece rates’ at x words per minute.
•
There appear to be pronounced problems around exploitation of intellectual property, including recognition of moral rights, faced by casual and fixed-term teaching staff responsible for the creation of online materials.
My contract is a year-by-year proposition, with no security beyond that. That’s OK for me, as I’m financially secure, but it would be a challenge for other people with a big mortgage. If [the] uni is repeatedly hiring someone like me to do the same thing year after year on a series of 1 year contracts, should there be some requirement to offer to make the position permanent after a while?
This survey found similar concerns amongst respondents. There were almost 260 usable responses of which two-thirds were from NTEU members. The findings raise important questions about how the employment conditions experienced by online academics impact upon the quality of the student learning experience.
• Sessionally employed staff are paid the same rate per hour regardless of years of experience.
• Casual teaching academics receive insufficient and often no training in relation to the use of online technologies.
”
• Casual teaching academics involved in online teaching are provided highly inconsistent opportunities to attend paid induction or other professional training. • Institutions expect that important non-staffing costs integral to online teaching (such as computer and internet access) to be borne by staff and not by the institution. • Much more could be done to develop and support mentoring practices and capability of online teaching coordinators, and others who have direct relationships with online academic staff.
To read more of the findings and analysis, please visit the Surveys page on the UniCasual website (see link below). www.unicasual.org.au/surveys/ online_teaching_survey_2014
“
Casual academics are often the ‘face’ of the university’s learning programs, ...having regular communication with students about their learning and providing feedback about assessment tasks. This does not seem to be supported by the working conditions... I am operating in a relatively isolated context, with little contact with and opportunity to learn about the school’s core staff development, discussion or planning. There is no formal process of performance review, ... there is no documentation that records the quality of my teaching.
• Institutions consistently underestimate the hours necessary for insecurely employed academic staff to
”
Never enough time allocated. [In] one course, the same assignment went from a 20 min allocation at complex rates to 10 min at simple rates. Of course, expectations about feedback etc. did not change. It doesn’t seem to matter to some coordinators, unfortunately…
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Knowing your Rights
10 handy tips for surviving sessional employment While many improvements could (and should) be made to the workplace rights for casual academics, it is important to understand the rights you already have. At many workplaces these rights are not properly enforced, and it is only with the support of your Union that you can be sure you are not being even more exploited than the rules allow. You need to check your Enterprise Agreement to find out precisely what rights you have. Here are some of the most common.
Get a clear statement of your contract Your employer is usually required to provide you with a letter on appointment which sets out details of what you are employed to do, including duties, rates of pay, and hours. This is usually in the form of a ‘casual contract’. It must be provided at the beginning of your period of employment. If your contract has still not been provided after work has commenced, this is usually a breach of your rights, and the Union can help you get it fixed.
Get paid on time You are entitled to be paid within a reasonable time of submitting your hours. This is usually payment within 14 or 21 days. If payments are delayed beyond that, whatever the reason, it is the university’s job to fix it. The NTEU can help sessionals get timely payment.
Get paid for extra work If you end up doing more work than was originally predicted in your contract, you are entitled to be paid for the extra work. Things such as attending lectures or staff meetings in the subject you teach, marking moderation meetings, compulsory completion of online PD, are often overlooked in your written contract, and should be paid at the ‘other academic duties’ rate of pay. If you pick up extra tutorials or lectures, you should be paid for them in your next pay – there is no excuse for universities to take months to sort out variations to your pay based on variations to your hours.
What is a tutorial? The casual rates of pay for a lecture or tutorial are higher than other rates because of the amount of preparation and student consultation time associated with each class. Some universities attempt to avoid these higher rates of pay by relabelling tutorials as something else. Whether or not they are tutorials, and therefore attract the tutorial rate of pay, is a question of fact, and not just of labels. The NTEU assists casual members to resist this sort of sleight-of-hand and ensure that the correct rate is paid.
Who cleans up the lab? The payment for tutorials covers the contact time, as well as time for preparation and associated student consultation. It does not cover follow-up work such as cleaning up a laboratory or studio. If you are required to do that work outside the contact time, then you should be paid at the ‘other academic duties’ rate.
Time spent in induction Whether it is online or in person, attending induction is not a bonus benefit. It is work. It is where the employer will provide you with important information about workplace systems, health and safety, plagiarism policies etc. You should be paid for the time spent in induction. Some universities do pay for this already, but others need to be reminded of their obligation.
Workplace injuries State and Territory occupational health and safety laws mean that workers have rights to time off, to payment for medical treatment, and to reasonable accommodations to assist a return to work, if you suffer a workplace injury or a work-related illness. There are different reporting and claiming systems in each State/Territory, so contact your NTEU Branch for more information.
Superannuation All university casual staff are entitled to be paid superannuation. NTEU is campaigning for increased levels of employer contribution to remove the disparity between casual and noncasual super entitlements (see www.supercasuals.org.au).
Respect in the workplace As well as the ‘hard’ workplace rights mentioned above, the NTEU campaigns for improved collegial rights for casual academics – working for genuine respect and recognition in the academic workplace. In many Agreements provisions have been negotiated which improve things such as access to university intranets, email and libraries between semesters.
Get involved! Our workplace rights are won, protected, enforced and improved by the NTEU – our Union. Casuals should be active in the NTEU to ensure your interests continue to be strongly advocated, and to stand together to make sure the rights already won are delivered in practice.
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WHY I’M A MEMBER William Mudford Australian National University
I
am part of the Union because it is the collective voice that we have together as employees. By being a member I’m supporting that. The Union rebalances the fundamental power imbalance between employers and employees in the workplace relationship. I work as a casual at ANU and I’ve had to do other jobs elsewhere as well. In another job we realised that through our Enterprise Agreement we had a right to an extra public holiday each year; but management ignored that, whether deliberately or not. We all walked into the CEO’s office together to say we expected to get that day off, and we got it. One person alone might not have had the confidence to do that. Of course, in my job as a casual at ANU we don’t even have those rights to paid public holidays and sick leave! I support the NTEU’s focus on working out ways to make sure that general staff as well as academics are employed on more secure employment terms, and also that, where there’s a genuine need for using casual staff, the pay loading is high enough to cover what is really lost through being casual. A 20% loading barely covers lost public holidays and annual leave. It’s 25% at ANU but it’s still not an encouragement for employers to put people on more permanent employment contracts. Using casuals is financially cheaper and they can not employ you from one day to the next if they want to cut costs further. We need the collective voice of a union so that we’re respected and our conditions are as good as they can be. There’s a drive by employers to employ less and less people who do more and more work. I don’t believe employers understand the practical details of the work that employees do. Together we can demonstrate that we actually need more people to do the work they are expecting us to do. Employees’ voices need to be heard for the employer to understand the practical details of the work being done, and they need to be heard collectively. For example, an individual might tell their supervisor – if they feel they can risk telling them – that it actually takes half an hour to mark an essay, not 15 minutes. Their supervisor might say you’re just not marking competently. But if a group of tutors collectively say it, that demonstrates that it’s systemic. The NTEU has consulted casuals and they have raised this issue and as a result the NTEU successfully fought for marking and preparation pay to be increased. It’s about getting paid properly to do the work properly. It takes a certain amount of time to provide detailed feedback for students – just skimming through doesn’t deliver good educational outcomes. I should mention that I myself have experienced fair treatment from supervisors in my work as a research assistant. The recent funding uncertainty for universities means there are significant structural issues that can’t be addressed at the individual level. It was only through staff and students uniting on this and creating public discussion about the importance of higher education that we were able to stop the Federal Government’s attacks. If we’d just relied on the Vice-Chancellors we would have had full deregulation and the resulting destruction of our current higher education system.
William Mudford is an academic at ANU and an NTEU member. This article is based on an interview conducted by Jane Maze from the NTEU ACT Division.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Pyne ignoring the $100K elephant in the room By Paul Kniest Policy & Research Coordinator
On 17 March, the Senate debated and voted down the Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 which Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne had introduced into the House of Representatives the day after his original legislation was rejected by the Senate, back in December last year. The new Bill incorporated a number of concessions including, most importantly, the removal of the proposal to charge students market-based interest rates on their HECS debts. However, upon realising that these changes were not enough to persuade Senators to change their votes, and in a desperate eleventh hour attempt to get his legislation through, the Minister also agreed to: • Remove the 20% cut in funding per student from the Bill and deal with it separately, and • Fund the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) for another year regardless of the outcome of the Bill, after threatening to not release the already approved funding. Part of the Government’s difficulty in selling its higher education policy is that the principles or reasons for needing reform have changed dramatically, both before and since the election. Pre-election promises of ‘masterly inactivity’ and ‘no changes to university funding’ have translated into the most radical changes to higher education policy in over two decades. Not even the Government’s $15 million advertising campaign, which made a number of highly misleading claims, was enough to convince the public and Senators that a policy which would allow universities to charge students whatever they like for a university degree is fair or in the public interest. It has become clear that neither the Minister nor ViceChancellors have been able, publicly or privately, to convince Senators that fee deregulation would not result in some students paying a $100,000 or more for a degree. While the Minister’s efforts to push through his policies without having an electoral mandate, or without adequate and genuine consultation, or without any research and or analysis and his threats to withdraw $150 million of NCRIS funding if this policy is not passed have contributed to his difficulties, they pale into insignificance when compared to the substantive problems associated with his policies. The real problems are that the policies are unprincipled, unsustainable and unfair. The Government’s principles for pursuing policy have varied from being an essential part of budget repair, to asking students to pay their share, to price signals being the most efficient way to allocate university places. It is no wonder the Government has been unable to kick a policy goal in this area when it keeps moving the goal posts. Further, the Government’s ‘blank cheque’ policy is also ultimately unsustainable. The experience with the demand driven model and the fully contestable funding model in Victorian VET is that greater than expected increases in enrolments lead to budget blow-outs which results in further cuts to funding-per-student.
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However, without doubt, the main reason the Government has been unable to get support for its higher education policy is because it is fundamentally unfair. Despite the Government’s best efforts to dismiss the prospects of $100,000 degrees as nothing but scare mongering, Pyne has been unable to convince Senators that this will not be the reality. $100,000 degrees or excessive fee increases are the elephant in the room that the Minister and Vice-Chancellors are trying to dance around when it comes to fee deregulation. Evidence of this has been the emergence of a number of alternative policies put forward with the objective of alleviating the possibility of excessive fee increases. These include introducing a policy which would limit how providers could spend fee revenue, limiting the amount students could borrow through the Higher Education Loans Scheme (HELP) and the Chapman-Phillips ‘tax/levy’ proposal
which would withdraw public subsidies for fee increases above a certain level. It’s time for the Government to look the $100,000 elephant directly in the eyes. As the NTEU states in our submissions to the latest Senate References Committee inquiries into the higher education legislation, the simplest, surest and most transparent way of stopping excessive fee increases is to keep a cap on the maximum fee Commonwealth supported students can be charged. Follow the campaign www.nteu.org.au/degreemortgage NTEU Submission to Senate Reference Committee www.nteu.org.au/degreemortgage/publications Above: NTEU supporters at the 4 March ACTU rally in Melbourne. Photo Paul Clifton.
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Precarious Academic Campaigns in the US
Struggle within the struggle By Joe Berry Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL)
M@ContrAcademic
The last few years in the US has seen the most publicity and the most activity in the contingent faculty movement since casualisation became a major factor in higher education academic employment in the 1970s. With over 70 per cent of post-secondary faculty now working without job security (tenure, in US terms), the precarious, contingent, ‘adjunct’ majority has been impossible to ignore by the mainstream press or the major unions on campuses, none of whom are led by contingent faculty.
National Adjunct Walkout Day The media attention has changed, from the occasional or even frequent ‘poor adjunct’ stories to reports of organising and collective struggle, most recently National Adjunct Walkout Day (NAWD). Sparked initially by an anonymous group of contingents at San Jose State University (where contingents have arguably the best collective bargaining agreement in the US, as part of the California Faculty Association/AAUP, SEIU, NEA) and spread mostly through social media, 25 February saw activities on hundreds of campuses in over half the 50 states. Actions ranged from actual mass walkouts to rallies, teach-ins and informational picketing and tabling.
COCAL This sort of grassroots independent action by contingents, has been effectively part of a broader inside-outside strategy and has pushed major unions into more activity among the contingent majority. Another aspect of the ‘outside’ part of the strategy (contingents organising themselves independently to speak for themselves directly as compared with the ‘inside’ actions to work within larger unions and organisations that we do not control) has been the development of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL) and its international (Canada, US and Mexico) biennial conferences since 1996. COCAL also sponsors a discussion listserve and a weekly news aggregator, COCAL
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UPDATES (email joeberry@igc.org to get on the list). COCAL was also the parent of Campus Equity Week, alternating biennially with the COCAL conferences.
New Faculty Majority Another major aspect of the ‘outside’ strategy is the New Faculty Majority (NFM) membership organisation, the only US organisation focused completely on contingent faculty. Although not a union, NFM has worked on contingent faculty issues with all the major unions and with non-unionised contingent faculty, including an Unemployment Initiative to gain greater rights to unemployment insurance; testimony before a Congressional committee on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), a women and contingency project, assistance in building local and regional organisations of contingents in a number of different states, and responding to media and other information requests. NFM was the sponsor in 2013 (and will be in 2015) of Campus Equity Week, a nationally coordinated attempt to draw attention to the impact of contingency on campus on education, students and faculty.
Metro strategy This outside aspect of the inside-outside strategy has had its clearest effect ‘inside’ larger unions in the rising level of union organising among contingent faculty. Unions have finally adopted the Metro Strategy, which seeks to organise contingent faculty on a regional basis, reflecting the way the contingent labour force actually functions – not particularly attached to one employer or institution. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been pursuing a national organising campaign
in over 20 cities, especially in the private non-profit sector and has established over 20 new bargaining units so far. Both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and United Steel Workers (USW) have begun projects of a similar nature. The Metro Strategy has been popularised by the book Reclaiming the Ivory Tower, Organising Adjuncts to Change Higher Education, by Joe Berry (Monthly Review Press, 2005). All in all, there is more happening with the more than one million contingent faculty than at any time in the past. One way to observe the vitality and strength of a movement is that there is now active strategic debate within it, the ‘struggle within the struggle.’ While uncomfortable sometimes, this may be the most hopeful sign and marker for future progress, along with the increasing international consciousness and political sophistication of the still-emerging movement leadership. Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL) www.cocalinternational.org COCAL discussion listserve http://adj-l.org/mailman/listinfo/adj-l_adj-l.org National Adjunct Walkout Day nationaladjunct.tumblr.com www.facebook.com/pages/National-Adjunct-WalkoutDay/340019999501000 New Faculty Majority www.newfacultymajority.info SIEU Adjunct Action adjunctaction.org AFT United Academics of Philadelphia unitedacademicsphilly.org USW Adjunct Faculty Association www.facebook.com/AdjunctFacultyAssociation Above: Seattle University faculty and students stage a Walkout for Quality Education on National Adjunct Walkout Day in February (image: Flickr). Left: ‘A is for Adjunct’ badges used in Flint, Michigan on National Adjunct Walkout Day (image: Facebook).
read online at www.unicasual.org.au
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Organising casualised academics in Canada
Fairness for contract academic staff By Jeannie Rea NTEU National President
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) biannual Council last December opened with a panel discussion on ‘Fairness for contract academic staff’. This was indicative of CAUT’s determination to increase their focus upon contract academic staff. The NTEU was invited to participate and coming straight from our National Insecure Work Conference, I was well positioned to outline and reflect upon the NTEU’s record and new initiatives. There was significant interest from delegates in the NTEU’s approach and our ongoing critique of our own practice. Most of the delegates were academics and despite the institutionalisation of university teaching as precarious work in Canadian universities, as I listened to the debate it was clear that there remained an elitist view from some speakers that ignored both the critical work and the humanity of their casually employed colleagues. Therefore, in discussion it was emphasised the personally and professionally crushing impact for casual teaching staff of invisibility to their more securely employed colleagues. Opening up the issue assisted contract academic delegates to speak about their experiences. I also distributed the report of our recent survey on the experiences of academic casuals with online teaching expectations, which includes commentary on their experiences (see p.14). Similar to our experience, for many more securely employed academics it is as casualisation impacts more directly upon their own work and profession that many have become more conscious of, and concerned about, their casually employed colleagues’ situations. The capacity of academics to control their workload and their courses is broken down when teaching is done by another group of staff, as is assessment and student contact. Meanwhile, they wear responsibility for holding onto
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quality and standards in course review and accreditation. Working collaboratively increases awareness of colleagues’ poor working conditions and remuneration. It was disturbing to listen to the other panellists from Canada and the United States describe a divided system, which has been apparently accepted for decades. Only now that more previously tenured academic jobs are being casualised (made ‘adjunct’) are unions who principally cover tenured academics mobilising around precarious work. At the same time, other unions have jumped into this space like the Service Employees International Union (SIEU). The SEIU is organising academics in the same way they have other precarious workers. However, the most success has been at universities and colleges with histories of union activism. At the NTEU Insecure Work Conference, Malini Cadambi, SIEU Higher Education Organiser, explained that support from more securely employed faculty and administrators makes all the difference. There are also unions dedicated to organising precariously employed higher education workers. Also speaking on the CAUT panel was, Sylvain Marios, Vice President of FNEEQ-CSN (Quebec), which covers casual contract adjunct staff. He spoke about what they have won over forty years for adjunct staff in terms of wages and conditions. It is an impressive record and clearly better than the non-unionised experiences of most adjunct academics. However, there has not been any success on gaining more secure jobs. The reality is that insecure jobs have continue to expand while tenured positions continue to contract. The NTEU will look and listen to other unions on how they are tackling the rapid expansion of casual academic work and this will inform our own approaches. I was most grateful for the invitation from CAUT to participate in their Council, and also to give the dinner address on our campaign against our Federal Government’s higher education agenda of deregulation, funding cuts and privatisation. Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) www.caut.ca FNEEQ-CSN www.fneeq.qc.ca/en/ Service Employees International Union (SIEU) www.seiu.org
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I hereby authorise the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) APCA User ID No.062604 to arrange for funds to be debited from my/our account at the financial institution identified and in accordance with the terms described in the Direct Debit Request (DDR) Service Agreement
I INSERT YOUR NAME
SIGNATURE
1. 2. 3. 4.
NAME ON CARD
I hereby authorise the Merchant to debit my Card account with the amount and at intervals specified above and in the event of any change in the charges for these goods/ services to alter the amount from the appropriate date in accordance with such change. This authority shall stand, in respect of the above specified Card and in respect of any Card issued to me in renewal or replacement thereof, until I notify the Merchant in writing of its cancellation. Standing Authority for Recurrent Periodic Payment by Credit Card.
| MASTERCARD VISA |PAYMENT: MONTHLY
SIGNATURE
BSB
I hereby authorise the Institution or its duly authorised servants and agents to deduct from my salary by regular instalments, dues and levies (as determined from time to time by the Union), to NTEU or its authorised agents. All payments on my behalf and in accordance with this authority shall be deemed to be payments by me personally. This authority shall remain in force until revoked by me in writing. I also consent to my employer supplying NTEU with updated information relating to my employment status.
OPTION 4: CASUAL/SESSIONAL
Processed on the 16th of the month or following working day
NAME ON CARD CARD NO.
|MAIL/ BLDG CODE MONTH NEXT | INCREMENT DUE
DATE
Description of goods/services: NTEU Membership Dues. To: NTEU, PO Box 1323, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205
‡Associated bodies: NTEU (NSW); Union of Australian College Academics (WA Branch) Industrial Union of Workers at Edith Cowan University & Curtin University; Curtin University Staff Association (Inc.) at Curtin University; Staff Association of Edith Cowan University (Inc.) at ECU
MAIL TO: NTEU National Office PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 T (03) 9254 1910 F (03) 9254 1915 E national@nteu.org.au
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