Connect 12 01 by NTEU

VOLUME 3 Vol. 12 No. 2 No. 1

August 2010 March 2019

THE MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIAN CASUAL & SESSIONAL UNIVERSITY STAFF

VOLUME 3 No. 2 August 2010

NTEU protests casualisation at Universities Australia conference Fighting for employer paid parental leave for all staff A Day in the Life of an ECR Casual worker wins right to annual leave Momentum building to change the rules Precarity, parenting & radical generosity University workforce casualisation a national disgrace Is the pursuit of student satisfaction risking your health & safety?

read online at www.unicasual.org.au ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)

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One set of rules for vice-chancellors, another for casual staff

Freedom of speech a distraction from academic constraints

NTEU protests casualisation

National Employment Standards: Call for casual conversion

Dispute over casual pay rates at UniSA

Employer paid parental leave for all staff

'I Pledge' campaign

Wage theft, university style

Casual worker wins right to annual leave

NTEU Scholarships 2019: Call for applications

A&TSI Staffing rates rise slightly

Aboriginal massacres map

10 Momentum building to change the rules 12 A Day in the Life an ECR 14 UQ Charter of Rights for Casual Academic Staff 16 Precarity, parenting & radical generosity 18 University .workforce casualisation a national disgrace 20 Is the pursuit of student satisfaction risking your health & safety? 22 Meet the Defenders of Tertiary Education

Editor: Alison Barnes Production: Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance: Anastasia Kotaidis Cover image: NTEU members protesting at the Universities Australia conference in Canberra, February 2019 (Credit: Mr Guard). 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 The views expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors, and not necessarily the official views of NTEU.

In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, this magazine is printed on 100 per cent recycled paper: produced from 65 per cent postconsumer waste and 35 per cent pre-consumer waste.

NTEU Editorial

One set of rules for vice-chancellors, another for casual staff As Connect goes to print, Australia is gearing up for a Federal Election. There is no doubt that the many laws that govern Australian workplaces are flawed and favour Australian employers at the expense of working Australians. Unions are currently subject to laws that limit our right to strike and thereby undermine labour’s most effective means of improving wages and conditions. Award conditions, on which higher education staff employed by private providers are often dependent, are substantially worse than those that cover the rest of the sector. And yet, we lack effective means to improve them. Allowing industrially aggressive employers such as Murdoch University to use the termination of workplace agreements as a weapon to break unions and drive down the wages and employment conditions of employees is yet another example of broken workplace rules. These rules inhibit our ability to ensure that we all work in decent jobs with fairly negotiated pay and conditions and in safe workplaces free of bullying and harassment. Moreover, bodies such as the Registered Organisations Commission and the Australian Building and Construction Commission explicitly seek to impede and cripple unions by draining resources and wasting members’ money. A recent study by the ACTU suggests that inequality in Australia is growing. There was a 20 per cent increase in the number of Australian billionaires between 20162017. Yet wage stagnation suggests that Australia is moving towards an income recession. Many precariously employed workers across our sector have experienced an income recession of sorts for years and are trapped in forms of employment that offer little security of any type. Meanwhile vice-chancellors' remuneration has reached excessive levels. Australian universities are, and should remain, centres of excellence in teaching and research, and places that generate debate and contribute to a healthy democracy. This is a view we share with university managements. Where we depart from management’s rosy rhetoric is our belief that excellence should not be achieved on the back of an insecurely employed and vulnerable workforce. We reject the notion that staff who contribute to teaching and research excellence and to the administration that supports these goals are often not entitled to sick leave, holiday pay, or any number of conditions hard won by other workers.

Think of those casually employed at the Australian National University (ANU) who are excluded from employer-paid parental leave (regardless of their length of service to the University), or those on fixed-term contracts who are at risk of losing their employer-paid parental leave if they experience a break in service between contracts. As one professional staff member at ANU remarked when recounting her experience, "I returned to work at the ANU ten days after giving birth to my son. My family needed the income, but it wasn’t just this – I also needed to secure my next contract. I felt guilty about leaving my son, and would try to see him to breastfeed on my lunch breaks". Federal elections are one way to change the rules. They potentially provide a way to check the often contemptuous behaviour of Australia’s vice-chancellors. But a focus on electoral politics is not all that's needed. We must continue to work together to build grassroots power on our campuses by building our membership and our levels of organisation and activism so that we can: • Ensure our current Agreements are enforced. • Stop the petty tyrannies of university management. • Secure significant wins for all staff in future rounds of enterprise bargaining. We can stop wage theft and improve job security and work conditions if we (whether casually or continuously employed): • Talk to our colleagues about joining the NTEU. • Engage with our casuals networks. • Participate in the actions that happen regularly across our universities. As Raewyn Connell concludes in her new book, The Good University, ‘I think it is possible to make the future creative, inclusive and democratic. It will require commitment and struggle. Good universities make the commitment and the struggle worthwhile.’ abarnes@nteu.org.au

Alison Barnes NTEU National President

Australian Universities’ Review (AUR) is published twice a year by the NTEU. All NTEU members are entitled to receive a free subscription on an opt-in basis – so you need to let us know.

Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.

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

CAPA Column

Freedom of speech a distraction from academic constraints Freedom of speech in universities has become a hot-button issue in Australia, following similar culture wars in the United States and United Kingdom. The free speech debate has been used as an excuse to attack universities and their staff for their presumed political beliefs, while failing to acknowledge material barriers to academic freedom. Several high-profile incidents in late 2018 formed the basis for conservatives to argue that free speech is under threat in universities. First, a speaking tour talk by Quentin Van Meter slated for the University of Western Australia was cancelled amid student opposition on the basis that Van Meter’s subject mater was transphobic. Then, Bettina Arndt faced opposition to her speeches at La Trobe University and the University of Sydney, on her ‘Fake Rape Crisis’ speaking tour. Unlike Van Meter, Arndt was able to deliver both speeches. These incidents prompted the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, to order a sector-wide Review of Freedom of Speech in Higher Education, which sought to create a model free speech code which universities can ratify. The Hon Robert French AC, tasked with leading the review, has generated the anticipated model code despite writing that he is not convinced of the existence of a free speech crisis. The so-called free speech crisis is framed by Minister Tehan and his ilk as the radical, monolithic Left silencing conservative-leaning viewpoints. There is no acknowledgement that the students who protested Arndt’s questionable claims were exercising their freedom of speech, much like Arndt herself. Those who have spent much time in universities will understand that the academy houses a diversity of viewpoints. There are genuine issues with academic freedom in universities, but censorship of conservative viewpoints is not one of them. Sustained cuts to funding constrain the types of research which takes place. With research conducted on a bare-bones budget, there is little room for exploration of controversial ideas. Cutting research funding narrows diversity of ideas. Casualisation of the research workforce plays a part, too. The NTEU has repeatedly sounded the alarm on increasing casualisation. Sadly, most of the university workforce is now employed insecurely. Researchers who lack job security are less inclined to pursue risky or controversial projects, as failure threatens their likelihood of winning their next short-term contract. At the same time, the current Coalition Government has actively interfered with research funding allocations. Clandestine ministerial interference in the awarding of Australian Research Council funding, removing funding from projects which do not align with the Government’s agenda, is a serious threat to academic freedom. Perhaps Minister Tehan should have begun his concerns around free speech by condemning his predecessor’s secret removal of funding from humanities research projects. Critical to the free speech debate is the concept of universities as public spaces. If the university is indeed a kind of town square, then any kind of speech which is permitted in public should be allowed within its grounds. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for the neoliberal university. Arguably, the university is no longer a community space – it is an institution that students pay top dollar to attend. International students and postgraduate coursework students paying full fees typically fork out $30,000 per year. Universities have become increasingly reliant on these full-fee paying students with declining government investment. With high fees come high expectations. University management, then, has every right to make judgments on who to allow on campus to use their facilities, in order to cultivate a safe and positive experience for their students. Successive governments have cut public funding and forced universities to run as businesses. Hosting a sexist or transphobic speaker, as was the case for Arndt and Van Meter respectively, is poor customer service. The Government cannot have it both ways. Universities are no longer fully-funded public resources which exist solely to benefit their communities. The free speech crisis is a deliberate distraction from the dysfunctions in our universities which are largely caused by inadequate funding. It has become another weapon in tearing down universities as excessive or out-of-touch, justifying the very funding cuts which have led to dampened academic inquiry. Natasha Abrahams is the President of CAPA president@capa.edu.au www.capa.edu.au www.facebook.com/CAPA.Au

Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

Semester 1, 2019

Natasha Abrahams CAPA President

Universities Australia Conference

NTEU protests casualisation By Lachlan Clohesy ACT Division Organiser

The average vice-chancellor will earn in 11 days what the average casual employee will earn in one year. An average casually employed university staff member’s yearly income will fall below the Australian full-time minimum wage. With the number of people employed on a casual basis creeping above 2-in-5 university staff, the NTEU ACT Division decided it was time to send a message to Australia’s vice-chancellors highlighting the consequences of their hiring practices to the people on the ground, who deliver more than half of the teaching at our universities. Every year vice-chancellors gather in Canberra for the National Conference of Universities Australia (UA), held in the National Convention Centre over several days. It’s the sort of event which attracts high profile international visitors and federal politicians, and this year it coincided with an address to the National Press Club by UA Chair (and Monash University Vice-Chancellor) Margaret Gardner. It’s also attended by many of our hard working members, who do the real work in universities – leading their fields in research, teaching and learning. And it’s an event where the fact that more than 2-in-5 university staff are now employed on a casual basis is never really grappled with in any substantive way. NTEU members decided to highlight to this conference what 2-in-5 university staff being in casual work means. It means that 2-in-5 university staff have no paid sick leave, and must make the choice between coming to work sick, or forgoing desperately needed income. It means that 2-in-5 university staff have no employer paid parental leave, and must decide whether they can afford to rest and recover or whether they need to go back to work within a week or two of giving birth, so that they can pay the rent. It means that 2-in-5 university staff will have no annual leave, and

that while for many Christmas is time off, for casual staff it can mean months of unemployment. It means that 2-in-5 university staff, already disadvantaged by earning less income, will earn 9.5 per cent in superannuation instead of the 17 per cent enjoyed by a securely employed colleague doing similar work. Given the gendered nature of insecure work, this contributes to both the gender pay gap and the gender superannuation gap. So, members from the NTEU ACT Division arrived at the National Convention Centre on the day before the conference proper, as guests were welcomed with an evening pre-conference reception. They arrived, not to attend the reception, but to send a clear message to vice-chancellors that the exploitation of casually employed staff in their universities will no longer stand. They came to tell vice-chancellors that, for as long as the mass casualisation of our sector causes these problems to persist, our members will hold them accountable. The most inspiring part of this was that the members that arrived were not just those in casual employment. Plenty of fixed-term and continuing, full-time and part-time members gave up their evening to show their solidarity with casually employed staff. Billy Bragg, in his lyrics to The Internationale, sings that “freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all”, and the same is true of our working conditions. We can negotiate great outcomes when it comes to annual leave, sick leave, paid parental leave and more – but so long as 2-in-5 university staff will never enjoy these conditions we are helping to exacerbate the divisions between the haves and have-nots in Australian higher education. We are all in this together. Tackling the huge problem of casualisation in our sector requires not just casually employed staff, but all staff to lend their voices of support to improving conditions for all university staff in the sector. Congratulations to all of the NTEU ACT Division members who attended and demonstrated their commitment as unionists by expressing solidarity with casually employed staff. Below: NTEU members at the UA action

read online at www.unicasual.org.au

National Employment Standards

Call for casual conversion By Wayne Cupido National Industrial Coordinator

NTEU has made a submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee Inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Right to Request Casual Conversion) Bill 2019. The draft bill proposes to provide eligible casual employees with a clear conversion pathway via the National Employment Standards (NES) in the Fair Work Act. The Bill would ensure a protected right to request conversion will be available to casuals, such as academic casual staff, who do not have an existing right in an award or agreement. Although the Union is broadly supportive of a right to apply for conversion incorporated into the Fair Work Act, the Union has made several recommendations to strengthen the bill and remove any diminution of existing rights to casuals in our sector.

In our submission, the Union calls for the bill to: • Remove the requirement for casual employees to be ‘designated’ by employers in order to qualify for the entitlement. • Clarify employees’ service requirements or continuous service requirements which may include non-working periods. • Remove the requirement for a “regular pattern of hours” in favour of "any regular pattern of work, without the need for it to be ongoing." • Limit the grounds on which the request can be refused to "reasonable grounds." • Make any contravention a civil remedy provision subject to penalties. A report back from the Senate Committee is due on 26 March 2019 and updates will be posted on our UniCasuals website. www.unicasual.org.au

CASUAL VOICES Tell us your story @ unicasual.org.au/casual_voices

what I am entitled to, because of 'funding cuts'. The Enterprise Agreement makes clear what rates to pay, but the School just 'picked' the rate to match their budget. Not on!! The School also took away my role as Coordinator for a course that I developed and am the only academic staff for. Why? Because of budget cuts.

I've been a sessional academic for 4 years now, involved in Course Coordination, Lecturing and Tutoring. The uni 'says' it values sessional staff, but actions suggest otherwise. This semester the School sought to pay me a lower rate for lecturing and tutoring than

In practice, I am spending the same amount of time explaining to the permanent staff member what to do, as he does not teach this Course. I am the only teaching staff.

Dispute over casual pay rates at UniSA By John Pezy UniSA Branch Organiser

In January, NTEU notified a dispute to the University of South Australia over remuneration for tutors working at UniSA Online. After issues were raised by casual staff at UniSA online, NTEU looked in to apparent disparities in online tutors’ pay as compared to face-to-face tutors. As a result, NTEU has notified a dispute over the application of casual pay rates. Part of the

Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

Semester 1, 2019

Fair pay for fair work. I had to fight to get paid the right rate. In the meantime, the School was looking for an alternative sessional to replace me. We only reached agreement in the closing hours of Friday before Week 1. As the Head of School so eloquently put it, they needed a "warm body infront of the students" to teach students the following Monday. This uni values it's sessional staff? I think not. Deb.

remedy NTEU is seeking includes an audit of UniSA Online remuneration of its casual tutors. Casual staff do core work at all universities. NTEU considers the work and preparation that goes in to online teaching to be the same as that done for face-to-face teaching. It is not uncommon for casual staff in the higher education sector to experience difficulties in getting properly remunerated for their work, especially as purse strings tighten and organisational units look for ways to cut costs. Typically this takes the form of casual contracts which underestimate the amount of work required for a specific task (such as allocating too little time for marking) or which fail to account for or remunerate tasks that are nevertheless required (such as course reviews). If you would like to tell us your own story, please contact the UniSA Branch on 08 8227 2384 or at unisa@nteu.org.au.

Employer paid parental leave for all staff By Sarah Ambrose and Lachlan Clohesy ACT Division

Women’s Action Network (WAN) members at the Australian National University (ANU) have started a campaign to demand the right to employer paid parental leave for all university staff, including casuals. The petition will be open until the end of April, after which it will be presented to ANU Vice-Chancellor, Brian Schmidt. If successful, the ANU will become just the second university in the country (behind UNSW) to win employer paid parental leave for casually employed university staff. Members got together on International Women's Day (IWD) 2019 to hand out leaflets and circulate the petition. The WAN, an active group of women NTEU members established at the ANU to campaign around issues which predominantly affect women, launched a survey on IWD 2018 to find out what concerns are forefront for women members. As a result, one year later the inaugural WAN campaign has taken off, seeking to win employer paid parental leave for all staff. Paid parental leave emerged from the survey as a key issue, and it became clear in subsequent WAN meetings that this was a deeply felt issue for members. At the ANU, an employee on a fixed-term or continuing contract must have been employed for 12 months to receive any employer paid parental leave. Casually employed staff receive no employer paid parental leave. This causes additional problems for women who have taken career breaks – they may be forced into a situation where upon recommencing at the University they need to serve their 12 months again before accessing further paid parental leave. Staff from overseas may also face issues in the first 12 months, or if they’re employed casually.

If they are not Australian citizens, they will not be able to access either government paid or employer paid parental leave. Currently 14 universities have pro-rata parental leave for those employed in the first 12 months. Additionally, 6 other universities have some measure to address the issue – meaning 20 universities have attempted to address that problem in some way. However, only one university currently provides employer paid parental leave for casually employed staff. Members at UNSW were able to win a clause in their Agreement which provided employer paid parental leave to casually employed staff who have been engaged for more than two years. While the WAN would like to see pro-rata arrangements for these staff too, there is clearly a precedent for providing employer paid parental leave for casually employed staff. If the ANU wants to live up to its reputation as a sector leader in this area, and continue to attract the best and brightest, it needs to at least match (if not improve upon) conditions which are enjoyed by university staff elsewhere in the country. This campaign is a fantastic initiative from the WAN and is particularly impressive in that it is explicit in stating that when we win conditions for all staff, that we mean all staff. Casually employed staff are as much a part of the University as those employed in more secure positions, and when we win conditions for our members we need to ensure that those rights are enjoyed by all of our members – including casuals. You can support our members in their campaign by signing their petition at: nteu.org.au/anu/wan Below: WAN members on IWD at ANU (Sophie Baker)

read online at www.unicasual.org.au

'I Pledge' campaign By Gaurav Nanda Victorian Division Recruitment & Campaign Organiser

If we want to win campaigns for casual staff members, the first step is to build support from other staff members who are an integral part of the university community. That is why the NTEU Victorian Division's new ‘I Pledge’ campaign aims to: • Activate the university community and build support from other staff members by educating them about casual staff members' issues. • Build NTEU members' community by growing all staff membership. • Identify and develop activists amongst casual staff to build grassroots power

Wage theft, university style By Ken McAlpine National Education & Training Officer

Wage theft by employers has made big news in the last year, with many vulnerable employees – especially casuals – being ripped of thousands of dollars. Universities, TAFES and other large employers of NTEU members run sophisticated pay systems. Almost universally, the employer pays the right rate for the classification assigned to the employee. So how can our employers be involved in wage theft?

A community that is active and engaged serves as the backbone of our campaign work. We need to activate engagement from professors, lecturers, general staff, and unit chairs – casual staff members' first point of contact at any given university.

The answer is that in our industry, wage theft occurs by the misclassification of employees. If a university advertises that it wants someone with a science degree to work as a casual Research Assistant, and then employs the successful applicant at General Staff Level 4, then the university is engaging in wage theft just as much as a shonky Dominos Pizza Store.

Other staff members working in universities are not aware how hardworking casual employees are treated. They might want to support casual campaigns but are not educated about the issues that casuals deal with, or they have never been approached by unions to encourage them to support casual staff members campaigns.

NTEU is constantly having to enforce correct classifications, where the correct rate of pay is being made for the wrong classification – for example tutors being paid as demonstrators, or casual general staff students being paid at Level 1 irrespective of the work performed.

Other groups of employees can help target decision makers. More than wining campaigns, this initiative will also direct the movement towards a wholly powerful engaged community of university workers who care for each other and will stand together to combat unfair treatment. The ‘I Pledge’ campaign's objectives are to: • Recruit all university staff including Unit chairs/subject coordinators to take the pledge to support casual staff members. • Recruit casual staff members and encourage them to participate in the campaign. • Grow casual academic staff membership by 10% statewide. • Grow Victorian Division all other staff membership by 5%. • Build ‘I Pledge’ committees comprising of casuals and other staff members in universities across Victoria. • Identify potential casual delegates and activists. An engaged and active university community is powerful and is bound to win real improvements in working conditions. Together we can and we will. ‘I Pledge’ to support casual staff members, will you take the pledge? Send us your message of support on any of our social media pages:

C thesupercasuals

M@thesupercasuals

Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

@supercasuals9

Semester 1, 2019

Non-disclosure agreements add to abuse In some cases, after NTEU intervention, universities have acknowledged that they have broken the law, but will even then not pay the employee what they are owed unless the employee signs a “non-disclosure agreement”, leaving the Union and its members with the choice of agreeing to sign such an agreement or have to take the university to court. This compounds the original abuse, and makes it illegal in some cases for the employee to tell others in the same boat that they have also been underpaid. All casual members should be aware of the rules around the correct classification of their work. If you are in doubt, contact your local NTEU Branch.

Casual worker wins right to annual leave By Kelly Thomas National Senior Industrial Officer

The Federal Court of Australia delivered a ruling in favour of casual workers across the country. The decision has widespread effects and might also impact your university employment. In Workpac v Skene [2018] FCAFC 131, the Full Court found that a casual worker had actually, according to law, been a permanent employee and was therefore entitled to annual leave under the National Employment Standards. Mr Skene was a dump truck operator, employed by Workpac, a labour hire company at a minesite. Workpac and Skene had a contract, referring to him as a casual worker. He worked fly-in, fly-out and he was given his roster 12 months in advance. He worked the same number of hours per shift, worked with the same crew and his roster did not change. His room became exclusively his. None of his pay was designated as a casual loading. Following the termination of his employment, Skene made a claim for accrued but untaken annual leave. His union, the CFMMEU, represented him in the claim. The Full Court’s task in the appeal, was to consider what is casual employment. The National Employment Standards, in the Fair Work Act, entitle employees, other than casuals, to accrue annual leave and to take it at times agreed with their employer. The Fair Work Act does not define casual employment, so the Full Court had to determine whether or not Skene was a casual employee, and therefore whether he was entitled to annual leave. In a unanimous decision, the Full Court found Skene was not a casual employee, and Workpac owed him annual leave. The Court considered what was the “essence of casualness”. The Court found because there was a “firm advance commitment as to the

NTEU Scholarships 2019 Call for applications NTEU is again offering two scholarships in 2019. The application deadline for both scholarships is Friday 26 July 2019. A decision will be made in late August 2019. The Carolyn Allport Scholarship for Postgraduate Feminist Studies by Research is available for a woman undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline, awarding $5000 per year for a maximum of 3 years to the successful applicant. Applicants must be currently enrolled in postgraduate studies, by research, in an academic award of an Australian public university. This scholarship has been created in recognition of Dr Carolyn

duration of the …employment or the days or hours the employee will work”, the employment could not be considered casual. In coming to a conclusion about the nature of casual employment, the Court held that various factors will be in play, including whether the patterns of work are irregular, whether there is a lack of continuity of work, how intermittent the work is, and how predictable or uncertain the period of employment is. The unchanging, regular and predictable nature of Skene’s work was, in the Court’s view, determinant of ongoing employment. Business groups have widely condemned the decision, lobbying at least to be able to offset casual loading against any claim for annual leave. That issue was not clarified in the Skene case. Workpac has now initiated a separate proceeding to seek to limit the effect of the Skene case, arguing this same point. NTEU is considering the impact of the Skene decision on behalf of the thousands of casual workers in the higher education sector. We’d love to hear your experience, including how your casual employment might better be considered ongoing in light of the above. We encourage you to contact your Branch to find out more information. Any case we might launch will be more successful if the casual workforce unites. If you have friends in casual employment who are not Union members, ask them to join today! nteu.org.au/join

Allport’s contribution to the leadership and development of the Union in her 16 years as National President. The Joan Hardy Scholarship for Postgraduate Nursing Research is available for any student undertaking a postgraduate study of nurses, nursing culture or practices, or historical aspects of nursing as a lay or professional practice. The student need not therefore be or have been a nurse and can be undertaking the study in disciplines/schools other than nursing. A sum of $5000 will be paid in two instalments; half on the awarding of the Scholarship and the remainder on evidence of submission of the thesis. Applicants must be currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university and expect to submit the thesis within one year of being awarded the Scholarship. This scholarship recognises the contribution the late Joan Hardy made to higher education and higher education unionism in over 30 years of activism. For more information: Helena Spyrou hspyrou@nteu.org.au www.nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships

read online at www.unicasual.org.au

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander

Staffing rates rise slightly By Celeste Liddle Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organiser

According to data released by the Australian Government in 2018, the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) staff working in the higher education sector rose to about 1.2% of the total number of staff, showing a slight growth both in the actual number of A&TSI staff hired and in the full-time equivalent rates. Whilst there remains a long way to go before staffing levels are anywhere near approaching population parity rates, at least on the surface increasing numbers look to be a pleasing sign. NTEU membership data, however, paints a different story at this time of the year. Whilst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander membership rates remain comparatively high, the number of people dropping off the lists this time of the year appears to increase each time. Most of these numbers can be attributed to people who are on precarious employment not having their contracts renewed at the end of the year leaving them moving between universities for opportunities or find new roles in the sector. Despite the government data painting one picture, NTEU data appears to paint another – that of rising opportunities for A&TSI people in the sector being mainly non-continuing positions based around specific programs and/or research. The longer term investment in A&TSI employment does not appear to be there because as external project funding dries up, so to do these jobs. Since 2002, the NTEU has been fighting for the inclusion of A&TSI employment targets in all university Enterprise Agreements. Since that time, the number of A&TSI people working in the sector has more than doubled, many universities have employed Indigenous Employment Coordinators and more are working towards the appointment of high level appointments such as Pro-Vice Chancellor Indigenous.

Indigenous Strategy 2017-2020. Good intentions have been outlined however in everyday practice, these types of ambitions don’t appear to be playing out. When looking at the plotted lines on graphs between the actual number and the full time equivalent A&TSI staff currently employed within the university sector, it is clear that the gap between the two lines is growing larger. What this means is that more staff are being employed on lower fractions and continuing roles are being replaced with rolling contracts. Though the numbers of casual staff are not reported by the Government, the assumption can be made that if more fixed term and fractional appointments are being made, then an increase in casual appointments is likely too. In the mainstream, these employment rates equate to 2-in-5 staff working at universities being engaged on casual contracts. If more is not done, A&TSI staff will reach, and then surpass, these statistics. Considering the majority of the teaching load at many institutions is now covered by casual staff, it follows that the number of casually-employed A&TSI staff will be rising too. Simply put, at a time when universities still have so very far to go before they achieve population parity levels of employment, they should not even be thinking of engaging A&TSI staff using tenuous contracts. Doing this only ensures that A&TSI staff are destined to just flow through the system rather than being a part of great cultural and educational change. The NTEU National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC), together with the National A&TSI Unit, are looking to uncloak these numbers and create better awareness of the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander casual and fixed term staff on campus. If you have been engaged on rolling employment contacts or you know an A&TSI staff member who has been, we recommend you make contact with your local A&TSIPC representative.

In addition to this, many universities – outwardly, at least – show their support for shifting the culture of universities by adopting Reconciliation Action Plans and internal employment strategies.

The details for your local representative can be found at

The Federal Coalition Government tied its Indigenous Student Success Program funding guidelines to include universities striving to achieve 3 per cent employment targets. Universities Australia backed these government initiatives and urged all universities to drive towards these employment targets in their

Adam Frogley (Unit Coordinator) afrogley@nteu.org.au

CASUAL VOICES Tell us your story @ unicasual.org.au/casual_voices

Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

www.nteu.org.au/atsi/atsipc Additionally, please make contact with the National A&TSI Unit: Celeste Liddle (Unit Organiser) cliddle@nteu.org.au

I have coordinated several units regularly over the last 6 years. In Semester 1 2018, 900 students enrolled in my unit, [yet] sufficient teaching staff were not engaged to manage this workload. At the end of semester marking was, unsurprisingly, not complete. Shortly thereafter I was advised that 'we are giving someone else the opportunity to develop their unit coordination skills'! M.

Semester 1, 2019

AO for casual academic Lyndall Ryan

Aboriginal massacres map By Helena Spyrou National Education & Training Officer

In January this year, Professor Lyndall Ryan was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant services to higher education, particularly to Indigenous history and women’s studies. Lyndall, a long-term NTEU member, said the award was "completely unexpected and I feel very humbled by it." Lyndall has spent a significant part of her academic career researching Australian Indigenous history. Her interest began in the late 1960s when she spent time in the Hobart archives as a research assistant to Professor Manning Clark. During that time, an archivist there showed her 18 volumes of letters and reports on Tasmania’s Black War in the 1820s. She decided to undertake postgraduate studies, completing a PhD in 1975 titled Aborigines in Tasmania, 1800–1974 and their problems with the Europeans. Over the last 40 years Lyndall has become a leading academic on Australian Aboriginal History, in particular colonial frontier massacres. Her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1981), presented a critical interpretation of the early history of relations between Tasmanian Aborigines and white settlers in Tasmania. A second edition (1996) brought the story up to date. Her work was attacked by Keith Windschuttle, thus drawing her into the "history wars". Windschuttle pointed to alleged discrepancies between Ryan's claims and her cited sources for the claims. Lyndall contested his claims in an essay entitled 'Who is the fabricator?' in Robert Manne's Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2003) and in her book, Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803 (2012).

and approximate locations of massacres and provides sources of corroborating evidence. The map is an important step in acknowledging the extensive violence used against Indigenous people in Australia's history. Stage 2 of the map was released in July 2018 with more than 250 sites including the Northern Territory and South Australia as well as in eastern Australia from 1788-1930. Stage 3 of the map will be released at the end of 2019 and will include sites in Western Australia and an update of sites in other parts of Australia to 1960. In November 2018, NTEU invited Professor Ryan to give the annual NTEU Lecture titled, “From Myall Creek to Coniston: Telling the Truth about Australia’s brutal past”. Over 200 people packed the theatre at University of Adelaide. Lyndall focused on two frontier massacres in Australia – the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, and the Coniston massacre of 1928. She demonstrated the scale and extent of frontier massacres and showed how they were responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Aboriginal people. “The map”, says Lyndall, “is an example of truth telling and a critical part of the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians”. The daughter of Edna Ryan, Australian feminist and labour movement activist and writer, Lyndall also considers herself an activist, but it is “history that has always beckoned me,” she says. Lyndall plans to retire this year but will continue her research. Interactive map: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

Currently a Research Professor in the Centre for the History of Violence, which is part of the Centre for the 21st Century Humanities at the University of Newcastle, Lyndall leads the Colonial Frontier Massacres Project. (https://c21ch.newcastle.edu. au/colonialmassacres/). In 2017, Lyndall and her team at the University of Newcastle released a partially completed online map showing more than 150 massacre sites in eastern Australia. Within six months the site had received more than 60,000 visitors and has received wide coverage in Australia and also internationally. The interactive map records details

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The ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign is building towards its first significant milestone – the 2019 federal election, likely to occur in May.

Momentum building to change the

rules

It’s a milestone because it has been clear from the beginning of the campaign two years ago that to change industrial law to make it fairer for working people, we first need to change the Government. Momentum has been building, with a second round of major rallies throughout Australia held in October last year. The ACTU and state trades and labour councils have announced a further series of mass rallies for 10 April, hoping to carry that momentum through the election campaign. While it’s important that these rallies are very large and demonstrate to the Coalition Government that its existence is under severe threat, it’s also important that the ALP as the alternative government is aware of the breadth and depth of support for changing the rules. The ALP has made some general commitments around correcting the imbalance between employers and employees during enterprise bargaining, and to restoring the penalty rate cuts under the Coalition. But workers and the union movement will need to maintain pressure on a newly elected ALP government to ensure that our voices are heard and acted upon.

‘Jobs You Can Count On’ The ACTU released its 'Jobs You Can Count On' jobs policy on 23 May last year. The policy sets out a strategy to improve both the quantity and quality of work: creating new jobs, lifting pay, enhancing the security and conditions of employment, and ensuring access to decent work for all Australians. This is the framework around which the ACTU and unions are campaigning.

By Michael Evans National Organiser

Its key elements are: • Australia must move to a more even playing field by updating our industrial laws to reflect the reality of the modern workplace and labour market – we must change the rules to put working people’s needs on par with business profits.

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• We must promote and encourage local industries that provide good, secure jobs, rather than relying on a failed model of trickle-down economics. This means maximising job opportunities for locals and investing in industries that train and employ local workers. • We must fight gender inequality, marginalisation and discrimination so that people who have the toughest time getting good secure jobs have a fair shot.

Marginal seats campaign The ACTU is targeting 16 marginal seats, with full-time campaigners employed to co-ordinate community activities. The campaign seeks to identify union members who are undecided about who they will vote for. Their respective unions will then seek to persuade these members that it is in their best interests as workers to put the Coalition last on their ballot paper.

NTEU election activities The key issues affecting higher education about which we want the rules changed continue to be inadequate levels of government funding, job security and the rights of casual staff to convert to more secure forms of employment. Australia has one of the lowest levels of public investment in tertiary education amongst OECD countries: 0.8% of GDP, while the average is 1.0% of GDP; and our students pay amongst the highest fees in the world to attend public universities. We are asking for: • An immediate reversal of the current funding freeze imposed in the MYEFO statement in December 2017, and • A minimum 10% increase in funding per Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP). As for job security, the data tells a depressing tale. On a full time equivalent (FTE) basis: • Just over half (50.9%) of university positions are insecure positions.

• Almost eight out of ten (77%) of teaching-only academic positions are casuals. It is estimated that half of all university teaching is now delivered by casuals. • A similar proportion (78%) of research-only academic positions are short term contracts, with a large proportion of dedicated university researchers relying on research grants for their jobs. This is unsustainable and must change. Unfortunately, the ability of university staff to act collectively to mitigate this situation is severely curtailed by the current industrial relations set-up: • The right to take industrial action is limited to enterprise bargaining periods, and then only after ballots of all members. • As we saw at Murdoch University in 2017, employers can terminate enterprise agreements to undermine the wages and conditions of staff. We want to see the balance of power in enterprise bargaining redressed by: • Curbing employers’ ability to terminate Agreements. • Introducing expanded rights to withdraw our labour, with a real right to strike for better conditions of employment.

Defending & enrolling NTEU is running our Defenders of Tertiary Education campaign for MPS and candidates in this election (see p. 23). We have also developed and distributed information encouraging people to ensure they are correctly enrolled to vote, targeting students and young people who may not have enrolled (see p. 22). We urge NTEU members and activists to get involved in the federal election campaign either through your local Branch or local trades and labour councils, which will manage the ACTU campaign in each locality. www.nteu.org.au/changetherules Above: NTEU members at a Change the Rules rally in Adelaide in 2018. (Keiran McCarron)

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A Day in the Life of an

ECR By "Dr Jennie"

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She comes in the room quietly, nearly a tiptoe, and places her hands on my arm. Still as soft as the day she was born, but no longer as tiny, it is our family sign to ask for attention without talking. Laying my hand briefly on hers, to acknowledge her presence, I keep typing until I finish the thought, and then turn to look into her hazel eyes staring into mine. “Yes, Baby?” “Mum, will you ever be able to play with us?” My heart breaks. She’s ten, how much longer will she want to me to play with her? I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and she leans her cheek into the palm of my hand. “I wish that I could. I really do. But this DECRA [Discovery Early Career Researcher Award] is already overdue and I need to finish it – and I still have to write my lecture for Monday, and I have a journal article due. But I promise, I’ll play as soon as it’s done.” She frowns, her eyes glassy with tears I know she won’t shed. “You always say that!” She stomps from the room, angry to hide her pain. I keep writing for I have no choice. Not really. Earlier this year, I was offered a coordination position. It is a class I have tutored several times before, but the lectures are new. Perhaps I’m lucky, I’ve had the opportunity to coordinate a class in 2015, 2016, and 2017 – meaning that I got to re-use my lectures. And now I get to coordinate again, not everyone gets that chance, even if I do have to write new lectures this time. But when the position was offered to me it was made explicit – I would not be getting any more casual work. I was too expensive, and they have to ‘look after’ their more recent graduates. It doesn’t matter to them that my teaching SES scores have consistently been above a 4.6 out

if 5.0 – teaching is not valued. And I have children to feed. This DECRA is my last shot to stay in academia. But if my teaching is not valued, then neither is my research. Not only do sessional casual teaching contracts contain no provision for paid research time, but two weeks after the contract ends so does institutional access. That means you have no access to libraries for research or accessing journal articles. No desk space, no printer, no institutional email or affiliation. My students can’t even contact me for a letter of recommendation.

Not-snuggles It is night time now, I’ve been working all day, except for the hour when I realised it was 7pm and I hadn’t yet fed the kids their dinner. No wonder they were hungry. I sit on the side of my son's bed in the dark, still typing by the light of the laptop screen. He rests his head against my leg and sighs. “I’m getting used to these not-snuggles. Are you finished yet?” “Be nice if I was wouldn’t it, Buddy?” He pats my knee. “Its OK momma. I know you are doing your best. If I do the dishes in the morning and pack my own lunch box, will you teach me how to play Yahtzee when I get home from school?” I brush his hair back from his forehead and he flattens it again. He’s six. He hates the dishes. It’s a big deal that he’s even offered. I wish that I could promise, but I don’t want to break a promise. “I’ll think about it Buddy. I’m really trying to finish this DECRA buddy. It was due to the staff yesterday.” He huffs and rolls his back to me. “Will you bring Pipkin and Sinder to give me proper cuddles?” I’m glad the cats like to snuggle.

Obstacles and outputs The house is quiet. Both children finally asleep, Pipkin has escaped my son's arms but Sinder has chosen to stay. Nearly midnight, and I am still staring at the computer screen, looking at the advice I was giving by the readership team. "You need to start the ROPE [Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence] section positive, point out what you’ve achieved in spite of the obstacles." My eyes are burning and I don’t know if it is exhaustion or tears. Possibly both at this point. I know what it means to be competitive for a DECRA, the advice trotted out at postgraduate days years ago – five articles and a book. I don’t have that. Not yet. Almost everything I’ve written is in peer review, and you are not supposed to include things in peer review. I have a book contract, but it isn’t due to the publishers until July. I feel unable to figure out how to be positive about so few outputs in print, frozen by the memories of last year's DECRA, where two assessors wrote “Nevertheless, as harsh as it seems, my view is that the track record at this stage is not yet sufficient” and “Even taking into account the considerable career interruptions that she has experienced this is, unfortunately, not a competitive level of outputs for this highly sought after award.” Is ROPE really that meaningless? Did the 1.62 years FTE interruptions (more than half of the time post-graduation) not override the lower levels of publications? Being in the top 10 per cent for project and the bottom 25 per cent as a candidate was soul crushing. Everyone loves the project. But me and my slower outputs? Not so much.

The advice is often “Wait another year. With your ROPE you have two more years to apply.” But I don’t. Not really. I did not work all of 2018. First semester was my choice, I wanted to finish my monograph. Second semester was not, I simply wasn’t hired. And though I’ve been lucky to secure work this semester, it is unlikely for next semester. How do I afford to live? To feed my two children? Centrelink does not recognise writing articles or a book as “work”. It doesn’t matter that I am expected to produce them for my career; Centrelink expects me to be paid for them, and if it isn’t paid, it’s not work. We all know casuals don’t get paid to publish. And Centrelink is threatening to cut my single parent payments if I don’t find “real work”. And I see their point. The light fixture in my daughter's room is broken and has been for a year. It is a $5 piece, but I can’t afford the electrician to install it. I don’t have the funds for the occupational therapy my son needs for his handwriting, or the hole that has been in my back tooth for two years now. We’ve run out of food more than once in the last year that I’ve been unemployed. I didn’t waste 2018. I managed to submit three more journal articles for peer review. But they are still in peer review. This means four articles (one of which was submitted over 12 months ago), are not supposed to be included in the DECRA. On top of which, I have had to write them without institutional support. No libraries to look up new research. No “official” email address. And honestly, who can sustain these levels of outputs without institutional backing or when their kids are hungry?

ECRs need support If universities really want their Early Career Research (ECR) students to be successful, they need to better support them in the years post-graduation. It isn’t enough to simply hire them on teaching-only contracts, they need more support to turn their research into publications. University leaders need to recognise, too, that the world is not the same as when they graduated. It is rarely the case that you walk out of your PhD into a PostDoc. You generally have to have just as many articles as for a DECRA to get a postdoc. And finally, the funding model needs to change. People getting DECRAs who already have stable positions, is this really what the DECRA was designed for? If you think about it for a moment, there is no funding for a true ECRs, the ones just out from PhD trying to get a toehold in the industry. I finished the DECRA application for this year, and finally got to play Uno (my daughter thrashed us all) and taught my son Yahtzee (he beat me by 1 point. Beginner's luck). I know I have a great project, and all I can do now is hope that the articles in peer review (that I included in my ROPE even if I couldn’t list in publications) are enough to get me over the line. But in spite of the university affiliation under my name, none of my articles were written with any university support. And that needs to change. "Dr Jennie" is a casual employee at an Australian university. She has chosen to remain anonymous to protect her future employment opportunities.

read online at www.unicasual.org.au

UQ Charter of

Rights for Casual Academic Staff

By Ellyse Fenton UQ Branch Committee Representative for Casual Staff

Last year, the Charter of the Rights of Casual Academic Staff was launched at the University of Queensland (UQ). The Charter highlights the unfair and exploitative conditions faced by casually employed academics, and broadly calls for recognition, representation, fair remuneration, and employment security. An implementation plan in support of the Charter’s claims has been endorsed by UQ Branch Committee, and now underpins a campaign to improve the working conditions of casual academics at UQ. This article provides an update on campaign activities.

Increasing the visibility of issues affecting casual academics While UQ management is certainly aware of the exploitative conditions under which casual academics are employed, many students, staff, and other stakeholders are not. To educate the wider university community about issues affecting casual academics, we have been running a campaign to promote the Charter and seek support for its claims. This has included distributing the Charter to professional and scholarly associations, developing a poster communicating to ongoing staff the ways they can support their casual colleagues, and foregrounding discussion of casualisation in local area meetings. We have also been undertaking a postcard campaign to seek the support of the wider community. Postcards have been distributed to all Branch members as well as many others through the use of personal and professional networks. We have held two stalls on campus, speaking to passers-by about the Charter and the working conditions of casual academic staff. These have been very successful, with many important conversations taking place. Students, especially, have been shocked to learn about the insecurity, exclusion, and unpaid labour that characterises casual academic employment, particularly teaching. We will be holding further public stalls over the course of the semester. Building on the theatricality of ‘nailing’ the Charter to the

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doors of UQ’s iconic Forgan Smith building, signed postcards will be delivered to the Vice Chancellor in a sack.

Engaging UQ management We have sought meetings with management about the Charter and have opened dialogues at a range of levels, from the Vice-Chancellor and Provost to Faculty Executive Deans to Heads of Schools and School Managers. We have also begun raising issues affecting casuals through UQ’s regular staff consultative committees.

Collecting reliable data on pay An important way to challenge ignorance and mystification about casualisation is reliable data – on the extent and nature of the utilisation of casual academic staff, as well as how casual academics are paid. To this end, we have begun in a more systematic way to collect information about casual academic employment at UQ, beginning with pay. We have been gathering information from casual academics about how their duties are specified, communicated to them, and remunerated, particularly in relation to course coordination and marking, which are only loosely described in UQ’s enterprise agreement. Our data so far has revealed a high level of variation in pay practices across the University, even within Faculties where duties performed are relatively comparable. Our aim is to seek consistency and universalise best practice in relation to pay. We are beginning with the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, in which there is very high reliance on casually employed academics to develop and coordinate courses. We have also convened a work-logging group to generate data on unpaid labour. Last semester, this project was piloted by a small group of casual academics employed as course coordinators. Our data showed very high amounts of unpaid work, especially in relation to lecture and tutorial preparation, course development and administration, and marking. This semester, we have convened a larger group to record all work performed and broaden the scope of our data. We are using a free app called Toggl to help record, manage, and export the data.

Our aim is to develop a compelling bank of data demonstrating the extent of unpaid work among casual academics. This data could be used to inform future industrial campaigns to improve casual academic pay. When work is logged broadly, including activities not contractually required by casual academics such as research, supervision, and seminar participation, the data could be used to support a broader campaign highlighting the contribution casual academics make to the intellectual life of the university.

Future challenges The Charter campaign is in its infancy, and several challenges lie ahead. Key among them is how to engage important stakeholders who are not themselves casually employed academics. Stakeholders include undergraduate and postgraduate students, fixed-term and continuing academic staff, professional staff, and non-academic casuals. At present, we are engaging stakeholders through education, informing them about the conditions experienced by casual academics. The difficulty lies in building alliances with these groups, especially in situations in which interests do not appear to be aligned. The challenge is to make clear the ways in which the structural changes to Australian higher education that have produced the situation of mass casualisation affect all stakeholders negatively, albeit in different ways. The other key challenge is the need to build a constituency of casual academic members and maintain campaign energy and momentum. To do this, we are publicising campaign activities very broadly, using regular meetings as a tool to inform and recruit members and activists. However, there are specific barriers to organising casual academic staff, including high turnover, lack of access to on-campus resources and facilities, and the precarious nature of our employment which makes speaking out risky and fraught. We are working on ways to mitigate these challenges, such as using social media to reach casuals who are not regularly present on campus, and harnessing the power of collective action to ameliorate fear and self-blame. Above: Launching the Charter at UQ in October 2018 (Kate Warner)

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Precarity, parenting and

radical

generosity By Dr Sarina Kilham Charles Sturt University

I have crossed to the other side. As I lay here panting on the far shore, I wonder in awe at the sheer brutality of the crossing, and the unreasonableness of the current high casualisation rates in higher education in Australia. Yes, Dear Reader, after years of precarious sessional contracts I have secured an ongoing balanced academic position! I returned to Australia to study my PhD in my early 30s after a successful career as an international development consultant. My first decade of work as a professional was with the United Nations and international NGOs. I’m used to working-hard, making-do and building networks with people. I speak four languages, I’d travelled widely and studied at university level in Australia, Indonesia and Brazil earning a double-undergraduate degree and a Master degree before the PhD. I didn’t have a scholarship for the first year of my PhD, and I supported myself and my partner through consultancies and lecturing on the side of my full time PhD. This year was tough but ‘do-able’. I had made an active choice to return to study and I threw myself into the PhD and accepted the sacrifices that came with it. Casual teaching during this first year was sparse but provided enough small inputs of income to kept us afloat. My eldest child was born soon after I had completed the fieldresearch component of my PhD. There was uncertainty about my fertility, and my partner and I decided to have a child, even if the timing vis-a-vis PhD wasn’t perfect. I went on to have two miscarriages before my second child was born three and a half years after the first. I kept on teaching and working in higher education – by this time, clear that I wanted to work in academia. But the short, unstable contracts were becoming harder to maintain and justify. The sense of precarity and the need to constantly perform were palpable – I responded to work emails from the hospital bed after my second miscarriage and a dilation and curettage. I thought it would ensure that I looked like I cared about work, and perhaps get me a further contract as unemployment loomed. I would usually teach tutorials for just two hours a day, but have to pay for a full-day childcare for two children plus transport. The move by several universities to teaching three sessions a year (rather than 2 semesters) drastically shortened the contracts offered to casuals, and at my university the move to make the first week of semester orientation and online activities meant casual contracts were further shortened. Subject Coordinators would ask us to attend planning meetings, marking meetings, thank-you morning teas – the bits and pieces that make group teaching and collegiality work, but that become expensive and near impossible to attend when there is no pay attached. Then there’s professional development. Drop in, they say. We’ve got a specialist team of educational designers to help you with your lectures and tutorials. How exciting! The education revolution is underway. They don’t mention that you’re not paid for it. Bringing it up makes you look uncouth. I attended a full day workshop for sessional staff organised by the Library and the Educational Design team. It was well-designed, catered and nearly noone attended. The Library staff asked me why, and in a moment where I forget my normal social etiquette I plain-talked the shift of the cost of professional development from the University onto the casual staff member, and the double-whammy of paying childcare to attend. My rant was met with silence, and I slipped away, ashamed that I had forgotten the golden-rule of being a sessional staff member – don’t mention the lack of pay! At times it felt like the semester had only just started when I was already having to turn my mind to how to get the next contract. Despite efforts by several universities to use vetted casual rosters,

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in reality, knowing a Senior Subject Coordinator or Course Director was the most secure way to ensure your next teaching contract. Attending the casual staff orientation meeting, I started to feel like I was missing a piece of the puzzle – here I would sit with a room full of people with their PhDs, published books and years of teaching experience – all of us on 10 week contracts. How were people sustaining it? Paying rent or mortgages? Raising families? I started to ask – fearful and shameful that only I didn’t understand to the system. Instead, I found shared tales of teaching across multiple universities every week, of house-sitting for months in order to save on rent and of seeking stable part-time jobs outside the higher education sector. Pack shelves at Ikea, I heard. Hope that you get picked for jury duty – the contracts are longer than teaching contracts. I heard tales of working through physical illness, mental illness or of simply walking away from higher education all together. In these shared conversations about precarity, about spending each summer on Centrelink benefits when teaching dried up, about feeling like a second-rate academic because we often had no role or access to resources, I found solidarity. Both sessional and tenured academic friends called me when they knew of unadvertised positions, emailed me job opportunities and sent me links to fellowships and scholarships. These people took me for a coffee and spoke with me like I was still an academic citizen, a peer, rather than a disposable labourer. These acts of academic kindness were the lifebuoy that kept me afloat and hopeful, and perhaps hanging on by a last thread to the dream of an academic job long past the day whereby my family (or our credit card) could sustain it. In the second half of 2018, after unsuccessfully applying for more than two dozen jobs (academic and non-academic), numerous fellowships, 7 weeks into unemployment and a week before Christmas, I received the offer for ongoing balanced academic position. It would mean moving my family more than 400km,

leaving our close friends and neighbours, my children would have to change schools, my partner would need to leave his jobs and relocate his business. We would be further away from our families, and be less able to visit grandparents and cousins. There was no question that my answer would be yes. So here I am. Five weeks into my life as an academic with a secure position. It is an indescribable glory and privilege to be here. I know what I’m teaching for the whole of this year and probably next year too. I can turn my mind to activities like - perhaps I will try to write that book. Because I’m no longer hyper-stressed about how to ensure I get another contract. I understand that my position is a rare one, and that the economic and social environment in which universities operate has changed from the days where PhD graduates could walk into a secure academic position. But that is the point - sessional teaching is no longer performed primarily by students needing a bit of cash on the side. Sessional teaching is performed by qualified academics, and we need to fight for the right to have work contracts that are sustainable, fair and don’t push the burden on precarity onto individuals. Being able to teach and research in universities should not depend on a high-level of personal privilege to stay together in body and soul. Contracts for staff need to reflect the whole effort that it takes to be an engaged, up-to-date and pedagogically skilled lecturer or tutor. Sarina Kilham is an NTEU member at Charles Sturt University. She can be found on Twitter @sarinakilham or via her institutional email address skilham@csu.edu.au The idea of "radical generosity" originates from Associate Professor Douglas Dowland his article on ‘How to be a Generous Professor’ https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Be-a-GenerousProfessor/244581

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Uni workforce casualisation a

national disgrace By Colin Long Former NTEU Victorian Division Secretary

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The level of insecure work - in the form of casual and fixed-term jobs - has reached crisis levels in many parts of the Australian economy. We have come to associate poor employment practices with the hospitality and franchise sectors, but few people are likely to realise that one of the worst industries for insecure work is now higher education. Australian universities employ vastly more casual and fixed-term staff than staff in ongoing positions. Large numbers of our best researchers are employed on short-term contracts, while half of undergraduate teaching is performed by casual staff, many of whom need multiple jobs to survive. Our analysis of the latest Workplace Gender Equality Agency data shows that 27 of the nation’s 42 universities have rates of casualisation exceeding 40 per cent, including 14 with a rate equal to or exceeding 50 per cent. The highest is the University of Wollongong, with 71 per cent, while the worst in Victoria is RMIT, with 63 per cent. Note that these are just the percentages of casual staff; add to this staff on fixed-term contracts and it is clear that the big majority of our universities have rates of insecure work that far exceed 50 per cent, and many exceed 70 per cent. The idea that major public institutions with budgets in many cases over a billion dollars would be reliant to a considerable extent on casual workers to perform their central function – the teaching of the nation’s university students – is a national disgrace. The fact that many of those casuals are underpaid for the work they do only reinforces the extent to which our universities are now dependent on the same kind of exploitative labour practices that blight our economy more broadly, but especially in the hospitality industry. At the same time, many vice-chancellors are

now paid more than $1 million per year. It seems that universities are not immune to the problem of excessive CEO salaries too. We do not want to suggest that the need for job security is any more pressing for university staff than other workers, but it is surely the case that the creation and dissemination of knowledge are too important to our society today to treat the workers who create and disseminate it as disposable inputs in a production-line process. It is remarkable that our universities manage to conduct such important and useful research and provide such great education with such precariously employed workforces. This is entirely a tribute to the dedication of the staff upon whose backs this success is built. But success built on precarious workers is itself precarious. Universities surely have a responsibility to the long-term prosperity of the academic profession itself, and we all have an interest in the conditions under which research and education take place. The universities’ exploitation of casual and fixed-term staff is an affront to academia, undermining academic freedom (who will express difficult opinions or explore controversial research directions if there is nothing to protect one from having one’s employment terminated?), and wasting a huge amount of our educational potential and resources. This level of exploitation and failure to invest in the nation’s academic workforce will have long-term ramifications. If universities don't change their employment practices soon, it will become harder to attract young, qualified people into the academic profession.

we insist that they are much more. They are – or at least should be – repositories of cultural wisdom, generators of groundbreaking research and places where ideas and knowledge are communicated, shared and challenged. To do what we ask of them as a society, they should have workforces that are respected and valued, with staff who know whether they will have a job from one semester to the next. We know that in some universities more than 80 per cent of staff under the age of 30 are insecurely employed. For organisations supposedly committed to educating the future engineers, scientists, artists, lawyers, doctors, nurses, journalists etc of our nation, they have a surprisingly low level of commitment to providing career opportunities for young academics. For all the importance of universities, and the distinctive character of academic work, it also remains true that university staff are just like other workers. Like all workers they are surely entitled to paid leave if they get sick, parental leave if they have a child, and to have a reliable income upon which to plan their lives. Unfortunately, like too many Australian workers today, their insecure employment status gives them none of what should be our basic workplace rights. This article was co-authored with Nic Kimberley and Fabian Cannizzo. Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 3 August 2018. (Image: Blair Bunting)

While it is unfashionable, in the company of university managers, to suggest that universities are anything more than businesses,

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Is the pursuit of

student satisfaction risking your

health & safety? By Gabe Gooding National Assistant Secretary

Casual staff are at extra risk of injury. In previous editions of Connect (vol. 11, no. 2) we have reported on a survey conducted in 2018 regarding student evaluations of teaching, which demonstrated that less than 1-in-10 academics were satisfied with their usage. We said then, and continue to say now that they should be abandoned. Our position has not changed. Students are not equipped to “evaluate” teaching and these are not valid measures of the quality of education. Let’s call them what they are – student satisfaction surveys and let’s be clear about what they should be used for. Student satisfaction surveys can be a useful guide to how students are feeling about their university experience, but they are not, and can never be, appropriate measures of teaching quality or performance. Further, student satisfaction surveys are from a self-selecting group and are biased. In a recent article for The Conversation, Merlin Crossley, Emma Jonhston and Yanan Fan from UNSW reported on a study that analysed over half a million student responses over a 6 year period. They found that student responses are biased against women and those from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds.1 In other words they are discriminatory tools that entrench existing bias and privilege.

"a sitting duck"

For casual staff the jeopardy is increased by the fact that they are often held accountable by their students for things over which they have no control e.g. course content.

For those who are employed insecurely the issues associated with the use of surveys is compounded by the precarious nature of their employment. For many casually employed staff, whether you are employed in the next semester can be dependent on the whims of unqualified, self-interested observers. One respondent to the survey reported on their own experience “As a casual I have had single comments used against me to deny me work.” This needs to stop. Most importantly the use of open ended questions represents a significant health and safety risk to staff. Over half of the casual staff who participated in the survey reported that they had received

"zero support"

"zero attention given to teaching staff"

Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

Semester 1, 2019

abusive feedback from students. A staggering 83% of casuals reported that they feel distress on receiving negative feedback with 71% experiencing anger, fear, self consciousness and embarrassment.

"they seemed more interested in collecting fees than in my safety and wellbeing"

The receipt of unmoderated abusive comments is a serious risk to the mental well being of the recipient who is in the impossible situation of being unable to pursue the issue due to the anonymous nature of the surveys. As one casual academic observed in our survey “They are a major trigger for mental health episodes.” Again the issue is compounded for those whose work is insecure because the consequences of pursuing complaints can be high.

"sometimes I just cry"

• Long work hours. • High workload. • Emotional effort in responding to distressed clients (e.g. students). • Workers not involved in decisions that affect them. • Workers not having control over their work. • Workers who are not provided adequate support. • Workplaces where there is bullying and harassment (including from clients/students). • Lack of fairness and equity in dealing with performance.

"mostly they make me angry or upset"

The voices of casual staff were clearly heard through our survey and a selection of the many comments received are repeated here. They tell a grim story of a pool of workers subjected to abuse on a regular and systematic basis. So what we have here is a work-related activity that is definitely a foreseeable risk to the health of employees and anecdotally is causing actual harm. If this was a broken railing likely to cause people to fall and injure bones, our universities would have it fenced off, have notices installed advising people not to use the area, and immediate work would be conducted to remove the hazard. And yet we have a known hazard that is likely to cause another type of injury, less obvious, but no less debilitating, and we are seeing many employers simply ignore it, and worse still in many cases mandating exposure.

"deeply distressing"

importance and impact of work related psychosocial injury. Safework Australia recently published guidelines for employers on how to manage psychological hazards.2 Among the long list of risk factors are:

There is increasing recognition of the

"takes a toll on your nerves and stress"

• Isolated workers without appropriate support structures. For many casual staff this is an exact description of their working environment (and for many other university staff too) and yet how many can honestly say that their employer is taking them seriously and addressing their mental health? The recent Boland Review of the harmonised Workplace Health and Safety laws recommended that the development of comprehensive regulation of psycho-social risk be a priority. This will produce strengthened legislative requirements on employers. NTEU supports those recommendations and will be lobbying to ensure that they are adopted as a matter of urgency. In the meantime, we should be calling on all employers to demonstrate how they are addressing their obligations to ensure that staff have a safe workplace, especially casually employed staff who are doubly vulnerable because of the precarious nature of their employment. A good start would be to eliminate the systematic abuse that the pursuit of student satisfaction is producing. 1. theconversation.com/male-teachers-are-most-likely-to-rate-highly-inuniversity-student-feedback-111741 2. www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/work-related-psychological-healthand-safety-systematic-approach-meeting-your-duties

"I quit" "makes me wonder why I bother"

read online at www.unicasual.org.au

Australian Unions are campaigning to change the rules so that young Australians have more secure jobs and better pay. But to change the rules, we need to change the government. So YOU NEED TO

Enrol

and

JOIN

YOUR

Vote UNION

EN ROL n ow A T A E C .GO V.A U /e nro l

ch eck your det a i l s a t c he c k .a e c .go v.a u

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Connect // Volume 12, no. 1

Semester 1, 2019

Meet the Defenders In the 2019 Federal Election, NTEU is asking MPs and candidates to declare themselves a Defender of Tertiary Education by signing our pledge. We are asking them to take a selfie with our pledge, which we'll post in our Defenders Gallery, as well as across our social media accounts. nteu.org.au/defenders

M@NTEUNational

C NationalTertiaryEducationUnion @nteu_au

D E F E N DER OF TERTIA RY EDUCATION

Universities inhabit an important position in Australian society as places of independent debate and research. But the statistics tell a different story... Our public investment in universities ranks amongst the OECD’s lowest USA AUSTRALIA NETHERLANDS CANADA TURKEY NORWAY

Our students pay amongst the highest university fees in the developed world USA AUSTRALIA CANADA NETHERLANDS TURKEY NORWAY

Two-thirds of university staff are employed insecurely

FOR TEACHING-ONLY & RESEARCH-ONLY STAFF,

4-IN-5 ARE ON CONTRACTS

MY TERTIARY EDUCATION PLEDG

If elected in the 2019 Federal Elect

ion, I will support policies that : • Ensure university autonomy and academic freedom are prote cted. • Increase public funding for resea rch as an investment in our futu re. • Reverse the freeze on universit y funding, and return the billio ns of dollars taken out of TAFE since the Coal ition took office in 2013. • Ensure the rights of tertiary education staff are protected by: • Reducing insecure employm ent. • Removing the ability of employer s to weaken pay and conditions by terminating enterprise agreemen ts. • Strengthening the right of work ers to take industrial action. • Reduce the debt burden on stud ents. Name

Signed

______________________________

______________________________ Written and authorised by Matthew

McGowan, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, South

____

Melbourne VIC 3205

All NTEU members are automatically covered for journey injury insurance. You could be paying hundreds of dollars to get this valuable cover, but as a financial member of NTEU, it’s absolutely free!

Travel Work insurance Travel Toto Work Insurance

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Prepared by UniSuper Management Pty Ltd (ABN 91 006 961 799, AFSL 235907) on behalf of UniSuper Limited (ABN 54 006 027 121, AFSL 492806) the trustee of UniSuper (ABN 91 385 943 850). This information is of a general nature only. Before making any decision in relation to your UniSuper membership, you should consider your personal circumstances, the relevant product disclosure statement for your membership category and whether to consult a qualified financial adviser. *SuperRatings awarded UniSuper 2019 Fund of the Year. Visit unisuper.com.au/awards for more information.