COVID, casuals & workplace safety

The La Trobe University Casuals Network have been collecting evidence for weeks of the inconsistent, incomplete and often disturbing information being distributed to teaching staff in the lead up to the resumption of face to face teaching.

We had to collect this material through our comrades in permanent and fixed-term positions. As at many universities, casual teaching staff at La Trobe often are unsure about whether they will be required for teaching until the last minute, and, at the point of writing, some of our comrades who have been teaching for the past two weeks have been doing so without any formal contract.

Informal sharing of information

Unsurprisingly, therefore, casual teaching staff were completely out of the loop about COVID provisions and only found out through the solidarity of more secure workers who shared the information through informal channels.

What we did manage to learn was extremely concerning. Protocols were extremely inconsistent between schools and work areas – itself a cause for concern – but we found evidence of the following:

• Staff being tasked with policing students’ compliance to wearing face masks in class and managing social distancing in the classroom – up to and including calling security guards on non-compliant students. This is damaging to the pedagogical relationship all teaching staff strive to build in their classrooms. Requiring students to disclose medical information pertaining to mask wearing – presumably in the classroom and in front of their peers – is an invasion of privacy. Many staff also felt that this responsibility opened them to the potential for harassment or abuse at work. To police students in an already pressured and abnormal environment would only increase stress and tension – no support or training was offered to us in enacting this new responsibility.

• Staff being required to clean classrooms after teaching. Teaching staff have no training in this standard of cleaning, nor were any instructions provided on how to check and ensure safety standards are met. The ‘sanitation kit’ (see image) – one of which was made available per staff member per semester – gives a sense of how underequipped teaching staff were to perform these tasks. Furthermore, given that workers for Cirka (the La Trobe cleaning contractor) are currently un- or under-employed, we are concerned about their employment prospects being reduced through a reliance on our unpaid labour.

• Staff being expected to instruct students in COVID-19 cleaning of their workspaces – including offering a disposal of waste service for used antibacterial wipes. Some students were told that they should clean their workstations before and after classes – disposing their iso-wipes ‘in the plastic bag provided by your teacher’. This appears to imply that teaching staff were responsible for disposing of waste products. A waste bag is not included in the Sanitation Kit (pictured), nor do we think it is safe or appropriate to ask teaching staff to dispose of potentially contagious materials.

• Staff being instructed to examine classrooms for adequate ventilation for COVID-19 safety before classes resume. The managers who made this recommendation were clearly motivated by concern for staff and students – recognising that the University’s haphazard protocols meant that staff might have to take their safety into their own hands. Indeed, several members of the Casuals Network did find themselves assigned to rooms with insufficient space, insufficient seating or both for the size of their tutorials.

Notwithstanding the best intentions behind these communications, however, they place an onerous responsibility on already overburdened staff. Needless to say, casual teaching staff have not received training in assessing ventilation or air-flow. Furthermore, given that few casual staff had received their timetables and class sizes until days before classes started, this advice added additional stress and anxiety to the start of semester.

As can be seen, these communications were inconsistent across – and even within – schools and departments, with some information being directly contradicted within days of being circulated. Besides being told that the majority of tutorials would be held in person, most casual staff received little to no information, let alone training, regarding the extra obligations which this face-to-face teaching will entail. The poor clarification of safety standards posed and continues to pose a significant threat to the safety of staff and students.

Urgent concerns

The La Trobe Casuals Network meeting on 22 February 2021 resolved to write a collective statement to the Vice-Chancellor and Senior Executive Group of the University to express our urgent concerns. We also reached out to union comrades for support, and solidarity motions with our concerns were passed from University of Sydney Casuals Network and at the Monash Branch Committee. The motion read:

The Monash University Branch Committee of the NTEU express their solidarity with casual teaching staff at La Trobe University, who are returning to face-to-face teaching next week with inadequate safety provisions for COVID transmission.

We are disturbed to hear of reports of staff being told they will be responsible for:

1. Policing mask compliance by students – up to and including calling security guards on non compliant students.

2. Cleaning their classrooms after teaching. COVID cleaning is work, and as such should be undertaken by paid, trained, appropriately equipped professionals. Given that the United Workers Union has identified that many workers for the current contractor, Cirka, are currently un- or under-employed, this is a case of wage theft for academic casuals and work theft for cleaning casuals.

3. Examining their classrooms for adequate ventilation for COVID safety before classes resume.

4. Instructing students in COVID cleaning of their work spaces

5. Managing social distancing in the classroom.

Casual staff are under-informed – some still are unsure if they will be teaching next week, and information about COVID safety is contradictory, partial, and usually not even shared with casual staff.

This is an unacceptable breach of occupational health and safety and the Monash Branch Committee of the NTEU do not accept this as an appropriate attempt at COVID safety at any university campuses.

As the Monash Branch Committee notes, the undermining of health and safety protocols at any institution weakens the rights of workers across the sector.

The Herald Sun reported on our concerns on 3 March, with Ian Royall writing ‘Lecturers, researchers and other professional staff fear the liability for a safe environment has been pushed onto them… Academic staff were told to enforce mask-wearing and call security on any objectors. A spokeswoman from the network of hundreds of casuals said staff were shocked. “People are scared and angry and also anxious because it adds to the uncertainty of their jobs.”’

After a significant delay – and just two days after being contacted for comment by the Herald Sun – the Vice-Chancellor responded to the Network. So far, this has consisted of flat denial of all of our concerns – despite these being well documented.

The minimal information on cleaning arrangements communicated to some casual staff at this time also has implications for wage theft. Expecting teaching staff to undertake significant cleaning duties requires them to either end class early – meaning students lose critical interaction with their tutor for academic training – or that staff are expected to spend time outside of class engaged in cleaning. Special trips to campus to collect sanitation kits and inspect classrooms are also conducted without pay.

Given significant current media and parliamentary attention to the underpayment of casual university workers, we think there is strong momentum for an industrial campaign against this exploitation.

The La Trobe Casuals Network will continue to push for safe and dignified working conditions for all workers!

Anastasia Kanjere works as a casual teaching academic and research assistant at La Trobe College and La Trobe and Monash Universities. She is Convenor of the La Trobe Casuals Network and an NTEU member.