THE MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIAN CASUAL & SESSIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION STAFF
onnect volume 14 number 2
®
semester 2 august 2021
Women in casual work in academia: Disempowerment disguised as freedom Underpayment for academic judgement at RMIT Defending quality teaching with union power
Recognising wage theft of postgrads Being a casual rep at the bargaining table
FREE ONLINE AT UNICASUAL.ORG.AU
In this issue 1
End insecure work! Alison Barnes, NTEU National President
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NTEU recovering thousands in underpayment for casual academic members at RMIT NTEU RMIT University Branch
Cover image: Sandie Clarke/ Unsplash
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Being a casual representative at the bargaining table Michael Piotto, University of South Australia
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Early WGEA data reveals COVID impact Terri MacDonald, Director, Policy & Research
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Women in casual work in academia: .Disempowerment disguised as freedom Anonymous NTEU Member
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Delegate profile: Bailey Sharp
10 Recognising wage theft of postgrads Peter Watson, CAPA
11 UoM casuals defend quality teaching with union power Geraldine Fela & Ben Kunkler, University of Melbourne
Connect is a publication of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). All rights reserved ©2021 ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online)
NATIONAL TERTIARY
CASUALS COMMITTEE
Read online at www.unicasual.org.au Editor: Alison Barnes Production: Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance: Anastasia Kotaidis
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
NTEU National Office PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 phone 03 9254 1910 email national@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% recycled paper: produced from 65% postconsumer waste and 35% pre-consumer waste.
End insecure work! Alison Barnes NTEU National President
COVID-19 has impacted not just the tertiary education sector but the broader Australian economy, and has exposed the scourge of insecure work and its devastating effects on lives and livelihoods. The NTEU highlighted the demoralising impact of insecure employment on the lives of staff working in higher education in our recent submission to the Senate Select Committee into Secure Jobs. It’s worth noting that the calling of this Inquiry was not a result of the review of any proposed Government legislation (which is the normal practice) but was instead, in no small part, due to the continued campaigning and political lobbying efforts by the NTEU with its members and representatives around precarious work.
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...the extent to which we as NTEU members can address the multiple issues confronting staff depends not on our will, but on our influence and power.
In addition to providing our written submission, the NTEU was also called to appear before the Senate Committee, where we presented further evidence of the level, and effects, of insecure work in our universities, TAFEs and other higher education providers. While the Union has a great deal of research and statistics around insecure employment, the most important, and compelling, aspect of our verbal evidence came from our two casual staff witnesses, former National Tertiary Casuals Committee Chair and representative, Elizabeth Adamczyk and NTEU member, Paul Morris. Elizabeth and Paul were able to share their experiences of living with precarious work, made even more acute by the fact that, as a married couple, their financial security was always tenuous as a direct result of their employment as long term casuals. It was clear that their evidence had an impact on all at the hearing, when Paul so eloquently stated what is was like to be a university ‘casual’: I have been working for the University of Newcastle on a casual contract since 2004. I was studying between 2004 and 2008. Since 2008 I have been a casual, non-continuous academic and this has been my professional and financial mainstay. It’s a mainstay that’s founded on a very precarious basis, being open to the vicissitudes of often questionable management practices, practices that see me as a cost rather than an asset. In such a relational profession as teaching, which I see as a calling, this treatment not only devalues staff but disrespects and undermines the future of each of the students that we mentor. Precarity at work pervades personal life and impedes the ability to take opportunities such as marriage, family and, increasingly, retirement planning. It creates anxiety, which persists as a matter of course in my everyday life and intensifies each Christmas, when I again become unemployed, leaving
me wondering whether I’ll be picked up again in three months time and contemplating my ability to cope in the meantime. This is but one example of management’s choice of shifting burden onto others, proclaiming that in doing so the reduced operating costs will bring a better future to the organisation. This is a proclamation that simply never becomes realised, regardless of the amount of change that occurs, change that adds to already existing anxiety. I say this with two decades of experience of so-called change management. I have seen change in the workplace pit employee against employee in an increasingly competitive environment as opposed to the collegiate environment that academia has traditionally been founded upon. In the main, the spoils go to the organisation rather than the employees, and very rarely to our students. Change has ensured a race to the bottom for all except those making the decisions, who invariably move on to better things.’ Unfortunately, while the Committee members were able to hear directly from the Union and its members, the Government remains purposefully blind to the crisis in our sector – which, we know, has made existing problems far worse. Their deliberate exclusion of universities from JobKeeper and failure to provide the sector with a life line or rescue package effectively ensured that higher education was one of Australia’s hardest hit sectors, with thousands of casual and fixed-term employees losing their jobs in the last 18 months. Throughout this crisis, though, one thing has remained true: the only effective opponent to the agenda promoted by university managements and hostile governments is organised labour. But the extent to which we as NTEU members can address the multiple issues confronting staff depends not on our will, but on our influence and power. We must join together to promote and defend an alternative vision of what our universities can and should provide to both staff and students. While we were instrumental in the establishment of the Senate review of job insecurity, this is only a first step. More than ever, we must build our workplace strength right across the sector. We must build our network of NTEU continued overpage...
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
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NTEU recovering thousands in underpayment for casual academic members at RMIT NTEU RMIT Branch members are running a campaign for the hundreds of RMIT casual academics who have not been paid the correct Academic Judgement Rate for marking over the last six years. Thousands of dollars have already been recovered for members. Two years ago, NTEU RMIT Branch members learned from a staff survey that casual academic staff across numerous RMIT schools weren’t being paid the appropriate Academic Judgement rate for marking. After approaching various schools about backpay, and launching a campaign earlier this year, the Branch launched an industrial dispute and is demanding that RMIT pay back stolen wages to all affected staff. With the help of the NTEU, some individual underpayment cases have already been settled. Casual academic and NTEU member Andrew Linden said: ‘Systemic wage theft is a huge issue in [higher education]. With the help of Rhidian Thomas at the NTEU, I recovered nearly 10K for underpaid marking since 2014. Other sessionals are owed much, much more. I hope that through this campaign RMIT members will be able to recover those underpayments. It definitely pays to be an NTEU member.’ Since then, a significant amount of evidence has also been gathered via a website created by the NTEU’s campaign team, with hundreds of past and present RMIT casuals sharing their experiences of Academic Judgement wage theft. In some
cases, the wage bill that casuals have accrued exceeds $40,000.
management that casuals are standing together to fight back against wage theft.
In a recent meeting with RMIT management, the Union gave an overview of this evidence, which indicates Academic Judgement Rate underpayment has been perpetrated in at least eleven of RMIT’s 16 Academic Schools.
In a recent interview on ABC AM, NTEU Victorian Division Assistant Secretary, Sarah Roberts said:
After securing a written assurance from RMIT that staff who participated in the dispute would not be subjected to any adverse action, NTEU shared thousands of pages of this evidence, including a large number of member statements, which demonstrated the breadth and systemic nature of the underpayments. The NTEU is formally in dispute with RMIT under the current Enterprise Agreement, and has put the University on notice that the Union will consider launching legal action on behalf of members if RMIT does not appropriately investigate and redress the incidence of academic judgement wage theft across all of RMIT’s academic schools.
continued from p.1
workplace delegates so that there is one in every department, school and work unit. We must grow our membership and invite every staff member to join.
The Union’s key priorities – secure jobs and safe workloads – will be our themes for the National Week of Action, to be held 13–17 September 2021.
Our Branches are taking a fresh look at strategies to engage with members and university staff to build the Union’s strength in the lead-up to bargaining so we can all support our colleagues at the negotiating table.
Branches are planning a range of activities on campuses and in their communities to highlight the improvements we seek to staff working conditions and job security. Contact your local NTEU Branch to find out how you can get involved, and watch our web site and social media for more details about events as we get closer to September.
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If you know someone who worked at RMIT as a casual academic over the last 6 years, please send them this link. They could be owed thousands of dollars:
nteu.info/underpayment Find out more at www.nteu.org.au/rmit/ academic_judgement_underpayment
A second meeting will occur soon and the team wants as many members as possible to attend, to show RMIT
End insecure work!
We can do this with effective member-led campaigns. Bargaining is an opportunity to achieve our vision for the sector: workplaces not built on crippling workloads, and secure jobs, where the value of our work is recognised and rewarded.
‘Universities are structurally arranged to facilitate and grease the wheels of wage theft. They do it because they know that most casuals won’t come forward because they’re scared of losing their jobs. Unis want to save money and they simply think they can get away with it – and up until now they’ve been right. But this ends now.’
It is crucial that you talk to your colleagues about what we can achieve when we are all involved in building a strong, united voice for higher education workers.
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
As Paul Morris concludes: ‘The future I hope for is one in which employees are recognised and respected for who they are, as people first and foremost. I hope for real recognition of the contributions we make as productive members of our organisation, and I hope that the indifference and disaffection that insecure work often engenders within the workplace becomes a memory for the betterment of ourselves and those for whom we work – our students, who after all are our future leaders in business, the wider community and politics.’
Being a casual representative at the bargaining table
Michael Piotto University of South Australia
All of us have thought about, and continue to think about, strategies for raising, with management, the long list of industrial issues and concerns we have. Have you considered taking the fight for casual staff rights and entitlements straight to management through the enterprise bargaining process? In my former permanent employment role, I spent 18 months at the Enterprise Agreement bargaining table as the NTEU Professional Staff representative. Currently, I am the NTEU Casual Staff representative at the University of South Australia (UniSA) Enterprise Agreement negotiation meetings. I thought I might write about my experiences so far hoping this might persuade more casual staff to be at the negotiating table (or negotiating screen). It all starts with choosing a person to be the NTEU representative, and I was fortunate to be approved and endorsed by the local Branch Committee. There were no other nominations as there is a very active casual committee who discussed and agreed to my nomination.
example. Importantly, it meant the casual representative would be paid for attending the meetings, just like everyone else. The University also agreed to inform and negotiate with those employing me casually at the local level. This has been a tricky process and required me to meet with and continue negotiations with our unit executives and, at times, unfortunately, their tardy approval of my time release
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I explained that much of the after-hours communications are unpaid and how it felt like I was ‘at work’ or ‘on call’ for an unreasonable expanse of hours.
The next step is the development of bargaining protocols with the University management representatives, which occurs before there is any discussion about the Enterprise Agreement itself. This is where agreement is reached on the ‘rules of engagement’ and the bargaining process. The NTEU argued for the paid time release of the casual representative for eight hours per fortnight (the University agreed to seven), regardless of whether they were required to work at the time when meetings were scheduled. Management was initially not supportive of this idea, and this is where a single word can make a big difference. Management proposed that the casual representative be paid if the meetings were being held ‘at a time that coincides with the work they are scheduled to perform’. The NTEU successfully argued, as the University agreed, that we should be paid if the meetings were being held ‘at a time that coincides with the work they are engaged to perform’. That single word change meant the Course Coordinators could be reimbursed for contracting out not just my scheduled teaching, such as tutorials, that conflicted with meetings, but also work such as marking assignments, for
has meant I have not been able to give my Course Coordinators much notice to arrange cover for my work. It was well worth going through reaching this agreement, as the real value of being present very quickly became apparent at the meetings themselves.
Providing real life context The NTEU has presented a Log of Claims, many of which affect and impact directly upon casual staff. We have started discussing some of these claims (it is still very early days), and I would like to give an example of the contributions which casual representatives can make which might hopefully influence management’s understanding and perspective of an issue for casual staff. Under ‘Sustainable and Safe Workloads’, there has been discussion of one of the claims of significance to casual staff: ‘The right for all staff to disconnect from University systems on weekends and outside regular times.’
period whilst my university email was being set up), and phone contact details to students. I gave examples of receiving student text messages as late as 10.30pm and as early as 6.45am; phone calls after hours and on weekends from both staff and students. I explained that much of the afterhours communications are unpaid and how it felt like I was ‘at work’ or ‘on call’ for an unreasonable expanse of hours. I said that there was growing evidence that not being able to ‘disconnect’ from work can have serious impacts on staff wellbeing. Most importantly, I was able to state that it is, in fact, management’s responsibility to ensure that staff wellbeing is not adversely affected by intrusion of work expectations and demands into one’s time ‘not at work’. It is really important for the University management to hear the voices of staff who are directly affected by the culture, expectations and practices within the organisation. There is an expectation that the Union will make these types of claims and, as such, they can easily be dismissed. However, when the real-life experiences of staff are presented to them, it is much more difficult to refute these claims or suggest they are unreasonable. I am looking forward to future bargaining meetings where there are many more claims relevant to casuals to be discussed. I would strongly encourage any casual staff member to get directly involved in the bargaining process. Though frustrating and difficult, at times, it is also very educational and rewarding. In the end, it is one of the few remaining mechanisms for being heard and exercising our rights. Mick Piotto is a Social Work Casual Academic and Tutor at the University of South Australia.
I was able to provide examples to the University of the context for this claim. I began by explaining that I am required to provide my personal email (for a short
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Early WGEA data reveals COVID impact
Terri MacDonald Director, Policy & Research
When giving evidence at the Senate Committee hearing into the Job-Ready Graduates package last year, and this year at the Senate Select Committee into Secure Jobs, the NTEU warned that the mass redundancies in higher education will almost certainly see insecure employment increase even further. With Universities Australia announcing the loss of more than 17,300 jobs in 2020 alone, and further losses in the thousands so far in 2021, the NTEU has been gathering evidence on not only where these losses have occurred, but looking at their impact on the remaining workforce. The job losses come at same time as the regressive changes bought in by the Federal Government via the Job-Ready Graduates package last year mean that universities must now teach more students with less funding per student, on average. Indeed, the 2021 Federal Budget saw a cut to the Commonwealth’s Grants Scheme funding by almost 10% in real terms over forward estimates. What this means is that while jobs have disappeared, the work has not. In fact it has intensified, with the ‘Costello baby boom’ generation reaching university entrance age (and set to continue to increase, until peaking in 2024-25). What we are looking at is a ‘perfect storm’ scenario for insecure work to become the predominant form of employment in higher education. Yet, at the same time, casual and short term contract positions are the first to be affected as university managements ‘throw the lever’ on employment numbers as a mechanism to deal with immediate budget shortfalls – as COVID proved to be the case, on a national scale. In the first part of 2020, we saw thousands of short term contract, casual and sessional staff miss out on work, as the first wave of lockdowns hit the country and courses moved online. Then, as the impact of border closures and billions in lost university revenue came into play, universities commenced their redundancy rounds (often in excess of what their actual loss of income was, meaning that some university managements viewed COVID as less a crisis than an opportunity). Regardless of intentions, last year the NTEU forewarned policy makers that, while tertiary education was already one of the most casualised sectors in the Australian economy (with only retail and hospitality at a higher levels), once the waves of job losses are through the system we would almost certainly see an acceleration of precarious employment in higher education.
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Unfortunately, the early evidence is showing that the Union’s warnings to policy makers are justified.
with 326 casual staff lost, interestingly the percentage of insecure staff as a proportion of all non-management staff does not really change between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021.
Employers reports from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) for this year are starting to show some interesting contrast between 2020 and 2021. Usually undertaken in April, these employer reports are a snapshot in time of an organisation’s workforce and its gender equity policies.
However, at ANU, it’s worth looking at the difference in management staffing numbers between the two reports. In 2019 –2020, ANU Management totalled 484 staff, out of an all staff number of 6,300. As a percentage, this meant management categories were 7.6% of all staff.
Importantly, the WGEA reports provide information on staffing by headcount. While WGEA doesn’t break down staffing by academic/general staff cohorts, it is useful in that it gives an indication of headcount staffing numbers overall.
In the 2020-2021 reports, ANU Management total 435 staff members, out of a figure of 5,521 all staff. As a percentage, this meant there was a small increase in the proportion of management staff, at 7.8%. Looking at this, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, while there are job losses for both management and non-management staff, the brunt of the redundancy pain is not being felt by the managers of the institution.
While this year’s employer reports have been delayed, a few universities have started to forward their reports. As the NTEU is an organisation that represents staff of these employers, universities are legislatively obligated to forward a copy to the Union.
The WGEA report for University of Adelaide also presents an interesting picture of that institution during COVID, albeit in a slightly different way to ANU.
Due to the delay in reporting, only a few reports have so far come through. That said, we can already clearly see there are major declines in staffing data.
What is immediately noticeable is the dramatic increase in casual numbers – of some 345 staff members. According to the WGEA report, this is due to a major increase in clerical and administrative staff (in fact, there was a drop in ‘professional’ casual staff, from 357 to 240) going from 161 reported in 2019/2020 report to 623 in the 2020/2021 report.
Figures 1 and 2 show the results from two Group of Eight universities – the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide. These two universities are worth noting as research intensive institutions that have been reliant on international student fee income to subsidise their research (and teaching), and as such both have been impacted by the border closures.
But what about management numbers? In 2019-2020, there were 504 management staff at University of Adelaide reported to WGEA, out of a total of 4,392 staff. The meant that management staff comprised some 11.47% of all staff. In 2020-2021, there were 474 management staff members reported to WGEA, out of a total of 4,492
At ANU, the bulk of job losses can be seen in the permanent areas – with 216 full time staff and 82 part time staff gone in the 12 months between reports. While there are also significant job losses for casual staff, Fig. 1: ANU – All non-management, by headcount WGEA Report year
Full time permanent
Full time contract
Part time permanent
Part time contract
Casual
All non % insecure manage- (casual & ment staff contract
20192020
2,573
954
468
295
1,526
5,816
47.7%
20202021
2,357
855
386
288
1,200
5,086
46%
Source: WGEA employer reports, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
Fig. 2: University of Adelaide – All non-management, by headcount Report year
Full time permanent
Full time contract
Part time permanent
Part time contract
Casual
All non management staff
% insecure (casual & contract
20192020
1,330
923
480
637
518
3,888
53.4%
20202021
1,369
818
298
670
863
4,018
58.5%
Source: WGEA employer reports, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021
staff. This comprised 10.5% of all staff – a fall of around 1% from the previous year. So, while there was a slight decrease in management numbers, there was a real spike in the casual staffing – what does this mean? Well, while there was also a slight increase in the number of full-time permanent staff (up by 39), part time permanent and both full time and part time contract staff all fell significantly. It must be pointed out that there are a number of caveats with these numbers – firstly, WGEA’s reporting deadline extension may mean that the census date was different in the two reports, and there can be considerable seasonal variations around casual employment. Secondly, our experience tells us that universities tend to move their staff in and out of different categories on an ad hoc basis, which can muddy the waters between academic and professional staff in particular, (and
potentially may be a factor in the changes in casual numbers for ‘clerical and administration’ and ‘professional’ at the University of Adelaide). However, the data in the WGEA reports is still worth paying attention to, particularly when it gives an indication of how university managements have directed staff redundancies at their institution. At ANU, while there is pain all round, the losses are definitely greater for non-management staff. At the University of Adelaide, we can see losses for part time and contract staff, with their work most likely being doing by more casuals. We need to wait to see more employer reports before we have a fuller understanding of what the overall response by the sector has been, and it is important to note that these reports, as snapshots at a point in time, don’t give us the entire picture. However, given there are usually twelve
month (or more) delays in the publishing of national staffing data (via the Department of Education) and casual staffing numbers are reported by the Government as full time equivalent (rather than as head counts), we do need to pay attention to what we see in these figures, particularly when it backs up what we hear from members who are at the coalface of these changes. A further consideration is that with many universities about to commence (or have already started) bargaining, the information we see in these reports is becoming even more relevant. Clearly, we can assume that the reduction in staffing will have implications for debates around workload models, leave processes, and areas such as change management processes. Each institution is responding in slightly different ways, but the overall pattern is clear – jobs are being lost, and that even with the initial loss of casual work that we saw last year, permanent roles are being replace with insecure positions. As a Union we will ensure our campaigning and political lobbying takes into account these developments, but with a Government more interested in pork barrelling car parks than safeguarding quality education, the long term future of the university sector is looking far less certain.
Image: Neonbrand/Unsplash
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Women in casual work in academia Disempowerment disguised as freedom
Image: Sandie Clarke/Unsplash
The first offer of work at the university feels like a great honour, a major achievement. How could you say no? How could you consider what working long term in this casual role would mean for your future? How could it possibly have any negative implications for your future, such a prestigious opportunity?
Anonymous NTEU Member
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Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
®®® Women in casual work in academia Casual work at the university is presented as an opportunity to build your experience and knowledge towards a long term career in academia. Perhaps no one says it out loud (or maybe they do but most certainly not in writing), but it is implied that there will be some payoff for your hard (and sometimes unpaid) work in terms of an academic position. And this subtle implication makes it seem like a good choice for the future.
Starting a family In addition to the not so casual nature of the ‘casual’ roles at the university, being employed casually means losing the freedom to make certain important lifestyle decisions. For example, starting a family on a casual wage is hugely problematic. Concerns associated with creating a secure environment for your family, such as getting a home loan, become extremely difficult, if not impossible. Banks do not want to give loans to casual workers, least of all when their hours fluctuate or their employers cannot guarantee their future employment, and certainly not when in each casual contract stands a clause which states that every casual employee can be fired with one hour’s notice.
Working causally is a bonus for you; it is a great advantage. You can choose your work hours. You will have fewer responsibilities. You will have freedom. You will get paid more to do less. Less will be expected of you. That is the promise of casual work. The reality, however, looks very different.
The casual reality Casual positions are not given to staff to see how well they work, with the intention of them converting to a permanent contract in the future. There is no legal obligation for the university to allow or encourage long term casual employees to convert to any other basis of employment. Yet teaching at the university is not ‘casual’ in any sense of the word.
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There is no legislation that truly stops casuals from being replaced, if they choose to take time off work to carry out parental (or any other) duties.
There are many responsibilities connected to academic teaching. The work does not end at the end of the tutorial, nor does it end at the end of the semester. A long term casual employee is, by consequence of their ongoing involvement in teaching, also involved in course and assessment development, which generally occurs after the completion of the course.
This work is often completed on an unofficial ‘voluntary’ basis, with the knowledge that the time invested will make the course run more smoothly in future semesters, where the casual employee will teach the course again in the future, though of course they can never be sure. There are, in fact, six months of the year in which casual employees are completely
unpaid, so it is no surprise that this is such a popular solution for the university. Casual employees face the challenge of being without work or pay for half of the year, and also require any additional work they do find to fit within the rigid university teaching schedule. Thus, rather than having additional freedom, long term casual employees spend their (unpaid) ‘holidays’ considering how they might make ends meet.
Further, there is no payment for maternity leave, even after years of continuous employment. Casuals can take maternity leave without pay, but there is no real assurance of re-employment after having the child because there was no real job security in the first place. No matter how long a casual employee carries out their role and no matter how well they do it, casual staff are always replaceable. There is no legislation that truly stops casuals from being replaced, if they choose to take time off work to carry out parental (or any other) duties.
Flexibility? Casual work promises to be flexible, promises that the employee could change their shifts just as easily as the employer is able to change them. In reality, casual employees cannot chose their hours at all. Casual workers have the choice of taking the hours that are given to them or their hours are at risk of being given to someone else. Additionally, casual employees do not even have the possibility of taking sick leave. In a work environment dominated by casual employees, there is a strong implication that if someone is sick they still need to continued overpage...
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®®® Women in casual work in academia
come to work. Rarely, almost never, is anyone asked to do relief work. And this is understandable of course, because as a casual, you will not be paid if you call in sick. This in and of itself is problematic, but in the time of COVID, such a workplace culture is even more concerning. There is no financial or career related freedom associated with casual work, instead there is pure uncertainty, fear and insecurity.
Unhealthy power structures Though it often goes unrecognised, there is a direct link between casual work and the pre-existing power structures in the university, which favour men over women. A simple stroll through the university, a look at the names on office doors, a review of the photos of the heads of department over the years, hung celebratorily in the office corridors, will tell the story of a university dominated by male power, although the feminist narrative put forward by the university might try to suggest otherwise. Men are more often able to work overtime, are often not the ones expected to pick up their children from school and bring them to their extracurricular activities. Casual roles are given to women because ‘women require flexibility’ since they are the ones who continue to be expected to carry out carer roles for their families. Permanent roles are not offered to women because they are not always able to work the same hours as men, yet women year in and year out show up to their jobs and carry out their work, but instead of giving women part time contracts, women are simply given a casual contract. Women are kept in positions of powerlessness within the university system because of being forced into casual roles with the ‘freedom’ they offer. In the simple act of granting a man a secure position and giving the woman a ‘flexible’ casual role, the power has been taken away from the female worker and given to the male worker, to decide when, how, and how often the woman is allowed to work.
The value of our work People outside of the university system, as well as the students within it, may assume that the people delivering this highly important, valuable, not to mention costly, education at the university are employed on a fair, equal basis. Women are delivering high quality education and research at the university, but not under the same conditions as men. Just because a woman works in the morning and leaves earlier to collect her children from school does not mean that the work she is doing is less significant, academic, ongoing or important than the work completed by male staff. For a young woman, making decisions about which The term casual is an ill fitting workplaces to description for any form of academic aim to be a part engagement. Academic teaching is of, working at the university appears complex and it does not simply come to to promise much a halt when classes end. more than it turns out to offer in reality.
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The term casual is an ill fitting description for any form of academic engagement. Academic teaching is complex and it does not simply come to a halt when classes end. Universities need to be held accountable for the fact that their ongoing employment of long term employees as ‘casual’ staff members is significantly contributing to the broader social issue of sexism and unfair treatment of women in the workplace and within society. The author of this article is an NTEU member at an Australian university who wishes to remain anonymous.
Female workers become answerable to the male workers through the perpetuation of such structures in the workplace. This leads to significant differences in men’s and women’s salaries, necessarily as women employed casually are paid only for half of the year. This also results in women frequently being placed in positions of powerlessness in the workplace, which has a flow on effect in the rest of their lives.
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Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
Delegate profile:
Bailey Sharp My name is Bailey, I’m a casual tutor in the college of Design and Social Context at RMIT University. I started at RMIT the same week COVID reached Australia. In the first part of 2020, though I was a Union member, I wasn’t active. A few months in, after the frenzy of adapting to the pandemic gave way to the long depression of living COVID-normal, I found I was not given any work in the second semester. I decided I’d use a bit of my new (undesirable) free time to look into what my Casuals Network was doing. The first meeting I attended was relatively small, made up of maybe 10 stalwart members who turned to each other to ask how we should proceed. So much debate had just happened about the best way forward for the Union and there was so much carnage in the sector. I think the feeling across a lot of campuses was what was worth doing and what could we possibly do from a position of such weakness? At this point individual members at RMIT had recognised they were not being paid properly for their marking work. There are three bands of payment for marking at our university, the highest of which is the ‘academic judgement rate’ (AJR), to be paid for marking work that requires academic knowledge and skills. Several members had discovered that they were being paid at the base rate, which had erroneously become described as the ‘standard’, a difference of nearly $20 per hour. Not only is this theft, the conflation of the base rate as ‘standard’ is insulting. It’s easy to see that the vast majority of marking work done at a tertiary level requires ‘academic judgement’. So the matter of being paid at the AJR really sat at the intersection of two pain-points for casual members: wage theft and disrespect. Plus the wording in our Enterprise Agreement is clear on the matter, so ahead of Agreement negotiations an enforcement campaign felt timely. Some of these members bravely took their underpayments to the Union and together they forced repayments from the University (not without a lot of work and risk on the individual workers part). These members’ wins proved that management didn’t have a counter-argument, only a tactic: stick to meting out individual payments and keep them quiet, so only the bolshiest members, or those with little to lose, will pursue the money they’re owed.
At the time of writing this, about a year on from the commencement of the campaign, the Casuals Network, the RMIT NTEU Branch and the Victorian Division are working closely to win a collective outcome for former and current casual staff. After an initial meeting with HR (which was, quite frankly, embarrassing on the part of the University) we’re organising for a second, mass member meeting to force RMIT into forming a joint working party. Following the model of last year’s win for the Arts Casuals at Melbourne University, we want to see that casuals who have been underpaid are identified, contacted and re-paid. We believe for many people this will mean thousands of dollars. From the first meeting I attended, where members grappled with the overwhelming attack on casuals that came with COVID, it has taken real focus on the part of the Network to persist in moving this campaign along, step by step.
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We will now head into bargaining negotiations and future campaigns as a stronger, more united cohort than we were a year ago.
The AJR campaign doesn’t address the needs of all casual workers but as a starting point it has helped grow the Network and the NTEU’s casual membership. We will now head into bargaining negotiations and future campaigns as a stronger, more united cohort than we were a year ago. If we want to see change in the sector and, in the immediate future, positive changes to our conditions, we need the involvement of everyone, at whatever level they can participate. This is the only way to exercise our full union power. Get more information about becoming an NTEU Delegate at delegates.nteu.org.au
Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
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Peter Watson Board Chair, Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA)
Recognising wage theft of postgrads Each year universities across the country recruit thousands of postgraduate students for coursework and research degrees. For those completing research degrees, these students form part of a research workforce that is the backbone of the higher education sector, contributing 56% of all research hours. However, estimates suggest that only 40% of these are scholarship recipients and many will look to other work to get by. Entering their research training and beginning to engage in teaching, these students can find themselves a part of larger systemic policies in their work and are often exposed to uneven power dynamics. They might be an international student who is fearful that upsetting the status quo will come back to bite them. We know this kind of environment is fertile ground for wage theft practices to flourish. While the NTEU, CAPA and local student representatives are fantastic avenues for reporting, what can we as colleagues do to recognise the signs in our peers? Open communication between our colleagues is always beneficial and a great starting point when combating these issues. It can often bring to light issues of wage theft before they exact too great a toll on a student. Compare what work each of you are doing, what your duties entail and ask yourself whether this is appropriate for someone balancing both study and work. By establishing this baseline between colleagues it can become quickly apparent when something is amiss and where a student is having too much asked of them. Something we at CAPA hear all too often is a student undertaking unpaid preparation work for a tutorial or laboratory. A student may be asked to undertake unpaid marking for a class they are responsible for, or be allocated time for marking such that no sense of constructive feedback could be given.
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These students are being asked to compromise their own performance as an educator to help the Department’s, and by extension the University’s, bottom line. As the first point of contact for the student’s they teach, they may also be in the firing line when an undergraduate’s experience in the unit beings to slip. Those that choose to stand their ground can be placed in the difficult position of receiving poor feedback and have their performance questioned as a result. It is important to keep an eye out for our colleagues who appear stressed by their workload or anxious for upcoming work and help them to connect with their local NTEU Branch and student union. Wage theft is not an issue that can be resolved overnight. It warrants a concerted and ongoing effort by our peak bodies all the way down to those at the coalface and in the classroom. As the Government pushes the sector towards greater commercialisation of our research, CAPA is concerned this may only serve to create new opportunities for exploitation where students unfamiliar with their rights as creators of research, stand to be taken advantage of by their university.
Compare what work each of you are doing, what your duties entail and ask yourself whether this is appropriate for someone balancing both study and work.
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Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
UoM casuals defend quality teaching with union power
Geraldine Fela & Ben Kunkler University of Melbourne
The UniMelb NTEU Casuals Network has scored yet another victory against management in recent weeks, forcing pro-casual improvements to the much-maligned ‘Local Operating Rules’ (LOR). At the end of semester one, the Dean of Arts, Reverend Russell Goulbourne, announced much-needed amendments to the LOR. After the wage justice victories of 2020 – approximately $15 million (and climbing) in back paid wages – the original LOR was ushered in to ‘ensure compliance’ with the Enterprise Agreement in the Faculty of Arts, which is under investigation by the Fairwork Ombudsman. However, what the original draft of the LOR did in effect was to cut casual hours and offload student consultation duties to alreadyoverworked permanent staff. After a semester’s-worth of agitation, the LOR was redrafted, conceding to casuals: • Improved (but not perfect) rights to paid lecture attendance (to save money, casual tutors had been banned from attending lectures) • 12 hours of paid meetings per subject per semester (without further authorisation). • 24 hours per tutor per subject per semester for ‘directed’ student consultation (i.e. in addition to the contemporaneous consultation that is self-directed and associated with the delivery of each tutorial).
How did we get here? This victory comes off the back of campaigning from casual, fixed term and continuing NTEU members this semester and the long wage theft campaign that has been organised by the Casuals Network. Our fight for paid lecture attendance goes back to November 2019, when NTEU members from the Faculty of Arts rallied outside the Dean’s offices and then marched right in, occupying the office for a number of hours. It culminated in a COVIDsafe rally at University of Melbourne ViceChancellor Duncan Maskell’s $6 million, University-supplied mansion in Parkville, ‘Cumnock House’, in November 2020. The rally at the mansion was a controversial step toward a stronger culture of militancy in the NTEU, but the Victory – management called fifteen minutes before the rally to cave on key wage justice demands, including full back pay for unpaid marking hours – proved that militancy and directaction tactics shift neoliberal University management, sensitive to having public attention drawn to their large salaries and perks.
Further, it meant that when management offered their penny-pinching solution to wage theft, the first version of the LOR, we were in a strong position to keep up the pressure. Instead of simply agreeing to pay us for lecture attendance and consults – some of the core business of teaching – the first LOR ‘directed’ us not to attend lectures or provide consults. In response, casuals and permanent staff members joined together, writing open letters and stacking out meetings with management to send the clear message that this was pedagogically unsound. It was this consistent pressure, in addition to years of campaigning around casual rights, that resulted in the latest LOR which significantly improves casual pay for lecture attendance, student consults and meetings. NTEU members have shown that when we stand together, we can push back against systemic wage theft and overwork and, importantly, defend high quality teaching for our students. Geraldine Fela is a Branch Committee member, University of Melbourne. Ben Kunkler is NTEU Branch Organiser, University of Melbourne.
The new LOR is not perfect, but it is a significant improvement and shows unequivocally that when we The new LOR is not perfect, but it fight, we win. Importantly, these are changes that will directly improve is a significant improvement and shows the quality of teaching which unequivocally that when we fight, we casuals provide by substantially increasing consultation hours win. and improving rights to paid lecture attendance. This is a clear demonstration of what the NTEU has been The public campaign for paid lecture saying for years, staff working conditions are attendance helped put the systemic student learning conditions. wage theft occurring at the University of Melbourne on the agenda in a way that It will also help address the spiralling management could not ignore. It also workload issues facing permanent staff, helped us recruit hundreds of casual staff by shifting some of the ‘burden’ of student members to the NTEU. consults off overworked permanent staff members to casuals who need more work.
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Connect ® Volume 14, no. 2 ® Semester 2, August 2021
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