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. 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’