The unions roar against unpaid work.

News Tired of unpaid extra hours

Three out of four lecturers at the University of Gothenburg do not think that the hours they have been allocated for teaching are enough for the work they put in, and half of them do at least 5 unpaid hours of extra work a month. This was revealed by a survey that Saco-S conducted among its members in December.

JUST BEFORE the GU Journal's deadline, around 400 of the 1,700 lecturers had had time to respond to the survey that Saco had sent out to its members at the University of Gothenburg. The preliminary results are in line with SULF's nationwide report, Nu får det vara nog – om det gränslösa, obetalda arbetet i akademin (We’ve had enough – about the limitless, unpaid work within academia) – which showed that almost 70 percent of lecturers worked more than their regular working hours in 2020, and that most of them were not paid for it. – The pandemic has really only made the flaws in the system more visible. We need to find another way to quantify the work that lecturers actually do. Our survey indicates that almost every third lecturer at the University of Gothenburg estimates that they do at least 120 extra hours a year, which is considered normal according to the culture that prevails at several faculties, says Maja Pelling, Saco Chairperson at the University of Gothenburg.

In the last issue of the GU Journal, we wrote several articles based on SULF's national report. What largely emerged, in interviews with the vice-chancellor and others, was that the unpaid work within academia is basically a national problem. And sure, Maja Pelling agrees with that. The parliament and the government are not prepared to invest the resources needed to maintain the quality of education – they ignore the problems and hide behind a variety of factors and calculation models. But the same thing applies to the University of Gothenburg, she says. – The employment conditions at the local university are not the responsibility of the government, nor is the work environment. There has to be accountability in the university's organisation. Heads of department, for example, are responsible for health and safety, something which is not always apparent.

Maja Pelling points out that each university has a responsibility for the work environment.

THE LECTURERS' system of annual working hours, which can conceal and make invisible reductions in reimbursement for lecturing, is something that is important to pay attention to in this context, says Maja Pelling. – If I as a lecturer am allocated a reduced course budget due to cutbacks, it means that I may

have to teach yet another course to make up my annual working hours. On paper, it looks like I’m doing the same amount of work, but in reality it could be seen as a pay cut as the lecturer has to "work harder" to make up their annual working hours, she says. – Many members who are af-

fected have contacted us. Here, the heads of department can assume their responsibility by paying attention to the deterioration in quality and changes in the rates of sickness, etc., that occur in the wake of budget cuts.

The unpaid work that lecturers perform is often explained by external factors, such as increased administrative requirements and more work with research applications spilling over into the role of lecturer. But that is not an adequate explanation, according to Maja Pelling. To clarify this, Saco has requested figures on how much overtime pay was paid out to different categories of lecturers in 2020. In total, almost SEK 3.2 million was paid to lecturers and senior lecturers. It may sound like a lot at first glance, but considering that almost one in three Saco members estimate that they work at least 120 hours of overtime a year, Maja Pelling thinks that this figure is ridiculously low.

The pandemic has really only made the flaws in the system.

MAJA PELLING

– EVEN DURING THE year of the pandemic in 2020, when they were extremely overburdened, hardly any money was paid out! We need to talk about the elephant in the room. How should lecturers be paid for their work?

If you look at it faculty by faculty, it is even more striking what little money we are talking about. The Sahlgrenska Academy has paid out barely 200,000 SEK in overtime. The School of Business, Economics and Law, the Faculty of Humanities and the IT Faculty paid out even less. And the least amount, 6,112 SEK, was paid out by the Faculty of Science. Why is that?

– THE SIMPLE ANSWER is that there is no tradition of paying for overtime. I have been a lecturer for many years at the faculty and I do not recall anyone ever receiving overtime pay, says Göran Hilmersson, Dean of the Faculty of Science.

He thinks that one explanation is that most people at the faculty carry out a high proportion of research as part of their job, and this is also where they work the most overtime. – This means that if you add an extra ten percent of lecturing time, then maybe in fact it only constitutes 2 percent of your annual working hours. And you might not care about that. You do not really have that view of working hours as a scientist, I think.

The culture that encourages working overtime is something we need to get away from, Göran Hilmersson thinks. – We should not work overtime. If you do that, the expectations are too high in relation to the funds available, or your employer has given you too much to do and needs to rethink your work situation.

FACTS

The simple answer is that there is no tradition of paying for overtime. ...

GÖRAN HILMERSSON

So what do you do about it at the faculty?

– We talk about it, but have not got very far. The fact that our employees often contact occupational healthcare services because they are stressed is a sign of that. We need to work more with health and safety and the culture, says Göran Hilmersson.

Text: Lars Nicklason Photo: Johan Wingborg

In the last issue of the GU

Journal, there were several articles about unpaid work within academia. The articles were based on SULF's report Nu får det vara nog – om det gränslösa, obetalda arbetet i akademin. The report, which examined how the country's university lecturers worked and felt during the pandemic in 2020 showed that almost 70 percent of the lecturers worked more than their regular working hours and that the vast majority (77 percent) were not paid for it. The GU Journal interviewed a couple of lecturers who could relate to the descriptions in the report: The pandemic may have been the last straw, but it has been a long time coming. “The big problem is that for a long time new duties have gradually been added, small things that are difficult to say no to.” This includes increased administrative reporting requirements, including Ladok, plagiarism checks, booking rooms, personnel administration and individual study plans. Increasingly demanding students as well as extensive work with research applications have also played a part. Vice-Chancellor Eva Wiberg emphasized that this additional work must be highlighted, for example in workforce plans. A new working hours agreement would hopefully clarify this. However, she saw the basic problem as a national issue. The universities have unreasonable streamlining requirements and the resource allocation system must be updated, she said. Malin Broberg, Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences, understood the problem, but did not agree with SULF that staff had had enough. “This does not mean that we do not have lecturers who work more than 40 hours a week. However, a lot of it relates to things that are not included in the workforce plan, rather it's things that you add yourself, said Malin Broberg in light of the Faculty of Social Sciences' survey which showed that the majority of lecturers were in good spirits, but that they felt both physically and mentally worse during the period of adjustment to the pandemic last spring.