news
43.1 %
Shouldn’ t be so casual
24.9 %
Educators warn the decline in full-time staff will hurt quality. By Dallas Bastian
With about half of teaching staff employed as casuals, universities are becoming increasingly insecure places of employment, a worker’ s union has said. National Tertiary Education Union( NTEU) president Jeannie Rea said this has ramifications for the sustainability and quality of teaching and research. And the situation is set to get worse this year.
Statistics the Department of Industry recently released show the proportion of full-time equivalent( FTE) hours performed by estimated casual staff, by work contract, increased by 92 per cent between 1996 and 2012.
Rea said the increase has occurred because the number of students has risen whilst the number of academics employed to teach them has remained stagnant.
Greens higher education spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said a decrease in public funding per student has been the overriding factor.
“ The cost burden has been pushed onto students via fees, and staff via working conditions,” Rhiannon said.“ The result is university managements that push hard to slash staff wages and other labour costs.”
The amount of federal funding is not increasing with each commonwealthsupported place student, Rea said.“ We need at least a 10 per cent increase in the money coming with each student, so you can actually start to employ people with more stability.”
Rhiannon said the lack of full-time work was resulting in academics doing large amounts of unpaid overtime.
Dustin Halse, a sessional academic at Swinburne University, listed the absence of a phone or office, difficulty accessing IT or library systems and time wasted on administrative tasks as issues that come with being employed casually or sessionally.
“ As a consequence, you are often spending your nights or weekends trying to catch up on work,” he said, adding one of the biggest challenges is the uncertainty surrounding the number of hours he will be asked to work until a week prior to the semester commencing. He said jobs are often rushed and there is little time to properly plan.
“ Having no security of work is particularly stressful,” Halse said.“ It would be great to not have to worry about when the next pay cheque will be coming.”
Rea said this has a follow-on affect on the amount of work full-time academics are left with, as casual academics are focused on the teaching side as opposed to research, scholarship and community engagement.
The phenomenon also affects students, as the lack of paid hours makes it difficult to find time with the course teacher and build important relationships, she added.
“ Students are frustrated,” she said.“ They lose their confidence in their own abilities and their studies when they have trouble seeing their tutor.”
Casual academics are often connecting with students outside work hours using university online management systems, email and social networking.
Rhiannon said relationships with colleagues are also strained due to the competition for new jobs in the next semester, which can work against a collegial and harmonious atmosphere.
Rea said there was also a disjunction in university teaching; fewer academics in ongoing positions are able to devise, review and improve courses. It is also difficult to be innovative, integrate with industry and organise internships when tutors aren’ t being employed full time.
As a result, Rea said, the quality of Australian university education is at risk of slipping, affecting the country’ s international attractiveness.
“ The last thing we want is to run down that reputation for both potential students locally and internationally, and of course [ for people who could potentially work as ] academics in the system, too,” she said.
She explained that there is also a risk of PhD graduates looking to neighbouring countries to find more stable employment.
“ Most of us would be ecstatic if we were even offered a part-time position,” Swinburne’ s Halse said.“ Annual leave and an end to the discrimination in [ super ] rates would be significant.” n
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Percentage of full-time equivalent hours worked by casuals in 2012.
Source: Department of Industry
4 | campusreview. com. au