policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
the latter, Douglas says they would be
“quite a bit higher”.
“They don’t tell us what we deeply want
and need to know,” Luzia adds.
Also, they fail to break down the
differences between academic and
administrative staff. At UTS, for example,
only 23 per cent of academic staff are
securely employed.
Let’s not
keep it casual
The pain and perils of
insecure university work.
By Loren Smith
A
s the summer break burns
on, many university casuals
are breaking sweats – not just
because of searing temperatures. Karina
Luzia, co-founder of blog CASA: Casual,
Adjunct, Sessional staff and Allies in
Australian Higher Education, says the
Christmas period is “particularly terrible”
for university casuals as they aren’t paid for
three months.
Though casuals’ strife is more intense
from December through February, it
persists year-round. Dr Samuel Douglas,
a casual philosophy academic at the
University of Newcastle, says being a
casual can potentially affect the quality of
one’s teaching.
“Sometimes as a casual employee, it’s
harder to … be across current research,
particularly [as] you only have access to
all the journals behind paywalls when
you’re on contract.”
Though a 2016 LH Martin
Institute report found no evidence linking
casualisation to a drop in teaching quality,
it noted a 2013 study “found that casuals
are marginalised in academic departments,
subject to high levels of uncertainty and
arbitrary decisions over future work, and are
not respected by their tenured colleagues”.
Douglas claims these conditions can
create stress, which is compounded by
casuals’ job insecurity.
“I do worry, if you’re insecurely employed,
then you always [have to] watch what you’re
saying to students.
“Not everything that’s worth saying
at university is popular either with your
students or … other staff, and if you’re
insecurely employed, you have no
protection to say things that are true and
worthwhile but are unpopular.”
Luzia ventures that casual employment
can foster frustration, as casual academics
aren’t eligible for research funding, “which
is why people are in academia in the first
place a lot of the time”.
MASS CASUALTIES
Aside from casualisation’s personal issues,
Luzia says it affects universities at large.
“I don’t think people get the fact that
it’s not just individual,” the former casual
academic says. “It’s an institutional stressor.”
That is, it puts universities in a precarious
position, as at any given time a large
proportion of their staff can simply quit,
effective immediately.
The data gives more reason for
universities to be fearful: casuals comprise a
larger segment of the university workforce
than ever. According to annual university
employment figures released by the
government late last year, there has been
an estimated 5.3 per cent increase in
casual university employees. They are
now thought to comprise 17.6 per cent of
university workforces.
Both Luzia and Douglas think those
figures belie reality. For one, they reflect
‘units’ of full-time equivalent staff, as
opposed to actual numbers. If they did
UNITE AND CONQUER?
Luzia and Douglas propose a simple
solution to growing casualisation: stop
hiring casuals.
They acknowledge that this wi ll cost
money, which, with the latest higher
education funding cuts, is probably
unpalatable.
So, in lieu of this, Luzia suggests
universities offer casuals more support.
“At my university, if you’ve been a long-
term casual for more than say, a year, and
you fall pregnant … the university will give
you maternity leave. That’s not written
down anywhere, it’s just a thing that the
university does.”
Other perks Luzia suggests include
learning and teaching funding grants, and
awards. Similarly, Douglas recommends
short-term rather than casual contracts,
and access to sick leave.
“You might spend six hours writing an
hour of lecture material, but you only get
paid if you present that one hour of lecture
material; so if you’re sick for one day a
week, you can lose quite a lot of your take-
home pay.
“Sick leave, I think, would be a big deal for
a lot of casual staff.”
Long term, however, they both believe
universities need to unite to combat
casualisation, which Luzia terms a
“structural inequity”.
“No-one ever talks about the fact that
when it comes to casual employment
at universities, you’ve got qualified
professionals and experts. You’ve got
engineers, you’ve got accountants, you’ve
got librarians, geographers, pathologists,
doctors. You’ve got psychologists,
professionals, artists, media producers.
They have been teaching future and current
professionals without having access to
leave, professional services and security.
“It’s kind of like … [universities aren’t]
taking care of their current experts, who are
taking care of their future experts.
“There’s something really wrong
with that.” ■
11