COVID-19 and casualisation: How the pandemic is affecting university staff
Ellie Stephenson reports.
The University of New South Wales Casuals Network, a grassroots staff activist group at UNSW, has released a new report detailing the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for casual workers. The report found that one third of casual workers at UNSW had already lost work, with an average income loss of $626 per week.
The University of New South Wales Casuals Network, a grassroots staff activist group at UNSW, has released a new report detailing the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for casual workers. The report found that one third of casual workers at UNSW had already lost work, with an average income loss of $626 per week. This drastic level of job insecurity and loss of pay is a result of the fact that universities are ineligible to receive the JobKeeper wage subsidy, meaning many universities have announced measures to reduce costs. At UNSW, permanent staff were asked to voluntarily take pay cuts and retirement, while casual staff are being fired without notice or asked to work without proper pay.
Image Credit: UNSW Casuals Network
The report found that one third of respondents were working over 10 unpaid hours per week, with the move to online work requiring staff to do extra unpaid work.
The Casuals Network also emphasised the huge amount of anxiety among staff caused by their working conditions, with the report finding that 81% of casuals are concerned about losing their job. One anonymous worker told the report, “my anxiety level is through the roof”, while others expressed anger at the lack of support from UNSW management and fears about job security. This is worsened by the fact that a majority of casual workers are balancing their work commitments with postgraduate study, which has also been affected by COVID-19, for instance through cancelled fieldwork.
Anxiety surrounds not just short-term job losses, but also worries that recorded lectures and online teaching material could be used to cut jobs in the future.
Employment in the tertiary education sector is heavily casualised with casuals typically being long-term employees. This means that, by sacrificing casuals to maintain profits, the universities are forcing costs onto many long-term staff, with significant experience. This scenario reveals the precariousness inherent to large-scale casualisation. Anna Hush, a member of the Network, commented “It’s our work that keeps universities running. Unpaid work and job insecurity are part of their business model, but these trends have only worsened during COVID-19.”
The report called for several changes to protect casual workers: providing more certainty about ongoing work, more transparency from management, full payment for the extra work of moving online, and JobKeeper support for casuals in the tertiary sector.
The fight to safeguard casual jobs in universities is occurring around the country. Controversially, the National Executive of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which represents staff at universities, recently offered significant concessions to universities, apparently in order to save jobs. The USyd NTEU branch moved to censure the NTEU for this move, opposing “deferring pay rises, granting management the ability to direct the taking of leave, and all other punitive cost-saving measures”. They have been joined in opposing these concessions by NTEU branches at RMIT, Monash University, Victoria University, Flinders University, and Melbourne University, as well as the La Trobe University Casuals network. Staff have noted that concessions now come with no guaranteed protection from further cuts and lost jobs.