Trinity: Stop putting our teachers on precarious contracts!

Picture: Academics protesting casualization, pension, pay cuts and lack of equality in the U.K (UCU).

Who are precarious staff and what is casualization?

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The term precarious staff refers to any university worker who shares insecure working conditions (these could be teachers, tutors, researchers, cleaners, caterers, hospitality or admin staff) that leave them underpaid, vulnerable and living with the constant risk of unemployment. Casualization refers to the casual forms of employment which leave people in this insecure position. It can also refer to outsourcing. For example, in our College estates 20.5% of all cleaning staff are outsourced, and 14.28% of security staff. The University in total has employed over 2,500 staff on casualized, short-term and hourly-paid contracts, leaving them in a precarious condition. When the institution decides to no longer rely upon its casualized workers, it can dispose of them easily.

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Staff

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Within College our 5,500 postgraduate – of these 4000 masters’ and 1600 PhD students – are akin to workers as they carry out research, teach and tutor. Yet, their contributions are undervalued and underpaid. Many receive some form of stipend, from a funding agency like the Irish Research Council, Science Foundation Ireland or the Health Research Board, others will receive a stipend from the university or their supervisor, while a smaller number receive nothing at all. The underfunded arts, humanities and social sciences are the worst offenders for this, like the School of Creative Arts and the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences. These stipends are meagre, with as low as €6.5k stipends advertised at Trinity. On top of stipends, some postgrads receive pay doing casual teaching work, whereas others are required to do unpaid teaching as a condition to receive their stipend, fees and research funding. Often this teaching work can take up hours outside of class time, and when pay is received and averaged out over total hours worked, pay amounts to less than the minimum hourly wage. For example, the pay rates for tutorials range between 28.71€ to 37€ according to Trinity’s policy, but this should be divided by three because there is one hour of preparation, one hour of teaching, and one hour of marking. So, for someone on the 28.71€ scale, this comes out to 9.57€ per hour. In addition, teaching contribution work is not enough to make a living, as there are not enough classes. In some cases, final year fees are foregone in exchange for unpaid teaching contribution, which is regardless of exploitation.

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These numbers are based on real-life examples but are indicative. It varies highly according to individual postgraduates because of different income thresholds for funding organisations.

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Casualization does not only affect postgraduate students, but also other teaching staff. Within the Irish third-level education sector, the average rate of casualization is 50%, with 80% of all researchers being on temporary contracts. They can be paid less than €10,000 a year. This amounts to around 13,000 staff each year across Ireland. Lecturers can be paid per class (sometimes referred to as ‘hourly-paid’) or they can be employed on 3, 6, or 9 month contracts, which could be one-off or recurring. Finally, they could be employed on temporary contracts of one to three years. The average length of time spent in academic precarity in Ireland is 7.1 years for women and 5.7 years for men. Many workers have endured these conditions for a decade or more, leading to financial difficulties, poverty and stress. During the summer, for example, many are left jobless, but even during the year, the pay is inadequate, there is a lack of worker protections and no job security is guaranteed.

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Academic precarity also affects professional staff, through outsourcing, which has been an increasing trend. 80% of the 2,500 casualized staff are employed for lecturing purposes, while the rest are professional workers. Contracted workers are paid less, and outsourcing seeks to undermine staff working conditions and replace them with cheaper alternatives. Here, at Trinity College Dublin, the share of casualized staff stands around 41%. Of these, 60% or so are female, highlighting an element of gender inequality and contributing to the 9% wage gap between men and women within our institution.

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During Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, a total of 18 academics and 11 professional staff were laid off, 2 courses were ended, 1 suspended and 1 merged at College. In the U.K, the pandemic afforded opportunities for institutions to casualize their staff and cut corners. We must organise to ensure we do not end up going down the same path.

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How does this impact you?

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Staff teaching conditions are student learning conditions. To these teaching conditions, everyone contributes. From cleaners to security to IT services staff, it is of paramount importance that everyone in our community is given the respect they deserve. The casualized approach that our institutions have taken towards members of our College community seriously undermines education and research. The neoliberal university professes to be for social progress, yet eats itself up and becomes the enemy of its own goals. While students are being charged rising tuition fees, and increasing the number of students, it refuses to pay more or increase the number of staff in an effort to cut corners. Similarly, the university has invested in new buildings, such as 80 million euros for Trinity East, but not in the staff that maintains them. More than 60% of College teaching spaces are in need of repair.

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As more and more functions are outsourced, there is a hollowing out of the professionalism of Trinity staff in favour of subcontractors. Rather than providing proper employment, Trinity seeks to shirk its responsibilities and save money. Outsourced workers are paid little and do not have the same worker protection as being employed at an organisation, while non-outsourced staff are left wondering about their futures. In 2019, College proposed 75% of all new hires in security, attendant, housekeeping and maintenance to be temporary workers in new buildings, to the outrage of trade unions. In a recently published IT Services survey, the outsourcing of technical support to FittingImage was identified as a barrier to the delivery of digital and online (and thus accessible) learning, highlighting how hiring external contractors (who have little to no idea about how a College is run) as a cost-cutting measure hampers the delivery of services. This agenda contributes to a College environment where our workers are not respected, and we students should stand in solidarity with them.

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What can we do?

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The intent of this flyer is to raise awareness about casualization and to offer ways in which we students can stand in solidarity with our staff. We link below campaigns that you can support and engage with. We, as the student population of our College, can have a real impact

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Within our Schools, we are asking:

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Find out more and support the campaigns!

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On the above 4 QR codes, 4 different organisations are linked. They are as follows. Irish Precarity Network, PhD’s Collective Action Union, TCD Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance and Non-EEA Ph.D. Students Society Ireland. Students4Change is not affiliated with them.

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The Trinity Graduate Students’ Union is also active on campaigning on this front. You can find their website here. Feel free to get involved in any of these organisations.

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Where are our sources? We know all this information from the S4C FOI Database, available on our website at students4change.eu !

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