Casualisation: a report from discussions at the WCC UK AGM

Posted on July 16, 2019 by lizgloyn

Dr. Katherine Harloe of the University of Reading reports on discussions from our AGM.

We are all aware of the problem of casualisation in UK Higher Education, as universities seek to cut costs, and respond to volatility in student numbers, by relying on fixed-term staff rather than creating open-ended posts. Many Classics Departments are presently in institutions operating non-replacement of posts for permanent staff; others have gone further and opened voluntary redundancy schemes, with compulsory redundancies actively being considered for next year.

The result of all this has been a job market with very few open-ended positions advertised, and a large number of fixed-term, and/or fractional posts – many of which flout the recently (2017) revised CUCD protocol on employment of fixed-term staff. The Universities and Colleges Union, which is running an anti-casualisation campaign, called last year for staff to take industrial action in relation to casualisation; turn-out was, however, insufficient for this to take place.

Given this context, it seemed important for the WCC UK to address the problem of casualisation in discussions at our 2019 AGM. The casualisation break-out group held a very full, urgent discussion, which could have gone on for much longer given the scale of the problem and the multiple issues and disadvantages being faced. It was particularly useful to have a mixture of those at the sharp end of casualisation (including some who have by now spent up to a decade on short-term contracts, with no end in sight); finishing PhDs contemplating the academic labour market; more senior/established staff who might be in a position to influence institutions’ policies and practices, even at a local level; and active members of UCU branch committees. 

It was agreed that the problem of casualisation has been getting worse in UK universities. Every year the jobs advertised appear to be fewer and worse in terms of working conditions/types of contract, and casualisation has clear, long-term negative effects upon individuals’ lives (including the ability to establish and maintain family life), research agendas, mental and physical health, as well as upon research cultures and the sense of academic community within and across UK Classics Departments.

Specific negative consequences of casualisation impact not only upon casualised academics themselves but also upon the undergraduates and postgraduates they teach or supervise. Since the latter are articulated less often than the former, it is worth noting that the ‘student-side’ problems noticed less often include lack of opportunities for doctoral supervision (a negative both for prospective supervisors and for prospective supervisees, if a person with particular expertise does not hold a position where they can supervise doctoral researchers); lack of continuity in lecturers and personal tutors, which can lead to lack of suitable referees when graduates are entering the job market. These all have a negative effect on ‘the student experience’ and student satisfaction; some casualised staff also feel that they are accorded less authority and/or respect, both by students and by colleagues, than staff on open-ended contracts.

A lot of the discussion centred around measures that could be taken at that level to alleviate the conditions of casualised staff, although the group recognised that bigger, structural questions need to be addressed if the UK HE sector’s ever-increasing reliance on casualised staff is to be reversed. Drawing on the experience of long-term casualised staff, we came up with a short wish-list of suggestions, in no particular order. These are addressed primarily to Heads of Department and Departmental Directors of Teaching and Learning, that could ease, even if only marginally, the lives of casualised staff

1. Pay relocation costs of staff arriving to fill temporary contracts. This is something that is almost never offered, although a few departments now require any permanent staff who are applying for research funding that includes teaching replacement to include relocation costs in their project costings, where this is an allowable expense under the scheme.

2. Aim to offer a minimum 12–month contract, which includes research time/university vacation pay. Some discussion took place around the challenges faced by those who had spent a long time on fractional, teaching-only contracts in maintaining their competitiveness for contracts which included a research element, but it was felt overall that it was better to hold teaching and research together if at all possible, since this would be of greatest long-term benefit to aspiring academics.

3. Increase uniformity in application procedure/expected paperwork for temporary posts, across different UK Classics Departments. Ideal from the point of view of prospective applicants would be a single, simple, online form for all UK Classics applications; although this is probably unrealisable, it was felt that the application process could often be simplified and Classics departments could collaborate, through subject associations, to increase uniformity in some areas. The next two points also relate to this:

4. Make the eligibility criteria explicit in job advertisements and further particulars. In particular, different definitions of ‘early-career’ are used in the sector and in different institutions; this can involve a great deal of wasted effort when prospective applicants discover at a late stage that they are not in fact eligible for a particular postdoc or funding scheme. It was felt strongly that an ‘early-career researcher’ should be redefined as ‘someone who does not have a permanent academic post’.

5. When designing an application process, consider carefully what you require of candidates at each stage, and consider only taking up references, asking for research samples, etc., at point of shortlisting. It is asking a lot of candidates to expect them to produce detailed, institution-specific module plans before they have even been longlisted, and requiring references at Stage 1 increased burdens on candidates and referees. Consider whether you can long-list, or even short-list, on the basis of CV and covering letter/application form alone.

6. Offer honorary, non-stipendiary research positions after close of contract, to enable underemployed or unemployed scholars to maintain some library/electronic resources access, as well as access to academic community. A related suggestion, for WCC UK to take up, was to ask the Institute of Classical Studies to consider establishing an electronic resources/institutional email account for independent scholars who are paid-up members of Senate House Library.

7. Prioritise the needs of casualised staff when timetabling teaching. Pull out all the stops to bunch their teaching onto fewer days in order to minimise their travel costs if commuting long distances to fulfil a fractional contract (see too point 1 above)

8. Allow casualised staff, even on teaching-only contracts, access to conference expenses funding, research and development opportunities, and institutional research support (e.g. help with grant writing) that is available to staff on open-ended contracts. This is appropriate in recognition of the fact that many such staff are experienced and/or aspiring researchers who have a contribution to make beyond their immediate labour as lecturers.

Many of these recommendations correspond to those made in the openly available Council of University Classical Departments Protocol on Academic Staffing, last revised 2017. It was felt that UK Classics Departments, many of whom are CUCD members, could be more mindful of this document than they have proven to be so far.

WCC UK Steering Committee Statement On Events At The 2019 Society For Classical Studies/Archaeological Institute Of America Meeting

Posted on January 21, 2019 by lizgloyn

Last week, we issued a joint statement with the Council of University Classics Departments and the Institute of Classical Studies deploring the incidents of overt racism which occurred at the AIA/SCS conference in San Diego. We repeat our censure of the behaviour targeted at Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta and at Djesika Bel Watson and Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, representatives of the Sportula. Professor Padilla Peralta has written powerfully about his experience, while the Sportula team have responded by organising their own on-line conference. Professor Padilla Peralta has now published the text of the paper he gave at the “Future of Classics” panel which raises serious questions about the under-representation of scholarship by women and people of colour in journals in our field, and challenges us to examine the role of structural factors, unconscious and explicit prejudice, in these exclusions. We are aware that some classicists, including former and present journal editors, have begun to respond to his challenge to reflect on and transform their practice; we urge this activity to continue.

In the joint statement published on Monday, we commented that ‘None of these problems are confined by national borders, and the UK community, including our organisations, has a long way to go in reckoning with their manifestations in our own country.’ Dr. Josephine Quinn has written eloquently about minimization which took place during and after the conference, both along national lines and in attempts to excuse the incident that targeted Professor Padilla Peralta by marginalising those who experience mental illness and those who work as independent scholars. The report by the Royal Historical Society on Race, Ethnicity and Equality shows the depth of the problem in one of our sister disciplines; we welcome the news in the November 2018 minutes that Council of University Classics Departments intend to commission a similar report examining the situation within our discipline.

One of the WCC UK’s aims since its foundation has been to advance equality and diversity in classics; anti-racist work is a fundamental part of supporting classics without white fragility. We support efforts of disciplinary bodies and other institutions to examine and change their own practices, and we recognise that we have much to learn both as individuals and as an organisation. In our 2018 AGM, we included a critical whiteness workshop precisely to begin talking about these issues. The workshop succeeded in that it did start a conversation, and gave us confidence that we are able to facilitate these discussions among our members. Yet we failed to anticipate that colleagues of colour would be asked to perform a disproportionate amount of labour and that we did not do all we could to prepare attendees for the kind of self-reflection necessary to engage productively in anti-racism training. We didn’t get it right – but we recognise our responsibility to learn from our mistakes and to do better.

To that end, our 2019 AGM in Cardiff will include a town hall style meeting to discuss our experiences of racism within the discipline and develop strategies to respond to them. As part of this, we intend to take account of the interconnectivity of racism and xenophobia within UK society in general, as well as drawing attention to the ways in which UK classics is robbed of the richness of perspective brought by people from all ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, we hope to support attendees in developing strategies to engage with current institutional structures that require change if we are to tackle racism head-on within the discipline. We also intend to organise a separate on-line event on activism and allyship, which will explore the various intersections between feminism, race, class and disability. Its goal will be to start developing future strategies and to give members the confidence to take grassroots action in their local communities against both highly visible and more insidious kinds of prejudice. As an organisation, we recognise the part we can (indeed, should) play in striving for inclusivity in classics and hope that these events will lay foundations for encouraging change within the discipline.

If you would like more information about the AGM, or would like to be involved in organising our on-line event, please e-mail the Administrator at womensclassicalcommittee at gmail.com.