THE MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIAN CASUAL & SESSIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION STAFF onnect volume 13 number 2 ® semester 2 sept 2020

WE’RE EXPOSING WAGE THEFT

IN UNI’S see inside

Wage theft rampant in higher education Building an inclusive post-Covid sector COVID-19: The casual pandemic The struggle to save & remake public higher ed We are Zoomed! Parenting in lockdown Undermining the dominance of neoliberalism

FREE ONLINE AT UNICASUAL.ORG.AU In this issue 1 Precarity increases threat of wage theft Alison Barnes, NTEU National President

2 NTCC addresses crisis of casualisation Tricia Daly, NTCC Chair

3 Secure research and teaching funding Romana-Rea Begicevic, CAPA President Cover image: Piggy bank in jail. Lightwise/123rf 4 Wage theft is running rampart in higher education Michael Evans, National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

6 NTEU surveys staff on wage theft 7 Union win! $6m in casual wage theft uncovered at UniMelb Sarah Roberts, Assistant Secretary, Victorian Division

Union takes on RMIT over casual wage cuts Karen Douglas, RMIT University

8 As casuals, we are vulnerable to wage theft exploitation Dr Andrew Broertjes, University of Western Australia

9 Delegate profile: Siobhan Irving 10 COVID-19: The casual pandemic Tricia Daly, Macquarie University

13 We are Zoomed! A Parent, Any University

14 Celebrating casual activism in Qld universities Mike Oliver, Senior State Organiser, Queensland Division

16 Undermining the dominance of neoliberalism before it undermines us Victoria Fielding, University of South Australia & Kent Getsinger, University of Adelaide

18 Building an inclusive post-COVID higher education sector Dr Audrey Statham, Deakin University

21 Delegate profile: Izrin Ariff 22 Casual not so casual Claire Gaskin, Deakin University

25 The struggle to save & remake public higher education Laura Czerniewicz, University of Cape Town, South Africa

NTEU National Office PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 phone 03 9254 1910 Connect is a publication of the National Tertiary email [email protected] Education Union (NTEU). All rights reserved ©2020 ISSN 1836-8522 (Print)/ISSN 1836-8530 (Online) The views expressed in this publication are those of Read online at www.unicasual.org.au the individual authors, and not necessarily the official NATIONAL TERTIARY views of NTEU. Editor: Alison Barnes In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact CASUALS Production: Paul Clifton on the natural environment, this magazine is printed COMMITTEE on 100% recycled paper: produced from 65% post- Editorial Assistance: Anastasia Kotaidis consumer waste and 35% pre-consumer waste.

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Precarity increases

Alison Barnes threat of wage theft NTEU National President

The crisis in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic has helped bring two scandalous and intertwined aspects of our sector out into the open – the level of insecure employment and the widespread management practice of wage theft.

As detailed on p. 4 of this issue of Connect, casual academic staff to ongoing positions at least 10 Australian universities are either even though a number of Enterprise repaying millions of dollars to staff who Agreements contain these provisions. This have had their wages stolen, or are under lies solely at the feet of employers who investigation for wage theft breaches. fight tooth and nail to ensure that workers remain employed casually. NTEU has consistently stated that the sector’s chronic reliance on casual and Over 78% of casual academic staff who fixed-term employment creates the ideal responded to the survey said that they environment for exploitation. The power are not paid for all the hours of marking imbalance in the relationship between assignments out of class time; nearly 40% employer and employee lends itself to of respondents said that their tutorials casual and fixed-term staff being squeezed are described as something else so they by university management in order to can be paid less than the full rate. Most reduce costs and maximise profits. respondents said that there are a range of tasks and activities that their employer The campaigning and organising by requires them to do, for which they don’t NTEU members against wage theft get paid. has involved pushing universities to undertake audits, lodging collective It is these and other injustices that we are disputes, industrial enforcement, and campaigning to fix. surveying our casual members in August As we all know, the level of insecure – see the results detailed on p. 6. The employment in higher education has a survey demonstrates that exploitation lot to do with the historical shortfalls in remains rife amongst casual staff, and government funding and the reliance on widespread across the sector.

" The survey demonstrates that exploitation remains rife amongst casual staff, and widespread across the sector.

Wage theft is common not only in international student income to prop up universities. Our investigations into private the system. With the international student higher education providers, where almost income ‘tap’ effectively turned off due to every employee is employed insecurely, COVID-19, and the Federal Government demonstrates that like our universities, ignoring the sector’s crisis by denying wage theft is the business model of choice access to JobKeeper or any meaningful for employers. rescue package, we are now seeing significant job losses at many universities. Some of the worst practices evident in the The Federal Government has abandoned survey include 44% of casually employed universities and incentivised university professional staff having been employed management to act against their workforce. for more than three years, the majority of those for more than five years, and many University managements have for many of those employed for 10 to 15 years – as years actively fought against efforts to casual employees. If the work is ongoing decasualise their workforces, leaving and regular, then why haven’t these staff workers across the sector facing chronic been converted to ongoing positions? and harmful uncertainty. It is only by Probably because 93% of respondents continuing to stand together, by building said that they either don’t have any our delegate structures, growing our rights to apply for conversion, or have membership and our grassroots strength never been advised by their employer, that we can make advances toward more about any rights to apply for conversion to secure jobs and use the opportunities non-casual employment. Across the sector presented to us to force management to there have been limited conversions by change.

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 1 NTCC addresses

Tricia Daly crisis of casualisation Chair, National Tertiary Casuals Committee

NATIONAL TERTIARY CASUALS COMMITTEE As a collective, we include a diverse range of casual representatives, organisers, strategists, policy makers and activists. Our fundamental aim is to ensure casuals have a voice, are visible and actively participate within the NTEU. We draw on casual work experiences to inform National, Division and Branch campaigns. Our intention is to educate the public, influence the political sphere, and to change current policy on workplace casualisation.

Current NTCC actions NTCC resourcing and funding We are in the process of collecting Recently, the NTCC identified critical empirical data on budgets, and casual staff resource areas to empower casual members numbers. This data will demonstrate to the in higher education: Government the grave situation university • Creating an NTCC webpage on the NTEU casuals are currently experiencing. website for information sharing, journal We are calling on Vice-Chancellors articles, news media, online sites etc. to speak out against the Morrison • Increasing empirical data, stories and Government’s current dismantling of research on casuals. quality higher education in Australia. • Inclusion of casual surveys and a casual We put forward concrete and realistic perspective in NTEU surveys. demands to challenge the priorities NTEU support in these areas will enable of university management. In a recent the NTCC to retain new casual members, survey of casuals, the following demands train and organise casuals, and coordinate ranked highest on the list of deeply and national casual campaigns and collective Y widely felt concerns: actions. • Ongoing access to libraries to prepare course material and conduct research. The NTCC moving forward • Advance notice of work. The NTEU three-month suspension on fees • Inclusion in departmental decision for new casual members, along with the making. organising strength of the NTCC have seen a TIAR • Conversion to secure teaching positions. significant increase in new casual members.

" To build power, the NTCC encourage casual members TER to reach out to non-member casuals to join the NTEU. The NTCC provides a national voice to At the time of writing, over 2000 new casual campaigns against casualisation in higher members had joined the Union. education. We are working alongside the NTEU to build knowledge, provide training Our future casual campaigns will continue and organise casuals for campaigns to incorporate the following key areas: a focusing on casual issues. strategy, a decision-making structure and a participatory division of labour. To build power, the NTCC encourages casual members to reach out to non- The NTCC’s core asset is our casual member casuals to join the NTEU. members’ commitment to more equitable We educate and organise colleagues, and just working conditions, and the family, friends and the wider public proper funding of the Australian higher on the need to protect and defend education sector. quality education, and to highlight the TIONAL exploitative working conditions of casuals. Find out more about the NTCC at NA ALS www.unicasual.org.au/ntcc 2 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 CASUCOMMITTEE Secure research and

By Romana-Rea Begicevic teaching funding CAPA President

Imagine being a smart graduate, only a few years out from completing a PhD, building a career as a research leader, testing hypotheses, developing new treatment models, taking on your own PhD students? Doing what the system demands, you would devote months to writing applications for funding, to pay for the research and your own salary. Only to have your application rejected time after time. Not for a lack of quality or innovation, but simply because there are not enough grants or fellowships available from the Government at this level.

For the lucky few who are successful, Current levels of Federal Government government fellowships only cover around funding are insufficient to support the 60% of the salary costs. Research institutes teaching and research conducted in and universities are expected to plug this Australian universities. This results in funding hole. Except, due to government universities increasing their reliance on funding cuts, universities have become alternative sources of funding which reliant on highly volatile sources of funding compromise their purpose as fostering such as philanthropy, fundraising, or knowledge and promoting education for returns from investments and commercial public good. The purpose of publicly funded revenue. All of which have fallen in recent research is to develop new knowledge, months and will not recover for a while to innovation and technology to benefit come, when the true economic impact of national interests. the pandemic takes hold. The economic CAPA welcomes the recent establishment downturn from COVID-19 has only made an by the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, already precarious situation for researchers of the two working groups for Research much worse and we have managed, until Sustainability and the National Priorities now. Y and Linkage Fund, to revamp the way in Revenue from international students makes which research is funded. However, the up a large proportion of enrolments and Government reduced research funding by their fees made up over 26% of university $328.5 million over the course of three years, income last year. While COVID-19 is slowing as announced in the December 2018 Mid- across Australia, its impact on tertiary Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO). education is intensifying. There will be a In addition to that, Minister Tehan recently need to find different ways of operating with announced that student contributions a loss of income stream on this scale. With for Humanities, Commerce and Law TIAR overseas travel restrictions lasting months degrees would increase – further reducing even into next year – how will universities be government contributions to universities. adequately funded? We truly hope that a more favourable model " The negative The sector and nation will be permanently for teaching and research funding will come transformed. But it is all the more painful out of this chaos, and therefore strongly impacts of these reduced because universities have been relying on recommend that university teaching and sources of revenue will the surplus from international students’ research be properly funded, so these TER higher fees to subsidise vital research. The important pillars of our community are not disproportionately harm the negative impacts of these reduced sources compromised but thrive instead. next generation of research of revenue will disproportionately harm Moreover, this does not come at a long-term the next generation of research leaders, leaders, particularly recent cost to the Australian taxpayer. Research particularly recent graduates and women. graduates and women. conducted by Australian universities We cannot afford to allow this economic provides demonstrable economic benefits. downturn to damage our research sector, For every $1 invested in higher education to the point of no return. It is no wonder that research, $5 is returned to Australia’s GDP. the morale among our best and brightest The majority of research in Australia is has never been lower. What message are conducted at our world-class universities. we sending out to aspiring researchers such We therefore argue that a decline in public as Masters students, undergraduates and investment in research puts the Australian high-school students of today? economy at risk. Importantly, CAPA strongly warns that should universities become This pandemic has placed a spotlight funded properly, the unacceptable practice on how the Australian university funding TIONAL of ‘wage theft’ and over casualisation of the system is broken and we now have a golden academic workforce must not be allowed to opportunity to rebuild it into one that works. NA ALS continue. Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 3 CASUCOMMITTEE Wage theft is running rampart in higher education

Image: Lightwise/123rf As if the COVID-19 crisis isn’t causing enough grief for insecure employees, investigations by the ABC and NTEU have revealed at least ten Australian universities are in the spotlight for various forms of wage theft involving casual and fixed-term staff.

Michael Evans National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

4 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 ®®® Wage theft is running rampart in higher education

The University of Melbourne, Macquarie What is ‘wage theft’? University and the University of Sydney are repaying millions of dollars to hundreds ‘Wage theft’ occurs when employers either of employees after errors were identified irregularly or systematically under pay involving the incorrect classification of staff. In higher education it happens in types of work and unrealistic timeframes for various ways – failure to pay for the work marking students’ work. required, underpaying the required rate for the work done, under-classifying work The University of NSW is conducting a wage arbitrarily, and in the private providers, using theft audit after an NTEU survey of casual sham contracting – classifying workers as academic staff revealed concerns regarding contractors responsible for their own leave, the payment of wages. superannuation, and workers compensation, Disputes over underpayments are also rather than as genuine employees, and occurring at the University of Queensland, paying them at ‘contract’ rates. UTS and Murdoch University, while RMIT Almost everyone affected by wage theft is University was recently taken to the Fair insecurely employed. Casual or fixed-term Work Commission (FWC) by NTEU over include this information in their annual employment are almost pre-conditions for reports. new reduced marking rates. UWA engaged wage theft. NTEU investigations of some external auditors after allegations of private higher education providers indicated • That all higher education providers underpayments. that wage theft was practically a business who receive funding from the Federal Government (including FEE-HELP NTEU National President Dr Alison model to suppress wage costs and drive up income) can demonstrate historical and Barnes said that ‘the key driver of wage profits. ongoing compliance with core labour theft is casual and insecure standards including the correct rates of employment, which is pay. absolutely rife at Australian universities, and creates a fertile environment for exploitation. NTEU is following up with individual and Wage theft has terrible ‘Wage theft has terrible " groups of members who may have a claim consequences. It deprives consequences... We know of cases for compensation which the Union will take modestly paid casual workers where members have lost up to half the up with the relevant universities. of the income to pay bills, plan Dr Barnes said that NTEU has already for their future or take a basic income they are entitled to. recovered millions in lost wages for holiday. We know of cases members and is now preparing fresh legal where members have lost up campaigns. to half the income they are entitled to. ‘We do not believe wage theft is confined Senate inquiry to the ten universities that have admitted ‘This is widespread in our sector. We need Following widespread instances of wage to it. If a quarter of the sector now admits tougher penalties for those who steal from theft in many sectors of the economy, to underpayment you can be sure the their workers, including criminal penalties. a Senate inquiry called for submissions problem goes a lot further. ‘Unions need far better access to records in March and held hearings in April. The ‘We would’ve liked to have seen the vice including for former employees and non- committee was originally to report back chancellors appear before the Senate members. And we need the right to inspect to the Senate by the last sitting day in inquiry and explain their employment those records quickly, without having to wait June 2020, but because of the COVID-19 practices,’ Dr Barnes said. 24 hours. pandemic, this has been extended to June 2021. ‘But more importantly we are pushing ‘Australian universities should also be to flip the proportion of insecure compelled to report accurate figures on The NTEU submission’s recommendations employment in universities on its head. casual and limited contract employment. to the inquiry included two specific changes Currently, aroundseven in ten university This would provide a much clearer picture of in higher education that would go some way employees are insecurely employed. This which university employees are likely to be towards identifying and dealing with wage is scandalously high. Insecure employment exploited.’ theft. These are: should be fleeting and rare. Unfortunately These revelations in public universities • Requiring universities to accurately the opposite is true.’ follow the NTEU uncovering millions of report the actual numbers of casual staff NTEU submission to the Senate inquiry: dollars’ worth of wage theft from employees they employ, and the actual functions www.nteu.org.au/wagetheft at private higher education providers over performed. Only Victorian universities are the last two years. currently required by State legislation to

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 5 NTEU surveys staff on wage theft Michael Evans National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

As part of the ongoing campaign for wage justice, NTEU surveyed casually employed members in August. The results, while unsurprising, indicate huge problems still with casual employment in the sector.

Over 2,000 people responded to the Responses from casual academic staff are The key points of the responses from survey, and while the majority of those consistent with the issues currently being both professional and academic staff are are academic staff (81.9%), over 400 confronted at the ten plus universities where outlined below. professional staff employed casually wage theft investigations have occurred. answered the survey. Professional Staff

Have never been Have been advised by Don’t know employed their employer whether the on a casual about any . classification basis for rights to level at which more than 3 3 convert to being paid is years non-casual correct employment

The majority of these were employed on a casual basis for more than 5 years, and there are significant numbers of people employed casually for more than 10 years.

Receive 3 hr pay each time Work on weekends or public holidays and work less than 3 hr receive a higher rate of pay for this work . 11.

Only get paid for the Work on weekends 3. actual time worked 30. or public holidays if work less than 3 hr and do not receive a higher rate of pay

Many casual professional staff are entitled to a minimum 3 hours pay if the shift is less than 3 hours.

Academic Staff

Those not paid Tutorials are Were not paid for marking described as for all hours outside of 3.1 other things‡ of marking class time so that they . outside of 0.3 who are paid are paid less class time according to a than the full formula* rate

*Such as a certain number of words per hour, but this ‡ Such as ‘information sessions’, ‘seminars’, underestimates how long the marking actually takes. ‘practice classes’, ‘workshops’.

Tasks required to do for 21. 2. 1. Planning, which you don’t get paid: curriculum, Course Administration school meetings coordination

6 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Union win!

$6m in casual wage theft Sarah Roberts uncovered at UniMelb Assistant Secretary, Victorian Division

In late 2018, NTEU became aware of instances of underpayment of casual academic staff in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Melbourne. The Faculty had promoted information on its website failing to disclose that all casual marking was required to be paid separately, and had been required to pay for it separately since 2013.

The Union commenced a formal dispute ‘voluntary’ (i.e. deliberately unpaid). This with the University around this, claiming outraged casual staff. In the words of one Karen Douglas that casual academics were accordingly casual staff member, ‘the University wants NTEU Delegate, RMIT underpaid thousands as they had not been tutorials to be taught by staff who know less paid for much of the marking they had about the material taught in the lecture than performed – going back years. the students.’ Angry members conducted a rally and occupied the Dean of Arts’ office, Union takes At that time, the University resisted the presenting him with a petition calling for Union’s claim, which led the Union to payment for lecture attendance. become further concerned about instances on RMIT of casual wage theft more broadly across The Union continued to act like an annoying the University. Organising staff and activists buzzy mosquito, contacting Deans in each built a casuals network of members across of the Faculties where wage theft had been the University, meeting regularly at School uncovered, and calling for responses from over casual and University level to uncover and discuss management. Ultimately the Union’s activity further instances of wage theft. became so annoying that the University called the NTEU into dispute – previously wage cuts unheard of at the University of Melbourne. Two disputes meetings with management In February, casual teaching " Ultimately the Union’s ensured. At the first meeting, 25 casual staff at the RMIT School of activity became so annoying academic staff attended and told Management were advised our their stories to management about marking rates had been slashed that the University called the their experiences of wage theft. Many by up to 50%. NTEU into dispute management misconceptions as to how work and non-payment was actually Via a cut to time allocations RMIT structured were corrected, and casuals were determined that 30 minutes was Through this process wage theft in the empowered by the process. At the second sufficient to read 2,500 words of Faculties of Arts, Mathematics and Statistics, meeting, 22 casuals attended and again students’ work, access turn-it-in, and Fine Arts and Music were uncovered. told their stories – leading to an immediate complete rubrics and provide written In Arts, casuals were being paid a ‘piece reversal of tutorial reclassification as feedback. And then there is the rate’ for their marking, whereby instead of ‘practice classes’ in Maths and Stats. preparation and follow up work and staff being paid by the hour as required by the This disputes process led to the acceptance meetings that go unpaid. Collective Agreement, they were being paid on management’s part that illegal practices an hour’s pay for each 4000 words marked, Seeking to discuss the issue, casual staff had been going on, and the establishment of which casuals agreed was a significant were told by management that we were a union-management working group to deal underquote of the time actually taken to valued but – for operational reasons, and with all instances of casual underpayment. mark assignments. because we’re casuals – management That working group had control over all can make whatever decisions they In Maths and Stats, tutorials had been communications sent to staff affected. like about our engagement or our renamed as ‘practice classes’, thereby So far over $99,000 has been paid to casual involvement. avoiding paying the casual academics academics in Engineering. Other payments teaching those classes 3 hours’ pay, as This substantive cut to wages has are being processed, and our estimation is required for a tutorial. This was in breach wreaked havoc on low paid, vulnerable, that the total amount owed will be close to of the UniMelb Agreement provision which insecure workers. Rather than diminish $6m. The Fair Work Ombudsman is also now described tutorials as a secondary form of education experiences for students’ investigating. educational delivery – which the ‘practice casuals have continued to provide classes’ certainly were. Due to this practice The UniMelb experience is a great example high quality teaching but based in an casuals were being underpaid by one hour’s of how we can win by organising and exploitative employment model relied pay for each tutorial delivered – going back acting collectively to enforce our rights. In on by RMIT. to 2009. circumstances where members often feel But time’s up. intimidated by coming forward with their Then, in early 2019, the Faculty of Arts issues, for fear of losing their (insecure) work, We’re not prepared to tolerate announced it would no longer pay casual collective action and power in numbers has such contemptuous behaviour by academic staff for attendance at lectures for been the antidote. management and the matter has now the subjects they were delivering tutorials progressed to the FWC. – but yet announced that attendance was Now on to the next win!

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 7 As casuals, we are vulnerable to wage Dr Andrew Broertjes University of Western Australia theft exploitation Image: Tobias Tullius/Unsplash

Since the submission of my thesis in late 2006, I have been working as a casual lecturer and tutor in history at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Despite high student evaluations and a number of teaching awards, I have not been provided with a permanent position. Friends who work in non-tertiary institutions often ask me why this is the case, as surely after a decade of consistent work and exemplary feedback, any work place would make me permanent? Something surely must be deeply wrong? I simply reply that for the tertiary sector in the 21st century my casual role is a feature, not a bug.

I became an NTEU activist around 2015, Finally getting senior when the Faculty of Arts began cutting management to major sequences such as Medieval and admit that there was Early Modern Studies, European Studies, a problem with wage and Gender Studies. My involvement theft/underpayment deepened the following year as senior of casuals has management embarked on the Orwellian been an important named ‘Renewal Project’, stripping over breakthrough. Trying 350 staff of their jobs, and restructuring the to create a broader nine pre-existing faculties into four ‘super- awareness among the faculties’, against the strong objections campus community of staff and students. I finally became in general (particularly a formal member of the UWA NTEU students) was a Branch Committee in 2018 as the Casual genuine challenge, representative. and one that will be ongoing. The major campaign I’ve been involved with this past year has been around wage Most students are theft. The campaign at UWA began in under the belief that 2013, then gained momentum last year as the lecturer standing we discovered that casual underpayment in front of them has was not only rife in certain parts of the tenure and job security University, but that administrative and for life. Creating human resources staff had been directed to underpay casuals. Senior management agreed to bring in an outside auditor to review all casual payments going back to 2013. The process has been slowed considerably " ...we discovered that casual underpayment was not only by COVID-19, but will hopefully pick up rife in certain parts of the University, but that administrative and again as these cases enter mainstream news outlets. Around 70% of teaching human resources staff had been directed to underpay casuals. work at Australian universities is done by casual staff members. Like casuals in other industries, we are vulnerable to exploitation. History is made by those who show up. awareness that this image is a myth, The precariousness of our positions, a Genuine change is made by those who whilst at the same time not undermining precariousness that lasts years, has a show up. We are facing the twin threats the authority of those teaching staff, is devastating toll mentally and socially. of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and particularly difficult. a government that is not only content Many of us struggle to start families, buy Engaging with the wider UWA community to subject the tertiary sector to ‘benign homes, and take out loans because of our beyond my discipline group/school neglect’, but is actively seeking to positions. To add stolen wages on top of has brought me greater insight into the undermine it. These challenges require our already vulnerable position is both a challenges we face as a cohort, as well everyone to be in the arena, not merely legal and a moral failing on the part of our forming working relationships I would not sitting on the sidelines. universities. have otherwise made.

8 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Delegate profile: Siobhan Irving

I’ve taught sociology and anthropology at Macquarie University on a casual basis for 6 years and my experiences entering academia shaped my expectations of work once I got here. My path was bumpy. Poverty and precarity has cast long shadows over much of my life and it is a small miracle that I managed to finish a PhD. My father didn’t finish high school, so even being admitted to the PhD felt like I had already achieved something great. Graduating last year felt like a dream.

I have always felt privileged to be able to This realisation, convene my own courses at university level together with some and tutor in the courses of others. Teaching conversations with is a labour of love for me. After a few years, fellow casual NTEU however, I started to critically reflect on members, gave rise my working conditions and this is why I to the MQ Casual joined the NTEU and quickly became both Collective, which a delegate and an organiser of my fellow is a network of both casual staff. Feeling fulfilled and fortunate professional and academic is wonderful but sadly it does not pay the casual staff at Macquarie bills. University. Many casual staff are not NTEU members and When I began teaching, I wanted to model some are quite critical of the NTEU how I had been taught. I completed my for various reasons. The network, undergraduate degree at the University which at the moment operates primarily of Aberdeen, Scotland. Small tutorial through a Facebook page and a mailing list, sizes meant that I had tutors who had provides a COVID-19-friendly way to reach time to mentor as well as teach. Reading out to casual colleagues and understand their thoughtful comments on my work more about their working conditions, convinced me that I had something to say their feelings about the NTEU and also to that was worth reading. encourage them to join our union. After becoming a scholar myself, I wanted A union is entirely defined by its members to do the same for others and ‘pay it and the only way to improve casual forward’, and I did and still do. The only representation within the NTEU is for thing that has changed over the years is casual staff to join. Casual staff are not a that now I have realised that my casual minority. If we stand together and invest in colleagues and I deserve to be paid in full our union, we will shape not only the Union for this labour as my mentors were. We but also the universities we belong to. If we have large class sizes and giving everyone stand together, we can bring about change the amount of attention they deserve that will improve our working conditions requires far more hours of our time than we Get more information about becoming an and our students’ learning conditions. This are paid for. Teaching is an honour, but it is NTEU Delegate at delegates.nteu.org.au isn’t a dream. It’s a reality in progress. still work.

NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION Delegates Delegates are a vital part of the NTEU, maintaining visibility, Become an NTEU supporting recruitment & building the strength of the Union. Delegate! If you’re interested in becoming DELEGATES.NTEU.ORG.AU a Delegate in your work area, contact your Branch today.

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 9 COVID-19 The casual pandemic

Image: skeeze/Pixabay The global COVID-19 pandemic underscores the extent to which neoliberalism builds on the back of precarious labour. Australian universities and the Morrison Government continue to impose a neoliberal mode of domination based on the exploitation of casual labourers. This mode of domination results in overemployment, underemployment and unemployment for casual staff.

Tricia Daly Macquarie University

10 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 ®®® COVID-19: The casual pandemic

In the Australian higher education context, prior to COVID-19 ‘around 70 per cent UWA’s Lara McKenzie has highlighted how of undergraduate teaching was done precarity is a gendered phenomenon in by insecure labour’. The percentage of Australian universities. Older women precarious workers increases to 72.9% with grown children and single at Melbourne University and 72.9% at women are further disadvantaged Monash University. NTEU National in comparison to women with President Alison Barnes stresses that partners and small children. In precarious work results in workers other words, older women and vulnerability to wage theft. young single women do more Wage theft is ‘the unlawful of the precarious labour. underpayment of employee Australian universities use remuneration by employers’ and neoliberal policy as a mode is ‘one of the most pressing public of domination based on policy issues in Australia’. Wage precarious work, resulting in theft includes underpayment hierarchical and dependent for course co-ordination, writing social relations. This form courses, producing course content, of domination produces two tutorial preparation, marking, fundamentally unequal classes: moderation, research, knowledge the precariat and the permanent. production, supporting students, and more recently the transition from face-to- These two classes are also gendered face to online teaching. with women historically more disadvantaged within contemporary Casual academics find it difficult to escape universities. Casual experiences of these low-paid precarious work, have little chance social relations are ignored, misunderstood, of career progression with the ongoing or invisible. This leaves casual women expectation to voluntarily contribute to Image: Tim Gouw/Unsplash unable to speak about the daily realities of knowledge production their employment experience. within universities. In the domestic sphere, ABC journalist Many casuals are Annabel Crabb claims women are also forced to straddle continuing to pick up more of the unpaid multiple institutions "Casuals working in more than one job work. During COVID-19, women are and occupations just to survive are then taxed at a higher rate for experiencing increasing levels of domestic to buy food, to pay rent violence, and according to the Workplace or a mortgage and to having a second or third job. At the same Gender Equality Agency are doing more of cover other day-to- time, many Vice-Chancellors are now paid the emotional labour, caring for children, the day living or medical sick, and the elderly. expenses. Casuals more than $1 million per year – significantly working in more than more than the Prime Minister. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, one job to survive are unmarried women and students, and those then taxed at a higher within LGBTQIA communities are also more rate for having a second COVID-19 exacerbates and intensifies the vulnerable to bullying, sexual harassment, or third job. At the same time, many Vice- casual experience of high levels of wage and sexual assault. A national report on Chancellors are now paid more than $1 theft. A recent study of casuals at the sexual assault and sexual harassment at million per year – significantly more than the University of Sydney found casuals are Australian universities found more than half Prime Minister. systematically overworked and underpaid. of all students were sexually harassed, with 6.9% sexually assaulted. Overwhelmingly, Recent ABC investigations reveal wage This study found, at least 46% of casuals men were the perpetrators of these forms theft at major universities: Melbourne, are experiencing a ‘significant increase’ in of harm. UNSW, Macquarie, UWA, Sydney, UQ, UTS, unpaid work during COVID-19. Murdoch, RMIT and Monash. Women in comparison to their male Neoliberal casualisation enables wage theft and normalises a system of domination, Elysse Fenton, a former UQ course counterparts are experiencing increasing bullying, sexual harassment and sexual coordinator was quoted as saying: levels of unpaid labour. In the media, this assault by weakening labour laws and universities are ‘run on exploited labour’. phenomenon is dubbed as the pink-collar recession. decreasing union power. continued overpage...

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 11 ®®® COVID-19: The casual pandemic

COVID-19: challenges for Government response casuals The Australian Government is currently attempting to further COVID-19 creates additional challenges for burden students – the next casual workers. NTEU National Assistant generation of precarious Secretary, Gabe Gooding outlines how workers – with their past casual staff are increasingly vulnerable to failures to adequately fund work, health and safety issues: the Australian education • Mental health: stress, anxiety, depression, sector. Minister for insomnia, trauma. Education, Dan Tehan’s • Physical health: acute and chronic illness proposal to legislate from long-term and extreme levels of funding changes projects stress. this failing model into the future, while further • Intergenerational health: lack of quality dismantling the quality of time with children/grandchildren and the higher education sector. potential epigenetic changes. • Psychosocial hazards: bullying, work These proposed policy intensification, and poorly managed changes shift the blame onto change. university students. If a student fails too many subjects, they • Employment: job cuts and precarious are excluded from university and work. cannot receive HECS support from the • Theft: lower superannuation, knowledge Government. and wage theft. • Gender issues: sexual harassment, sexual Casuals in dark times assault, systemic institutional silencing and lack of trauma-informed practice. During COVID-19 and post-COVID, the NTEU is the key protector and defender of quality • Increasing workloads. higher education. The Morrison Government • Working or not working without notice economically punishes university staff • Lack of work clarity. and students, and with the support of the commercial media circulate narratives of • An inadequate workplace.

"The Government must adequately fund the higher education sector, so that universities are not relying on casualisation and workload intensification.

During COVID-19, casuals are voicing fear and threat. If we are to avoid repression, concerns over the higher levels of stress regression or a retreat into the dark ages, we and physical exhaustion from the ever- need to challenge and provide alternatives increasing accumulation of unpaid labour to these narratives. across multiple institutional settings. University casuals verbally report receiving The Government must adequately fund the little medical guidance or health training higher education sector, so that universities for working in a confined space with large are not relying on casualisation and numbers of people during a pandemic. workload intensification. Casualisation and workload intensification results in the further Health Safety Representatives (HSRs) have erosion of quality public education. a powerful role in the workplace. If you feel your health or the health of your colleagues In these dark times, we are all potentially or students are at risk, contact your HSR. precarious workers. COVID-19 is an opportunity to open the way for progressive policy changes to solve the funding crisis in the Australian higher education sector. Raewyn Connell’s The good university: What universities are actually doing and why it’s time for radical change draws attention to Australian university workers low pay and low security, output pressure, rising stress and anxiety and the way unions represent and speak to these issues. In the words of Connell, the future remains undecided.

12 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 We are Zoomed!

As I dash down the hallway holding my laptop out of reach of sticky little A Parent fingers, I think how I used to spend the ten minutes between 1pm and Any University the tutorial start time of 1:10pm casually chatting to students about their weekends and answering assessment questions.

This ‘normal’ tutorial life feels like a distant ‘Mummy has a class! They’re waiting for me The children weigh up the bribe and shrug memory. Three weeks into a pandemic right now! You know where the rice crackers in acceptance, eyes glued to the TV. lockdown, and tutorials now resemble a are!’ I bolt back into my semi-soundproof Brady Bunch collage. That’s if I can convince I fumble with the remote trying to find Bluey sanctuary and notice the bed is unmade. I them to please turn their videos on. on the ABC iView app. spend the last 10 seconds I have hurriedly Otherwise I’m teaching rows and columns tidying it while kicking some toys out of view of broken TV monitors, a muted brick wall ‘Not that episode! The one where they go to of the camera. I untangle my headphones of grey non-responses. We’re not doomed, the dump! The other one! The other one!’ while plugging them into my laptop and we’re Zoomed. My younger child starts swiping at the TV, opening the Zoom app. I shut my spare bedroom door behind wailing because I’ve turned off Paw Patrol. I My tired, anxious reflection stares back me, grateful my toddlers can’t reach the can sense a meltdown about to begin. Mine, at me, giving me half a second to run my handle. My heart aches for childcare, not hers. fingers through my unbrushed hair before blissful childcare. As I plug my laptop into my students see me entering the Zoom the charger and position my webcam, I I take a deep breath. There are people far classroom. I paste a smile on my face which realise my headphones are missing. I have worse off than me. There are people sick, feels more like a grimace. three minutes before the tutorial begins. I or with health conditions who are scared to get sick. There are people dying. I still have see my email ping to let me know there are One of my students has children wandering a job. Many aren’t as lucky as me. I can work students waiting in the Zoom room. around in the background. She starts talking from home. Sort of. I take a deep breath. but I can’t hear her. ‘Turn your microphone Do I have time to look for my headphones on!’ I laugh. She facepalms and apologises or should I just start without them? I take ‘There, Bluey is on. Now, Mummy has a class that her kids are distracting. I tell her not to the risk and go back out into the chaos of starting. I am going to shut the door and I worry. We all know what each other is going the living room, sneaking past children who don’t want any interruptions. If you’re good through. are watching their fifteenth episode of Paw for the next 1 hour and 50 minutes, Daddy will bring you home a Kinder egg from the Patrol since lunchtime. I scramble through ‘The show must go on’, I say. And the show supermarket’. my handbag looking for my headphones. does go on. ‘Mummy! I want another rice cracker!’ Daddy works for an essential business so lucky Daddy has to go to work. Grandma I spot a half-chewed rice cracker sitting on a can’t help as we can’t risk her getting sick. pile of Lego. I lob it in the child’s direction. ‘Not that one! That one’s slobbered on! Mummy! Can you put Bluey on instead!?’ " My younger child starts swiping at the TV, wailing because I’ve turned off Paw Patrol. I can sense a meltdown about to begin. Mine, not hers. Image: Charles Deluvio/Unsplash

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 13 Celebrating casual activism in Qld Mike Oliver Senior State Organiser, Queensland Division universities

This year the NTEU Queensland Division is proud to announce the birth of a new Casuals’ Network at Griffith University and the further maturation and expansion of the University of Queensland (UQ) Casuals’ Caucus.

Casual academics deliver more than half ‘Some teaching staff have been instructed of all undergraduate courses in Australia. to do a poor job, I suppose, because there The backbone of Australian university is widespread acknowledgment that these teaching, casual academic staff have no rates are inaccurate,’ said Ellyse. paid holidays, no paid sick leave, no job When workers are forced to cut corners, security, significant breaks in income, and it diminishes the product, the experience, are deliberately excluded from university life and the value of their labour. In the end, it is by management. The working relationship of students and casuals who bear the burden. most casual academics with their employer is, simply put, exploitative.’ ‘The first couple of meetings at UQ (late 2017) were about catharsis I think,’ said Casual union members and activists across Ellyse. ‘Members would come to meetings Australia are saying ‘no more’ to the lack of and just share their stories with each other. respect, the lack of value, and the lack of Get it out. We started to hear all the horror engagement shown to them by university stories and knew none of us was alone.’ managements and are measuring, revealing, and pursuing underpayments for the In 2018, the UQ Casuals Caucus launched millions in wage theft across the sector. the UQ Charter of Rights for Casual Academic Staff that laid out how casuals UQ Casuals Caucus wanted to be treated by their employer.

Casual Representative on the UQ Branch ‘The Charter made a range of claims. We Ellyse Fenton, UQ Committee, Dr Ellyse Fenton is one of demanded what tens-of-thousands of casual academics seem in retrospect who recently lost work. After 13 years of small things – our work at UQ, she is now facing a semester own desks and unemployed. This was after a hellish workspaces, Semester One in which Ellyse (and every participation " Members would come to meetings and university worker) went over-and-above to in institutional move studies online and keep Australia’s decision-making just share their stories with each other. Get it universities running in a COVID-19 world. fora, to be treated as out. We started to hear all the horror stories employees. But we Since late 2017, Ellyse has been working in also demanded fair and knew none of us was alone. her Branch’s Casuals Caucus, organising pay and job security, with fellow casual academics to challenge which cannot be exploitation and fight for better conditions. achieved without systemic transformation. ‘I had heard about the successful wage With a group of colleagues, Ellyse has The Caucus held stalls and events where we theft campaign run by casual staff at the logged her work hours for the past two publicised the Charter and talked about the University of Melbourne and thought there years, comparing the time it takes to do working conditions of casual staff. must be a way for us to do something her job well with the amount she is paid. similar. It was the perfect time to start acting Unsurprisingly, the result is thousands of At the end of 2019, we delivered 626 signed on systemic underpayment and exploitation dollars in unpaid wages. postcards of support for the Charter to the of casualised workers. We had all worked Vice-Chancellor’s office. Every one of those around the clock to support our students Casual academics are paid according to postcards represents a conversation about through the transition to online learning, in formulae that routinely undervalue the casualisation and a step on the path to most cases without any additional payment work involved in teaching. These rates building a broad coalition of support for de- or support. We just felt enough is enough, underestimate the time needed to mark casualising higher education.’ you know?’ assignments, prepare lectures and tutorials, and support students. In some institutions, After the Charter campaign wrapped up, Find out more about the UQ Casual Caucus essential work like course and subject The UQ Caucus gave thought to what came Wage Theft Campaign: coordination and attending lectures is not next. With a long list of problems to address www.nteu.org.au/uq/casuals paid at all. it was hard to know where to begin.

14 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Above: Delivering 626 signed postcards of support for the Charter to the UQ Vice-Chancellor’s office

Griffith Casuals Network Casual While UQ’s Casual Caucus keeps growing in strength and numbers, Griffith NTEU Branch has just launched its own Casuals Network. member Clare Poppi is the Casual Representative on the Griffith NTEU Branch Committee and a founding member of the Griffith Casuals’ testimonial Network. Clare started work as a casual technician/academic at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art in 2011. She is a jeweller/artist. " I have been a regular ‘In the College of Art, we don’t teach in casual English language teacher Trimester 3 (Summer), so that does give me and examiner at a regional some time to pursue other interests. Like all university for the past 12 years. casual academics, this isn’t the only place Due to COVID-19, the sharp drop I teach. I also teach at another community in international student numbers art college, and of course, I am an artist, so I has meant a great reduction in my need time for commissions and art pieces.’ Clare Poppi, Griffith work hours. ‘I wasn’t very involved in the Union until a few years ago,’ I was unexpectedly informed by said Clare, ‘but the the NTEU that I could claim for position of Casual accumulated long service leave Representative entitlement. This entitlement may on the Griffith be taken after 10 years of casual Branch Committee " Clare is not sure what shape the Griffith employment, and can be accessed came up and my Network will take. It is still in its early, cathartic pro rata if you have not been colleague Liz Shaw employed full-time. HR deemed convinced me to phase where casual workers are sharing their that I was due 13 days long service run.’ stories and building bonds. leave and this was then paid for Since coming the period I nominated. onto the Branch Committee, Clare has learned a lot; about sharing their stories and building bonds. My thanks to the NTEU for alerting the broader problems faced by casual and Clare holds high hopes for the Network’s me to this entitlement. I am sure future. non-casual workers across the University, there are many current and former and what it means to be union. ‘Will we take the same path as UQ – which casual university employees ‘Pre-COVID (2019) I went and had a chat with has done very well – or do our own thing? across Australia unaware Ellyse Fenton from the UQ Casuals Caucus, Not sure. But whatever we do will be until now of their rights to to find out how they do it there. When democratically decided.’ long service leave. COVID really hit, a few times members " ‘I am daunted. I haven’t done any organising asked if there was a casuals’ network at or activism in my life. But, I am getting so Encourage your Griffith. So, I went and talked to Stewart much support, and I am very excited.’ (Organiser) and Garry (Branch President), casual colleagues to and they said, ‘Go for it!’. So, I did.’ For more information about the Griffith University Casuals Network, call Griffith join NTEU today! Clare is not sure what shape the Griffith NTEU Organiser Stewart de Lacy-Leacey at Network will take. It is still in its early, [email protected]. cathartic phase where casual workers are nteu.org.au/join

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 15 Undermining the dominance of neoliberalism before it undermines us

As part of Friday Sessions, the NTEU’s online national training program, we recently ran a seminar entitled ‘Neoliberalism: how it infiltrates universities, how it affects us, and how can we resist it?’ We hope to open and maintain a conversation about how the neoliberalism of the university sector affects us as workers and unionists. We want to reframe the narrative and bring about the university sector we deserve.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public ‘trade liberalisation, deregulation, wage health crisis. That real crisis adds to the rollbacks, union attacks, privatisation and manufactured crisis of decades of neoliberal fiscal retrenchment’.2 ideology and managerialism that has This reconfiguration that erodes our decimated the university sector. To quote collectivism and conditions is also one t whom we largely owe this widespread happening in the university sector. Since decimation to: ‘only a crisis – actual or the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s, perceived – produces real change’ and that universities have seen fee deregulation, the actions taken ‘depend on the ideas that mass precarious work, withering of are lying around’.1 Thanks to Milton Friedman academic collegiately, erosion of the public and also the Mont Pelerin Society, the fringe institution and a shift in power to managers. idea lying around of neoliberalism took root The neoliberal ideological rhetoric of the immediately following the 1970s crises of ‘free market’ is then used to justify high stagflation and oil embargo.2 manager salaries, aggressive and cruel Whether ‘real’ or ‘perceived’, neoliberal restructures, job insecurity and abhorrent ideology blamed these crises on the failure workplace practices.4 of the socially-democratic Keynesian state, When we speak to our colleagues about framing state intervention as ‘unnatural’ the insidious neoliberalism of the university and claiming it causes societal breakdown. sector, they see this culture as the cause This near-mythic ethos enforces extreme of anxiety, shame and resentment in individual responsibility where collectivism their working lives. They want change, and social welfare are an affront to the but they don’t know what change looks ‘natural’ order.1,2,3 like. We argue that to reframe our work Neoliberalism-proper entered in the 1980s in a neoliberal age, we need to show our with the Reagan and Thatcher Governments. colleagues how neoliberalism positions both Victoria Fielding We have them to thank for some of the our university work and our union activity as University of South Australia cruellest austerity ever enacted, second illegitimate. Only then can we collectively only to the ‘shock treatment’ imposed see that this is just one story, and that there on the Global South. In particular, Chile are other stories which fight back against first suffered neoliberalism’s dictatorship the shame of living in a neoliberal frame. implementation for what would be revealed Through a neoliberal frame, university work to be anything but freeing individuals from is perceived to be the same as the public the ‘tyranny’ of the state.2 sector: as a cost taxpayers have to bear, Contrary to claims of enabling the ‘free rather than an investment in the health Kent Getsinger market’, neoliberalism was (is) in fact a of the economy and society. Universities radical state reconfiguration of accumulation are a microcosm of our larger society University of Adelaide of wealth and power to the very top. What that has resulted in power and wealth resulted is many institutions enforcing cruel concentration to the top. This contradictory

16 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 ®®® Undermining the dominance of neoliberalism before it undermines us

neoliberal ideology has taken root in the research outcomes, language, paradigm and milieu of the and as a result, current university system. It fills the halls, our institutions classrooms and the space between our better off. We social relations. As university workers, in our believe in our academic and administrative labour, we live work and value its effects. each other’s contribution. Neoliberalism treats higher education teaching as valuable only when a profit can Telling these be placed on its delivery. Research is viewed counter stories through this lens as pie in the sky and is not easy. useless, unless research invents something Resisting the the private sector can immediately profit dominance of from. University workers are constantly neoliberalism is, by pressured to reduce funding, encouraged definition, difficult to downsize, and to compete against private work. Neoliberalism providers; to let the market decide. frames our language, delegitimises our Union activity is also framed as illegitimate union narrative and because neoliberals view collective action constrains all our as a harmful intervention in the natural relations. Neoliberalism authority of university management. turns much academic Through this lens, workers have no place work into casual – disposable in institutional decision-making, should not – work. Neoliberalism creates seek to improve their working conditions, an environment of toxic shame, and should never assume they have a competition, inferiority, precariousness, place at the negotiating table or the right stigma and debilitating anxiety in to consult over how they do their work. academia.5,6 We can be confined to Management’s prerogative rules, and ‘neoliberal horizons’, where ‘disimagination’ Image: Moritz Mentges/Unsplash anything that undermines this prerogative is perpetuates to a pervasive insecure framed as adverse for the organisation. narcissism and reduces us to continual Neoliberalism automatically places lifeless measurement.7 We can lose management on a pedestal, in the hero personal connection, to others and self, and frame. Management are taken for granted narrowly view social attachment solely for as naturally acting in the best interest marketable worth. of their institutions. Funding cuts are When we recognise that neoliberalism good, downsizing is desirable, efficiency is in the air that we breathe, in the dividends apparently make us all structures of our workplaces, in better off. Unionists, on the other the attitudes towards unions, hand, are automatically in in the culture and ideology the neoliberal villain frame of the country we live because we challenge in, it is obvious why the unilateral power " resisting these ideas of our employers to Neoliberalism treats is emotionally and dictate every aspect intellectually difficult. of our working lives. higher education By having knowledge We also challenge teaching as valuable of this difficulty, and References the wisdom of the only when a profit can by confronting it, we 1. Bregman, R. (2020). ‘The Neoliberal Era is managerial prerogative, can defeat the force ending, what comes next?’ The Correspondent. often defending student be placed on its of these ideas. Naming 2. Mitchell, M. & Fazi, T. (2017). Reclaiming the State: educational outcomes as delivery. them is powerful. Listening A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post- much as we fight for our own to people’s experiences Neoliberal World, Pluto Press, London. benefit. of them is powerful. Telling 3. Sitaraman, G. (2019). ‘The Collapse of Neoliberalism’, The New Republic. As university workers and as unionists, our own stories that undermine we do our best to counter neoliberal neoliberalism is powerful action which 4. Connell, R. (2019). The Good University: What universities actually do and why it’s time for framing which tells us we are illegitimate. makes a real difference to our collective radical change, Monash University Printing, We tell a different story demonstrating the power. Clayton, Australia. value of the work we do. We believe in a Neoliberal ideology need not dominate 5. Gill, R. (2009). ‘Breaking the silence: The hidden democratic, cooperative, collectivist and our lives and universities. With awareness injuries of the neoliberal university’ in Secrecy supportive public university sector. We and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist of the theoretical basis to connect the know that we each contribute to quality Reflections, Routledge, New York. dots and see more clearly, we can realise teaching and research, and that without 6. Sims, M. (2019). ‘Neoliberalism and new public that our troubles are not the fault of our dedicated academic and professional staff, management in an Australian university: shortcomings, but those of cruel short- universities would be nothing more than The invisibility of our take-over’, Australian sightedness. With that awareness, we can Universities’ Review 61 01. buildings. We act in solidarity with each reframe the narrative and legitimately other, recognising that only as a collective 7. Wilson, J. (2017). ‘The Moods of Enterprise: demand what we believe in for our sector. Neoliberal affect and the care of self’ in can we ensure problems are solved in our Neoliberalism, Taylor & Francis Group, London. workplaces that make us, our students, our

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 17 Building an inclusive post-COVID higher education sector

Image: Pxhere Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin’s announcement on 25 May of 400 job losses launched the Major Workplace Change (MWC) consultation process now underway at the university- wide level at Deakin. However, this figure did not enumerate the casualised, sessional and fixed term staff – numbering around 2,500 according to Deakin staffing data – whose jobs were cut in Trimester 1 or those casualised and fixed term employees who have significantly less work or have not been engaged at all in Trimester 2 at Deakin. Dr Audrey Statham Deakin University

18 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 ®®® Building an inclusive post-COVID higher education sector

The Vice-Chancellor’s omission conveyed Deakin workforce with around 6000 casual the message to staff that the mass job and fixed term staff employed by the losses sustained by Deakin insecure University, 66% of whom are women. During workers weren’t considered by University the COVID-19 epidemic, the sector- leadership to be worth even mentioning. wide shift from face-to-face to online teaching and student support would That such an omission is not limited to not have been possible without the just one university but is, rather, right work (often involving many hours of now a sector-wide phenomenon additional unpaid work) of casual, was highlighted recently by an sessional and fixed term staff who article in Times Higher Education, helped to facilitate the transition. ‘Some staff are more equal than others’ (July 20). The article The increase of domestic observed, ‘Somehow, the loss of student applications at Deakin casual and fixed term staff doesn’t was confirmed recently at the elicit the same degree of pain – or meeting of Academic Board on 5 precision’ on the part of Australian August, which suggests that next university managements as is year Deakin and other universities evoked when announcing job losses will most likely need to rely again on among permanent staff. sessional, casualised and fixed term staff. However, Australian universities The stark difference between the currently engaged in culling insecure treatment of ongoing staff and insecure workers should not be surprised if those workers by managements as part of casual, sessionals and fixed term staff the Australian higher education sector’s whose jobs were cut this year, are no longer response to COVID-19, is well illustrated available to work in the higher education by the article’s grim but apt analogy: sector next year. In the current issue of ‘permanent staff are dispatched with full Image: Pxhere Advocate, former Deakin fixed term staff military honours while their casual and fixed member, Dash Jayasuriya, describes how term comrades wind up in mass unmarked her job at Deakin was cut during COVID and explains why she’s decided to leave the sector after 6 years. " ...the work of insecure university workers... does If the sector is to have any hope of matter: it mattered in the past, it matters now, and it will effectively carrying out its vital role in rebuilding Australian society and the most likely matter even more next year and into the future economy post-COVID through educating when we begin to navigate a post-COVID environment. the new influx of domestic students, researching, and creating community connections, then there is an urgent need now – as university managements graves.’ Of university managements’ attitude around the country launch Major Work towards insecure workers, one NTEU arbitrary figure and the exclusionary MWC Place Change processes which exclude Branch President interviewed in the article process, the reality is that the work of casualised staff from their terms of observed: ‘[they’re] just not seen as real insecure university workers at Deakin – and reference – for our union to hold university workers.’ the Australian higher education sector as a managements to account for the brutal and whole – does matter: it mattered in the past, short-sighted treatment they are currently it matters now, and it will most likely matter meting out to insecure workers. Insecure university workers: even more next year and into the future essential not ‘not real’ when we begin to navigate a post-COVID To this end, the NTEU Deakin Casuals Action environment. Network submitted feedback to Deakin’s The sense that casualised and sessional MWC process calling on the University staff job cuts don’t count or aren’t real The bulk of teaching, student support to implement transparent employment is now being reinforced at Deakin by and research assistance at Australian practices regarding the ceasing of a MWC process that excludes casual universities, including Deakin, has long employment of insecure workers and the employees from its terms and frame been carried out by sessional academics, re-engagement of precariously employed of reference, further compounding our casual professional, casual research and staff, starting at the faculty and school-level. feeling of being unseen, undervalued fixed term staff. Before COVID-19, insecure continued overpage... and disposable. Despite the University’s workers made up more than half of the

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 19 ®®® Building an inclusive post-COVID higher education sector

What kind of post-COVID Australian higher education sector? In Vice-Chancellor Iain Martin’s 27 March 3. Direct the relevant email to staff in which he identified the members of Faculty ‘principles’ for Faculty Executives to use Executives to make an when determining whether to retain explicit commitment or cease the employment of casual to identify and action professional and research staff as part of measures for keeping Deakin’s response to COVID-19, Prof Martin casual staff in employment, said: ‘Our University is going to look different for example by re-directing next year as we meet this challenge. We affected staff to other work that must begin to act now to help this transition. is required to be done within and Many of the things that we will be asking will across Faculties. This other work not be easy, but I can assure you that none should include duties in which the of the decisions will be taken lightly’. The kind of university that Deakin and other universities become over the next 12-18 months depends to a significant A ‘better’ kind of Australian university system must extent on the decisions now being made " in relation to the employment of insecure necessarily be one in which insecure workers are seen as workers, which will greatly shape the kind ‘real workers’ by management and are securely employed. of higher education sector that will emerge post-COVID. A ‘better’ kind of Australian university system must necessarily be one in which insecure workers are seen as ‘real casual employee has competence to workers’ by management and are securely complete, not restricted to duties they employed. have experience in specifically. One way our union can begin to act now 4. Direct the relevant members of Faculty to help such a transition towards a better, Executives to send – where it is not inclusive higher education system, and possible to keep casual staff in work – defend against the emergence of one that an official communication expressing is much worse, is by calling on university appreciation for the casual employees’ managements to implement transparent important contribution and outlining the practices for employment of insecure staff possibility of future re-engagement in a such as the following steps identified by the timely manner from HR and/or Deans and NTEU Deakin Casuals Action Network in our Heads of Schools and Faculties. feedback to the Deakin MWC. 5. Direct the relevant members of Faculty Executives to make an explicit NTEU Deakin Casuals Action Network calls commitment – where it is not possible on the University to undertake the following to keep casual staff in employment – to steps: keep affected staff connected to the 1. Keep a record and generate monthly Deakin systems and community through reports of all casual staff who lost work in ongoing provision of access to emails, Trimester 1, and those casual employees Cloud, Deakin Library and ongoing who had a reasonable expectation of affiliation as Visiting Scholars. This will work (i.e. have been employed on a enable continuity of contact between regular basis across Trimesters 1 and 2 for teams and continuity of employment more than one year) but have no work at when campuses are re-opened by all in Trimester 2. ensuring casualised and sessional staff 2. Direct the relevant members of retain their inboxes, contact list, and other Faculty Executives to make an explicit connections to their colleagues and the commitment to re-employ recently University. employed casuals rather than make new 6. Direct the relevant members of external appointments. This is in line Faculty Executives to make an explicit with the indication given by the Vice- commitment in Faculty and/or School Chancellor in a meeting with the NTEU policy to consult casual staff and Deakin Branch Executive and the Deakin include them on a regular, ongoing Branch Casual-identified committee basis in discussions around planning member on 28 April, that the University and delivery in the online environment can give preference to any non-ongoing in Trimesters 2 and 3. This should involve staff who were cut during the COVID-19 email newsletters, other forms of direct pandemic, when engaging staff for communication specifically targeted at these roles in the future when the work and for casual staff, regularly scheduled is required to be done and the casual online meetings, and casuals and employee had a reasonable expectation sessionals should be paid for their time. of work (as defined in Step 1).

20 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Delegate profile: Izrin Ariff

I am a casual academic in the School of Communications and Arts at the University of Queensland, and have been lucky to be amongst great active members willing to roll up their sleeves. As long as I remember I supported the union movement, but, like lots of people,

I decided to become an activist in the And we don’t only have NTEU as I became politicised by the lack to look to the past. of action on the big issues facing us all. Taking inspiration Climate change, historic inequality and from the work of now, the COVID-19 crisis. These problems dedicated members are so massive at times it seems like there in Melbourne, which is little hope for progress, but when we look have recently pushed to our history, we see it’s when organised back against systemic workers stand together that we make wage theft, we have change happen. begun our own wage theft campaign. Our It was the unions’ strength that won the organising has us well weekend and the 40 hour work week. placed to borrow from Ended child labour and the Vietnam War. the Melbourne model. But, to take on the big questions we need Members have already to build from the little ones. started work logging and we Every campaign is an opportunity to not hope this can become a nationwide only improve pay and conditions, but reach challenge to unfair conditions. non-members and have workers take an It has never been more important for active role in building the Union. Often, they rank and file workers to be organised are also a chance to connect the struggles and fighting for a better world. No one is of workers to those of other groups. untouched by the pandemic, we all know One the earliest NTEU campaigns I was someone affected, either personally or involved with against the Ramsay Centre, through lost work. Even those universities showed the value of organising this way. that accepted early concessions continue With union support, UQ students organised to see cuts and losses. the first student general meeting since Although social distancing makes the 1971, which voted to oppose establishing meetings and leafleting that are the a centre. A union is its members, so the backbone of campaigning difficult, we best measure of a union is how active its have to throw ourselves into reaching as rank and file members are. Organising many people as possible because we networks like our casuals caucus and will all need the Union to be as strong UQ Fightback, the rank and file was able as possible to ensure workers are able to spearhead campaigns against cuts to defend themselves from crises of the and concessions in all forms, the casuals bosses making, whether it be in the name caucus unanimously passing a motion of ‘saving jobs’ or making ‘reforms’. against the Jobs Protection Framework, as well as a combined campaign that built Get more information about becoming an upon our work with the students against NTEU Delegate at delegates.nteu.org.au the Tehan reforms.

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Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 21 Casual not so casual

Image: Christin Hume/Unsplash As a writer I know the power of words. Using the word casual to describe a worker who is essential to the institution they are working for is problematic. It enables institutions to treat people casually, as if they are dispensable. I have been working as a casual teacher across a number of institutions for over thirty years. I was a casual tutor for one university for eight consecutive years, consistently getting good reports from students and giving popular lectures. I currently supervise at Deakin University and teach at the Council for Adult Education and at a community centre where my courses are often booked out and there are often waiting lists. I have been teaching since 1988. I have been publishing in literary journals since 1985. I am a committed professional, and I am very good at what I do. Before I taught at universities I taught in the TAFE system as a casual. I was employed over the times of the funding cuts. I watched vocational teachers lose their jobs and their health. I watched good people in management try to treat their staff well, but in the end casuals, as we know, are the first to go. The public perception that if you work hard as a casual, are committed and reliable and are good at what you do you will get a secure job is no longer the case, if it ever was.

Claire Gaskin Deakin University

22 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 ®®® Casual not so casual

Pay as you go work. I risk being considered not community minded, or unsociable at best. A lot of I usually teach two or three tutorials a week networking and opportunity to better your when teaching at a university. A tutorial is position goes on socially, as we know. usually from one to two and a half hours long. So, I am paid for up to seven and When you talk to friends who have more a half hours a week for teaching and permanent positions at universities, one hour per student per semester you often hear horror stories of for marking and five hours per enormous workloads and constant semester for going to meetings. pressure. They commiserate with The pay is not enough to support the plight of the casual, looking you a family or run a household. So at in the eye and saying they worked any one given time, I have had up for ten years as a casual before to five different employers. I have they got their position. That is a very been known to get in the car and long apprenticeship and they are start to drive to the wrong location not saying it is a guarantee that you before checking myself. Every one will get a position. But the culture has of those different employers has their been to keep your head down and not own requirements. complain in the hope that you may get one of those jobs one day. Traditionally an employer could expect a full-time employee to do some unpaid Casual compensation administrative tasks off the clock. However, I feel that employers’ expectations have Casual staff get a higher hourly rate for not changed since the casualisation of their work and some people argue that large sections of the workforce. I can be this compensates for not getting sick pay, employed by an institution for seven hours Image: Oladimeji Ajegbile/Pexels holiday pay and job security. It does not. a week but be expected to Nor does it compensate for not getting the be available for seven days superannuation that reflects the work you a week. have done and the years you have worked. If I was employed full- The higher hourly rate does not compensate time I could afford to be If I was employed full-time I could for the absence of sick pay. Like most casual " tutors, when I am sick I usually go to work available full time. If I had an income that meant I afford to be available full time. If I had an because I cannot afford not to and because could pay my bills, I would income that meant I could pay my bills, I I know I am not easily replaceable and I do not mind doing a little not like to let my students or the subject extra here and there out would not mind doing a little extra here coordinators down. It is very stressful not of good will. Like most and there out of good will. being able to take sick leave. I spent all people nowadays I answer of first semester one year worrying that I work emails outside of might have to have two weeks off at some work hours, including slow with getting paperwork done. It can point to have an operation. I felt like I could weekends. But when you have five different take a whole morning to deal with a contract not apply for second semester work and employers expecting you to do the added for $199 to deliver a lecture that then takes a negotiate having any time off. I felt I would administrative requirements that go along week to write. At one university a course has be passed over for the work. with a job, it is untenable, unsustainable. been offered on how to get paid your wage, The higher hourly rate does not it takes time and considerable effort to work I have been reprimanded for saying I cannot compensate for the fact that you are only out and get onto a university’s pay system. make a meeting at one institution because paid for the hours you teach. If you travel I am teaching at another at that time. I As a casual you cannot complain or bargain. to do a two-hour job or an eight-hour job, have employers say to me that they have If you complain, you do not get sacked, you the expenses associated with the job are been emailing and trying to ring me all just do not get re-employed. You can be the same: travel costs, public transport day, when I have been teaching during the replaced by someone who has the means or car parking, and you may get caught time they were trying to contact me. I have to be available for unpaid work. It got worse having to eat out. A two-hour job can take different institutions that all have different every year. There is the turn of the screw, I up your whole day in time and effort and systems chasing me for paperwork. They was asked to do more for less every year. take away from your ability to do other look at me and roll their eyes and say, ‘She’s work or find other work. Sometimes I might I feel like a hired gun. I go I teach I leave. I creative’. It is not because I am a creative, have a gap between tutorials where I am cannot get involved with social events at or disorganised or do not care that I can be continued overpage...

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 23 ®®® Casual not so casual

teaching one class first thing in the morning class and on campus. There are great and one in the afternoon. I am not paid for pieces, these young people are our the hours in between. I try to spend those leaders, they teach me. With time and hours productively but without an office it experience you can be efficient as well is difficult. I do not have a suitable place as thoughtful, but still their faces come to meet students. I meet the students I into view as you read their pieces, and supervise in cafes. The hours between you know you owe it to yourself and tutorials are spent in cafes or libraries, trying to them to give each piece the time it not to spend too much money or get too deserves, as much as you can without exhausted carrying the books I carry around ruining your health or not meeting your because I do not have a suitable place to other work commitments. store them. I have been known to sit in my Anything done repetitively is hard to keep car with a thermos and a cold bag of food meaningful and can make you question between tutorials. the meaning of life. But even when an When you are paid for two or three tutorials experienced teacher is working efficiently, over a twelve-week semester, the higher the twenty minutes does not hourly rate does not make up for not getting work. No one works like that, holiday pay. I apply for first semester work in it shouldn’t be paid like that. December and do not hear whether I have it till February, often after the students know Unpaid work is " Doing unpaid work takes away when their tutorials are. If you do not get the work, it is too late to get work elsewhere. For wage theft from your ability to make ends meet, the last eight years I have gotten work first If I was earning enough from time you need to be looking for or be semester, but I had to eat Christmas dinner money to cover my bills doing paid work. It is theft. with my daughters not knowing if I would it would be bad enough have work the following year. If I had known doing copious amounts of earlier that I would have that work, my stress unpaid work, but when I am new ideas and older people with decades levels could have been managed better and employed for say seven hours and I am of publishing backgrounds and current I could have planned better. doing so much extra unpaid, where does industry and teaching experience. You do that time come from? You cannot ask for this not get re-employed as a casual tutor at a Speedmarking level of unpaid work from casuals who often university unless you get good reports from end up doing more hours than someone students and are constantly upgrading your I have consistently been paid one hour per employed full time, and for quarter of the qualifications and advancing your career student per semester for marking. I have income. Doing unpaid work takes away from through publication. added up my hours to be up to at least your ability to make ends meet, from time three times this amount. In some subjects you need to be looking for or be doing paid I do not know any casuals who are casual there are three sets of assignments each work. It is theft. about their careers or their teaching. All with several components. You may work out the casual tutors I know are passionate that you are paid 20 minutes per assignment We are often told we cannot expect the practitioners and passionate about per student. So, let me run you through how work, we shouldn’t rely on it. It has even imparting that to their students. marking can go. been said that we should not see it as work. We are told that the work needs to Students get good teachers, but teachers First cup of coffee, you check everyone has be shared around and that those of us who do not get good conditions. The word casual handed in. You follow up on who has not. have been employed for a few years cannot simply implies and enables universities to You put your classes into groups if you did keep expecting it. It is as if we are meant to treat tutors as if we are not really part of the the course on how to do that, along with the feel as though we are greedy for wanting organisation. Casual tutors are not transitory; course on how to get paid. You think of the secure work. Instead of rewarding hard we have a long-term commitment to our fruit picking you did to buy books when you work, commitment and reliability, we are fields. We are indispensable in terms of our were studying. made to feel as though fair work conditions dedication and levels of achievement. We do copious amounts of unpaid work and we It’s about efficiency and speed. As a casual are a privilege not a right. I have thought face all the consequences of instability and tutor you have a PhD or you are doing a about ringing my landlord and saying that insecure work. PhD to do piece work. I have a thirty-year he should not see my rent as rent, not publishing history to do piece work. You expect it all the time, he should not rely on I would like to get paid for all the hours I open the first assignment. it but rather he should feel privileged that work. I would like a superannuation that I live in the house. I have thought about reflects the hours I have worked. I would You are teaching creative writing, and you saying these things to him, but somehow I like sick pay, holiday pay and job security. have told your students the Hemingway do not think it would go down too well. Like other casual staff in universities, I thing: to write what they know, what they am a highly qualified and experienced care about. Or you ask them to write about The reality is that up to 80 per cent of the professional, and I deserve to be treated as what they do not know and are grappling teaching done at universities is done by such. with. so-called casuals. Universities are reliant on their casual staff for their teaching. The Clare Gaskin is currently undertaking a PhD The first student has done what you asked; quality of a student’s learning experience and supervising in Writing and Literature it is a beautiful piece on bereavement that at any given university depends on the at Deakin University. She was previously demands some care in marking. There are quality of its teaching staff. In my experience a lecturer and tutor at the University of pieces on students’ experience of sexual universities get the best and brightest to Melbourne. assault, and on racism experienced in teach, young tutors with PhDs fresh with

24 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 The struggle to save & Public higher education is at serious risk. Universities premised on knowledge creation and dissemination remake for the public good are on shakier terrain than before. The higher public higher education sector globally was already in a fragile condition – some would say a education crisis – before the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated campus shutdowns began.

Higher education across and within Along with others (which include the countries as well as within institutions has increase in metrics and datafication of the been characterised by profound inequalities sector), these factors increasingly drive the which have been shaped and exacerbated practices of individual institutions which by the austerity and marketisation that has have themselves become more corporate in deeply troubled the sector. These are now character. a threat that has the potential to undermine My observations are drawn from various the entire endeavour. sources: panels in which I have recently At the same time there have been strikes participated including at the World Bank and protests by those employed or enrolled and Africa-based; the Twitterverse where in higher education in many countries to the power of loose ties in my professional protest numerous failings in the system, networks shows the emergent trends and including exclusion (practical, cultural, on-the-ground anxieties. This has been epistemological), increasingly onerous augmented by ongoing virtual conversations conditions of service and the rapid with colleagues, funders and others and, of casualisation of academic labour. course, reports and talks, as well as rapid research publications. These strikes have been overshadowed by the pandemic – indeed, notwithstanding Austerity " some exceptions in the There is an avalanche of activity and ...numerous failings United States and the concern being expressed both formally and United Kingdom, they in the system, including informally about the financial implications of themselves have been the COVID-19 shutdown and the projected exclusion (practical, locked down. impacts of the associated economic cultural, epistemological), Since the lockdowns, downturn for institutions, for educators and for students. increasingly onerous I have been observing the trends in higher Internationally these are to be seen in the conditions of service and education: unsurprisingly following ways: the rapid casualisation the most prevalent is the ‘pivot online’ to • There have been cuts to university of academic remote learning with all its budgets, some with immediate effect. labour. manifestations and associated • Students are indicating that they are not concerns especially regarding planning to start the next university year. access and vulnerability. This is • Universities are losing money from current closely followed by increasingly dominant budgets – for example, some are returning narratives of austerity and marketisation – it fees to current students. And students are is these on which I will focus here. demanding fee rebates for studies taken I am using the term ‘austerity’ as an online instead of face to face. umbrella word for underfunding and • Universities are offering students free financial cuts which drive up the risks of tuition for the forthcoming term. sectoral fragmentation and breakdown. Also • Contract and casual staff are losing jobs in an umbrella term, ‘marketisation’ speaks to several locations so far. the increasingly unfettered infiltration of big corporate forces substantially reshaping • Job conditions are changing for all staff, Laura Czerniewicz higher education. often in the form of unpaid furloughs. University of Cape Town, South Africa continued overpage...

Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 25 ®®® The struggle to save and remake public higher education

• Financial scenarios are being calculated Clearly, private company interests are in offering free access to educational materials for the sector for the medium term. In relationships that will assure them of profits. and resources as a temporary offering both England and Australia where these Higher education is also seeing a growing during institutional closures. have been made available, the outlook is relationship between private education As the University of Cape Town’s SARChI bleak. companies and governments. Coursera Research Chair in Intellectual Property, currently has formal relationships with 16 Funders have warned that the economic Professor Caroline Ncube, points out in governments around the world (Australia, downturn will reduce the size of their a recent podcast, these are offerings Brunei, Columbia, Egypt, France, India, endowments and therefore their grants. of goodwill which do not address the Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan , Some have prioritised their local communities regulatory frameworks of intellectual Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE, when providing immediate relief. property for the public interest. These USA, Uruguay). Since the outbreak of offerings are loss-leaders which risk locking Anxiety is realistically high: this response, the pandemic I am told that Amazon has students into using resources which they from personal communication with a contacted heads of government worldwide will then have to pay for on the date that the teaching and learning director, is typical: ‘I to offer educational assistance. am very, very worried. My college has been temporary offerings cease. around for well over a hundred years and A new ecosystem shaped by This is a bleak description of the state of I honestly think we have a good chance of public higher education and its mission of closing in the next 3-5 years. Very scary and big corporates developing and sharing knowledge for the sad.’ Overall, what is being consolidated during public good. And it is made more bleak Governments are generally failing to bail out this period is a new ecosystem where the given that the South African economy is in universities and where they do offer support, templates for the contractual relationships, a formal recession. With the Government the sector is having to explain why these governance and delivery frameworks are prioritising direct redistributive financial funds will not be enough. increasingly being provided and shaped by measures as a result of the lockdown, big corporates. Coursera, for example, now it seems unlikely that South African In South Africa, higher education scholars has partnerships with Amazon, Alibaba and universities will be bailed out by the state. are warning that COVID-19 poses a serious Facebook, with universities contributing the threat to higher education. Universities content and the brand. The message On high alert South Africa has been working with from the World Bank has been universities to develop financial scenarios for clear: these companies are The point, though, is not to the medium term. These have not yet been regarded as the ones who be alarmist or apocalyptic. shared with the sector at large; and many can ‘deliver to scale’. " The point is that all who universities’ executives have voluntarily Governments are care about the premise taken salary cuts. Coursera is an of education for the excellent case generally failing to bail good of society as a While there is little yet articulated regarding exemplifying the whole need to be on austerity in the South African context, aside out universities and where enactment of both high alert. There is no from murmurings, it is assumed that global alternate forms of they do offer support, the hiding from reality; it is economic echoes will resonate here and accreditation as well essential to recognise that our deep national economic crisis will sector is having to explain as pathways into and acknowledge the exacerbate the financial challenges facing the formal systems why these funds will size of the crisis as well universities. of accreditation which not be enough. as the threat. universities use. These Marketisation alternative forms of What is needed right now accreditation are is unity of purpose in order to Digitally mediated forms of teaching and likely to gain make decisions that will save public learning provision have been on the agenda increased higher education and enable it to be for a while now and the private sector legitimacy reshaped for the unknown future. has recognised this as an opportunity. through this Higher education scholars often Recent years have seen the rise of Online pandemic. comment how hard it is to change Programme Managers (OPMs), private higher education. For decades companies whose business model offers Coursera nothing changes in higher ‘partnerships’ to move university programmes has seen education and now in a few online, usually taking half the profits. enrolments weeks everything is changing. up by 644% Public universities have been coming to since last year As many, including Yuval Noah grips with the complexities of these very and enrolments Harari have observed, the decisions new relationships. But suddenly, private from Africa are being made now will shape the education firms say they have been up by 51%. (This is future: ‘This is the most important thing ‘inundated with requests from universities the second highest people need to realise ... that we have a lot to help them deliver online education next increase: India is up 60%). The of choices. And very important decisions year’. latter is an enormous escalation and will are going to be taken in the next month or two. It’s a short window of opportunity This sector is now worth an estimated US$7 also mean that cash-strapped students in when history is moving into ... fast forward. billion, growing apace, and it is projected an economically difficult environment are It’s accelerating. Governments are willing that COVID-19 will substantially ‘accelerate likely to find these alternative online options to experiment to try ideas which previously this trend’. These relationships are described more viable and affordable than continued would have sounded crazy. And once this is as ones where ‘the private party bears risk traditional university enrolment. over, the order will solidify again.’ and management responsibility, and where A last point (for now) about marketisation. remuneration is linked to performance’. Numerous private companies have been continued next page...

26 Connect ® Volume 13, no. 2 ® Semester 2, 2020 Image: Ian Barbour/Flickr

Universities, academics, students and the state right now need to work together to make decisions in the short term that will serve the greater goals of the future of higher education and will reassert the key principles of public higher education for the public good. The alternatives – the collapse of the sector, or one designed to serve unregulated profiteering interests of global elites – are far worse. While recent history in South Africa has understandably focused on state capture, there is a less visible global threat to higher education in the form of corporate capture. This is a time to set aside differences of opinion within higher education communities. This is not the moment to argue about which form of open education is the most appropriate nor which strategy to achieve social equity is the most ideal. It is the time for unity of purpose. This is a time to develop a more nuanced understanding of the actors in the private sector. There is a big difference between barely regulated big corporations creating systems that monetise student data, and an ecosystem that includes regulated private sector providers where the terms of the relationships are determined by public universities, and where regulatory frameworks are premised on the public interest. The current use of It is extremely important not to conflate technology for teaching and the affordances of the technology with learning is not the real deal; it is an the business models which are currently emergency response to enable teaching in a dominant. It is more necessary than ever to crisis. No one has the luxury of the real deal signed between universities and online distinguish between what the technology right now. That involves careful planning and education providers at present contain clear makes possible and the purposes for which considered expertise, and the development processes for future review, that internal they are presently being used. of an infrastructure which few universities online capacity is strengthened, that digital have had the foresight to put in place. regulatory frameworks that are currently out The affordances of current technology of sync with the public interest are revisited As one of the participants from an African are astonishing: in the pandemic they can and that open education opportunities are university argued in a recent webinar, save lives; in higher education they can leveraged. Active collaboration will expand remote teaching right now is the lesser support at-risk students and they can save this agenda. educators from much drudgery allowing of two evils. The prime evil would be the them to focus on what humans are really complete collapse of the public higher The pandemic has forced a terrible good at – teaching. education system and all that it stands for, disruption. In order to save the principles on followed by its replacement with a profit- which public higher education is founded, Just because most current business driven system that serves only those who COVID-19 can and must be an opportunity models are exploiting these technologies can pay. for an additional pivot – one that helps by profiting from student experiences and to consolidate coalitions, which, working Across the education landscape there are violating their privacy does not mean that closely with the state, will enable us first huge numbers of examples of outstanding there aren’t ethical options. These exist, and to salvage and then reshape public higher teaching, premised on critical pedagogy, with time, investment and commitment, education for a more equitable future. many more are possible. shaped by equity goals, and many of these are already digitally mediated. Academics Professor Laura Czerniewicz is the director No one has the luxury of the and students are presently showing of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and extraordinary resilience and imagination Teaching at the University of Cape Town, real deal to develop adaptable, creative and varied South Africa. She has worked in education solutions to meet changing teaching in a number of roles with a continuous focus There is an understandable aversion right and learning needs. Through structured on digital inequality. She has recently been now to technology being used as the collaboration it is possible for these to be the South African lead on an ESRC-NRF primary medium for teaching and learning in aggregated, gain traction and be shared on (Economic and Social Research Council- the crisis. The way it is being used is uneven an ongoing basis. National Research Foundation) funded project and partial – of that there is no question. on the ‘Unbundled University’, researching Levels of preparation and readiness for the There is much to be done, including emerging models of teaching and learning pivot online vary hugely. ensuring that hurried contracts being provision.

This article was originally published by University World News, Africe Edition, 30 April 2020. Subscribe to UWN at www.universityworldnews.com

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All staff can join online @ NTEU.ORG.AU/JOIN/ONLINE nteu.memberadvantage.com.au For more information, email: [email protected] or call: 1300 853 352. Have you logged in yet?

Your benefit offers can help you save hundreds on everyday expenses. To log in for the first time, simply click request new password and enter your email address. Then click the link you are sent to activate your account!

Here are some ways to use your benefits to save this year. Shop household essentials with discounted gift cards from Woolworths & Coles and other popular retailers. Or access commercial pricing on fridges, washing machines & kitchen applicances with access to The Good Guys Commercial & JB HiFi Solutions. Protect you and your family with access to insurance including Motor, Home&Contents, Income Protection and more. Enjoy some time with the family and access discounted vouchers for popular leisure attractions around Australia, movie tickets and exclusive dining offers. nteu.memberadvantage.com.au For more information, email: [email protected] or call: 1300 853 352. Love UniSuper? Your family can too!

We’re passionate about helping our members save for an exceptional retirement. And now your family can join our award-winning* fund too. A UniSuper Personal Account offers your family great value for money with a range of investment options, low fees, excellent service, flexible insurance and a national financial advice team. See what’s to love at unisuper.com.au/personal.

Prepared by UniSuper Management Pty Ltd (ABN 91 006 961 799, AFSL 235907) on behalf of UniSuper Limited (ABN 54 006 027 121, AFSL 492806) the trustee of UniSuper (ABN 91 385 943 850). This information is of a general nature only. Before making any decision in relation to your UniSuper membership, you should consider your personal circumstances, the relevant product disclosure statement for your membership category and whether to consult a qualified financial adviser. *SuperRatings awarded UniSuper 2019 Fund of the Year. Chant West named UniSuper 2019 Fund of the Year. Visit unisuper.com.au/awards for more information.