1

Protecting the Academic Precariat: Aspects of organising and bargaining in New

Zealand’s universities

Megan Clayton, Industrial and Professional Committee, Tertiary Education

Union

In academic journals and mainstream media alike, the continuing rise of precarious

work in developed countries has become a topic of consideration in recent years, as

have its consequences. A part of this wider network of analysis has been the

consideration of precarious work in academic contexts. Given the cultural

associations of academic work with intellectual elites and social privilege, this has

required some unpacking. Many analyses comment on the way in which both the

public and the academy itself appears unaware of the extent to which academic

teaching, in particular, is supported by fixed-term, casual and otherwise contingent

labour.1

There is in both literature and media in general a lack of integrated discussion of the

topic of precarious academic labour. Many academic articles consider the issue in

terms of disciplinarity, such as examining precarious work in a particular field: the

humanities in the United States is a common example.2 Others discuss precarious

work in terms of the academy itself: as a consequence of neo-liberal managerialism,

1 See, for example, the discussion following the death in poverty of former Duquesne University

adjunct professor Margaret Mary Vojtko: Daniel Kovalik “Death of an adjunct”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (online ed, Pittsburgh, 18 September 2013). Lindsay Ellis “An Adjunct’s Death Becomes a Rallying Cry for Many in Academe” (19 September 2013) The Chronicle of Higher Education <http://chronicle.com/article/An-Adjuncts-Death-Becomes-a/141709/> Maria Maisto, Joseph A. McCartin and Jacob Swenson “Unethical Academia: The Next Front for Low-Wage Worker Uprising?” (17 October 2013) The Huffington Post <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-maisto/unethical-academia-the-ne_b_4116373.html> 2 See as an example Frank Donoghue “Do College Teachers Have to Be Scholars?” (2012) Spring The

Hedgehog Review 29, which discusses an op-ed from The Chronicle of Higher Education that argues it is possible for adjunct teachers in the humanities to make high salaries provided they abandon aspirations to scholarship and intellectual life.

2

or the massification of higher education in a time of public sector constraint. Overall

there is a lack of explication in these articles of the wider social contexts of labour,

perhaps because the interdisciplinary approach this would require is inimical to

current norms of academic publication.

This paper will highlight some themes in recent discussions of precarious academic

labour in order to discuss the New Zealand context, and particularly the work of the

New Zealand Tertiary Education Union Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa in organising,

supporting and advocating for its members in fixed-term and casual employment in

New Zealand’s eight universities. Precarious academic work is both a threat to

“decent work” in universities, and a pragmatic response, ideologically driven, to

wider pressures on academic life. Under government inimical to higher education,

the union has an important role to play in defending those who experience the

effects of this in inequitable work arrangements.3

In the North American context, the widespread rise of precarious work – fixed-term,

casual or informal employment agreements – is often associated with the end of the

long boom in the mid-1970s and the decline of traditional working-class jobs. One

Canadian writer notes the ubiquity of precarious employment across all sectors:

“seasonal workers, security guards and sales persons; web designers, fast-food

workers and university teachers; child care and elder workers, and so on”, extending

in Canada to “at least a third of all jobs and likely more”.4 In New Zealand, the rise in

precarious work is said to begin from the early 1990s, following the neo-liberal

labour market deregulations by the fourth Labour and fourth National governments

(1984-90, 1990-99).5

3 A recent survey, “The Impact of Insecure Work Arrangements: A Survey for TEU Members” found

that one in six respondents reported they were employed in a fixed-term, casual or otherwise insecure role, and one-third of respondents reported they had been employed in this manner previously. See TEU “Survey Shows Widespread Insecure Work in Tertiary Education” (11 July 2013) <http://teu.ac.nz/2013/07/survey-shows-widespread-insecure-work-in-tertiary-education/> 4 Cy Conick, “Precarious labour” (May-June 2011) 45.3 Canadian Dimension at 24.

5 Philip Bohle and others, “The Evolving Work Environment in New Zealand: Implications for

Occupation Health and Safety – NOHSAC Technical Report 10” at 6. <http://www.dol.govt.nz/publications/nohsac/pdfs/technical-report-10.pdf>

3

There is little recent data concerning the proportion of precarious jobs among those

employed in New Zealand. A 2008 report using data from the late 1990s calculated

those in part-time, casual or fixed-term employment and those who hold multiple

jobs to be around 23 per cent of the workforce. The report also notes that data on

casual work is not collected nationally in New Zealand, and that the last survey on

that topic was conducted in the 1990s.6 Whereas in New Zealand it is noted that the

“logic of casualisation is that businesses are likely to employ people on a casual,

part-time or temporary basis when it increases their flexibility” with “workers …

subject to fewer conditions of employment than full-time employees”,7 a Canadian

source is less circumspect:8

A strategy favoured by some corporations is to maintain a small core of highly

desirable full time, full-benefit positions as a means to elicit extraordinary effort

over a long period of time form workers competing for these positions. Many

workers are forced to take part-time employment in a company in the hope that

they will be hired full time when full-time jobs slots open up. But these are

growing increasingly scarce.

As will be seen, similar experiences can be found among employees in precarious

work in New Zealand’s universities.

The discussion of precarious employment in universities is, in the literature, typically

focused on the employment of academics on a fixed-term or non-permanent basis.

Particular distinction is drawn between these workers and those in the United States

who enjoy the benefits of tenured employment. That there is a financial imperative

for the universities to maintain a pool of non-permanent academic labour is not in

doubt, to the extent that this is now “a strategy utilized by universities to reduce

6 Bohle and others, at 60.

7 Bohle and others, at 61.

8 Conick, at 24.

4

overall labour costs”.9 The extent to which this is an embedded feature of the way in

which North American universities are run is starkly illustrated by figures widely

cited across a variety of research: those “tenured or eligible for tenure, now make up

only 32 percent of the college teaching workforce” in the United States, while

“adjuncts … make up the remaining 68 percent”.10 Working conditions for these

adjuncts are notoriously poor: employed part-time and ineligible for tenure (and

therefore health insurance and superannuation), adjuncts may be paid by the course

or by the hour, typically earn between 1500 and 3500USD per course taught and

work across multiple employers. Few have access to permanent office space or

departmental representation, and most are ineligible for membership in the unions

to which their tenured colleagues may belong.

The difficulty of organising and bargaining for these contingent faculty is in the

United States an area of study of its own. Convincing academics in precarious work

of their class position is a particular challenge for union organisers, who comment,

along with other researchers, on the “dual consciousness” of those affected: the

tension between the academic unions’ historical “‘guild consciousness’ of the skilled

professional seeking to protect existing privileges” and “the objective fact that

[adjunct faculty] are now workers”.11 The extent to which the individualism of

academic identity affects the ability to organise, is widely noted. Other restrictive

factors include the related idea of academia as a meritocracy and the practical

realities of precarious employment, outlined above. Even so, those affected “are

currently organizing more aggressively than any other sector of the teaching

workforce” in the United States.12

9 Michelle Webber “Miss Congeniality Meets the New Managerialism: Feminism, Contingent Labour,

and the New University” (2008) 38.3 Canadian Journal of Higher Education 37 at 37. 10

Donoghue, at 31. 11

Joe Berry Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2005) at 18-19. 12

Donoghue, at 33.

5

Academics and general staff alike in New Zealand universities are represented by the

Tertiary Education Union Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa, which has membership of

between 40 and 70 per cent of academic staff of the eight university branches.13

While academic and general members are covered by different (single-site)

collective agreements14 and some members are on individual employment

agreements, this combination of different professional roles and responsibilities

inside one industrial organisation has made it possible for the union to consider the

problem of precarious work in the wider context of labour relations. Since precarious

employment disproportionately involves women, younger and older employees,

Māori and Pasifika,15 there is a further context of campaigning for social justice that

is served by the union’s ability to represent staff across the two main areas of

university work. The union also affiliates to the New Zealand Council of Trade

Unions, through which a continuous campaign for Fairness at Work runs.16

In order to establish the extent of precarious work in the universities and those most

affected by it, the TEU made a series of Official Information Act requests of the eight

universities in 2012 and 2013 concerning the distribution of continuing/fixed-term,

full-time/part-time and casual employment agreements across academic and

general staff.17 Data was received from all of the eight universities for 2012, and

seven of the eight for 2013.18 Responses revealed considerable variation between

the universities in both the use and the categorisation of casual staff in particular.

Some institutions reported a high number of casual employees while others did not

keep sufficient data on these workers to report the information that was requested.

13

The TEU also represents members in institutes of technology and polytechnics, and in wānanga. 14

An exception is Massey University, where staff are on the same collective agreement. 15

Bohle and others, at 61. 16

New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi Fairness at Work <http://www.workrights.org.nz/> 17

In 2013 information was also sought on numbers of women and Māori employed in each of these categories, but this has not been used in this paper. 18

2013 data from one university was presented in a manner that was unusable for this paper, so only six of the eight universities have been considered.

6

The tables below provide a simple breakdown of the numbers received according to

continuing or fixed-term employment and within these categories academic or

general coverage and full-time or part-time employment. Where data was received

on casual staff for 2013 this is recorded. The University of Otago also reported some

staff with combinations of employment not accounted for by the academic/general,

full-time/part-time, continuing/fixed-term and casual breakdowns. These are noted

separately following the main tables.

7

Staffing levels within New Zealand Universities as at 30 June 2012 (response to OIA request)

Continuing Staff Total Continuing

Staff

Fixed-Term Staff Total Fixed-Term Staff

Total % Fixed-Term Staff

Academic General Academic General

Full-time Part-time

Full-time Part-time

Full-time Part-time

Full-time Part-time

University of Auckland

1286 283 1883 326 312 607 398 284

1569 2209 3778 919 682 1601 29.8

AUT 766 194 774 144 84 64 30 22

960 918 1878 148 52 200 9.6

University of Waikato

447 115 571 183 138 113 116 108

562 754 1316 251 224 475 26.5

Massey University 949 190 1245 296 134 159 125 129

1139 1541 2680 293 254 547 17

Victoria University of Wellington

610 57 806 175 73 238 72 136

667 981 1648 311 208 519 24

University of 544 53 759 337 73 125 100 554

8

Canterbury

597 1096 1693 198 654 852 33.5

Lincoln University 193 28 272 79 5 13 53 40

221 351 572 18 93 111 16.3

University of Otago

854 568 1593 505 363 560 251 906

1422 2098 3520 923 1157 2080 37.1

Staffing levels within New Zealand Universities as at 30 June 2013 (response to OIA request)

Continuing Staff Total Continuing

Staff

Fixed-Term Staff Total Fixed-Term Staff

Total % Fixed-Term Staff

Casual Staff Total Casual Staff

Total % Fixed-Term & Casual

Academic General Academic General Academic General

Full-time

Part-time

Full-time

Part-time

Full-time

Part-time

Full-time

Part-time

AUT 754 172 804 133 76 69 37 17 356 394

926 937 1863 145 54 199 9.7 750 33.7

University of Waikato

458 111 569 177 59 121 125 106 96 55

569 746 1315 180 231 411 23.8 151 29.9

Massey University

1018 181 1202 293 142 133 122 86 N/A N/A

1199 1495 2694 275 208 483 15.2 344 23.5

9

Victoria University of Wellington

640 70 812 196 83 485 66 972 55 453

710 1008 1718 568 1038 1606 48.3 508 55.2

Lincoln University

200 25 286 78 4 10 43 28 N/A N/A

225 364 589 14 71 85 12.6 N/A N/A

University of Otago

897 309 1573 445 366 341 186 219 2191 1757

1206 2018 3224 707 405 1112 25.6 3948 61.1

The University of Otago also reported to 30 June 2013 the following on a combination of continuing, fixed-term and casual agreements:

Academic Staff General Staff

Full-time Part-time Full-time Part-time

68 51 38 46

A smaller number of University of Otago staff hold combinations of academic and general roles, continuing, fixed-term and in casual employment.

10

In general, New Zealand universities employed fixed-term workers to 30 June 2012

at just below 10 to just above 37 per cent of continuing and fixed-term staff, and six

of the eight universities reported a proportion of fixed-term workers from just below

10 to just above 48 per cent of the same to 30 June 2013. Variations can be seen

between the two sets of responses, from small-scale increases or decreases in the

proportion of fixed-term labour (AUT, Waikato, Massey, Lincoln) to significant

increases (VUW) or, in the case of one institution (Otago), a significant decrease. It

should be noted that variations in how employment is recorded (as in the

specificities of the Otago example, above) may influence reporting. Averages for

supplied data for both years were close to 25 per cent. For 2013, when information

on casual workers was available, the proportion and the average were much higher,

the latter above 40 per cent:

Institution % of Fixed-term staff to 30 June 2012

% of Fixed-term staff to 30 June 2013

% of Fixed-term & casual staff to 30 June 2013

University of Auckland

29.8 N/A N/A

AUT 9.6 9.7 33.7

University of Waikato

26.5 23.8 29.9

Massey University 17 15.2 23.5

Victoria University of Wellington

24 48.3 55.2

University of Canterbury

33.5 N/A N/A

Lincoln University 16.3 12.6 N/A

University of Otago 37.1 25.6 61.1

Average 24.2 22.5 (excluding Auckland & Canterbury)

40.7 (excluding Auckland, Canterbury and Lincoln)

11

The available data shows consistencies with aspects of the situation abroad. As in

the United States, “peer institutions have widely disparate ratios” of fixed-term

academic employment,19 and, while continuing academic staff are in most

institutions not yet the “privileged minority” they are in the United States,20 in some

universities (particularly Victoria University of Wellington in 2013) the number of

fixed-term academics is close to the number of their continuing colleagues. Of

importance too, however, are not just the quantitative figures but also the

qualitative measures of the experience of precarious employment in academia. The

negative impacts of precarious employment are widely reported, and it is in

mitigation of these that the TEU continues to direct its efforts.

One report notes the effects of “irregularity of income, job insecurity and

intermittent bouts of unemployment” associated with precarious work as

adverse … on contingent workers and their dependants in terms of diet/food

choices, budgeting/meeting financial commitments/planning for family and

retirement, vocational training levels and the educational performance of

children

and cites an existing comparison of these effects to those reported for 19th-century

sweatshop, factory and casual labour.21 Staff in fixed-term employment in New

Zealand’s universities cannot access the redundancy entitlements of their continuing

peers, do not accrue annual or sick leave beyond the duration of their employment

agreement and cannot access study leave or long-service leave. Where an employee

repeatedly works under fixed-term employment agreements, these inequities are

particularly apparent over time. One TEU member describes a seven-year long

employment arrangement of single-semester employment agreements with a

19

Donoghue, at 32. 20

Berry, at 19. 21

Bohle and others, at 65.

12

polytechnic, limited access to sick leave and a “portfolio career” in which “I can’t

remember a proper weekend for a long time”.22

Members in the universities who have been employed repeatedly on fixed-term

agreements report anecdotally a variety of effects outside the institution, including

being unable to secure a home loan despite high-income, high-prestige

employment.23 Academic members working on fixed-term agreements describe a

limiting of their capacity for research and publication beyond the small-scale and

short-term. This has significant flow-on effects for new academics in particular, since

for them delays in publication and professionalisation can mean a limiting of options

in future, such as loss of access to early-career research grants. Similarly, members

report that the casualisation of available research and teaching work in many fields

in the universities is a disincentive for continuing academic careers, particularly for

those with family and caring responsibilities who cannot rely on seasonal work.24

Fluctuating institutional rationales for positions being or remaining fixed-term

despite the employment of long-serving staff are a source of professional frustration

and personal stress. Union members report losing faith in the employers whom

previously they were proud to serve but on whom they now depend financially,

without security. At least one qualitative study shows the breakdown in personal

satisfaction and intra-professional integrity that occurs as a result of this degradation

of employment relations:

In this institution, reliance on contingent faculty can vary by department and this

variation is not in the control of the departments themselves.

22

Tertiary Education Union “Hinemoana Baker: Eight Years Without a Holiday” (18 July 2013) Tertiary Update < http://teu.ac.nz/2013/07/hinemoana-baker-eight-years-without-a-holiday/> 23

These anecdotes often come from members who work in medicine and the health sciences, where funding agreements and the work associated with them are often of fixed duration. Baker, above n 22, is similarly affected in her work as a fixed-term creative writing tutor: “I don’t ever foresee being able to buy a house. I don’t have a savings plan or a retirement plan.” 24

This is one theme of individual responses to the question “Would you be comfortable with the TEU assessing if your position could be changed into a permanent position (either full-time or part-time)?” in “The impact of insecure work arrangements: A survey for TEU members” (June 2013).

13

…

One of the full-time professors interviewed adds to this by outlining how

Women’s Studies, by not being adequately funded by the university, has created

a rancorous legacy on the part of the non-permanent academics.

…

“Because the program has relied so heavily on part-time and contract people,

because our full-time faculty has not been able to support it, it’s run itself on the

backs of people like that who then have quite often become disillusioned”.25

A follow-on to this disillusionment noted by TEU staff has been some members’ loss

of faith in organisers and the union as a force to better their conditions of

employment. The vagaries of fixed-term and casual employment are particularly

powerful over time in this regard, with the employer having a variety of reasons

available to justify their use.

Options to test the validity of employment agreements in a precedent-setting

manner such as in the Employment Relations Authority or the Employment Court are

limited, in that employers will typically settle to avoid the risk of a precedent-setting

case. Under these conditions, while the pattern of employed fixed-term workers

continues, it is the union’s work to find those affected, in some cases to recruit them

to membership, and then to persuade them of their interests in taking a case. Rates

of union membership for fixed-term and casual staff are generally lower than among

their continuing colleagues, with uncertain income and lack of permanence in

employment arrangements acting as disincentives for the former group. Success

depends on representing members case by specific case, often with an aim of

bettering, rather than transforming, the situation. One organiser describes how

I worked for a member … who had been employed on an hourly basis for years

when her work was neither casual nor particularly irregular. We got her

converted to a proportional 0.4 position and she was paid backpay of around

$23000 net. Her husband was only able to get a job at McDonalds and they

25

Webber, at 40 & 45.

14

had been subsisting on a very meagre income with 2 children. … This situation

had been going on for about 5 years.

Another worker at the same institution who is a single parent had her

proportion held at 0.3 and regularly worked additional hours paid at a casual

rate. Over the course of the year we managed to get her around $9k

backpay. This still meant that these people were on low incomes doing work

spread across the week and with long gaps between work but it made a

difference in their pockets.26

Even where the use of a fixed-term agreement appears likely to be able to be

challenged by the union, this remains an avenue that precarious workers are

reluctant to pursue. An employee who feels dependent on the employer’s goodwill

may often prefer to take the pathway, already cited and often fruitless, of

“extraordinary effort over a long period of time … in the hope they will be hired” on

a continuing basis in future.27 To build capacity among members to support each

other through the industrial alternative, the TEU uses wider campaigns for solidarity

such as member profiles and success stories. The latter often involve extended union

involvement and a long route to continuing employment, circumstances which may

require exceptional determination on the part of an already embattled employee.28

However, by raising member awareness of existing success for current members by

current organisers, hope may continue to float. A section of the TEU webpages is

accordingly dedicated to casualisation and insecure work, with resources available

for members.29

26

Email from a TEU Organiser to the TEU Deputy Secretary regarding organising for precarious workers (21 October 2013). Note that these members were employed at a polytechnic. 27

Conick, at 24. 28

See, for example, TEU “Lesley Francey: Union Ends ‘Nasty’ Roll-over Agreements” (8 August 2013) Tertiary Update <http://teu.ac.nz/2013/08/lesley-francey-union-ends-nasty-roll-over-agreements/>, a history of the precarious employment experience of the current TEU National President. 29

TEU “Casualisation and Insecure Work” <http://teu.ac.nz/portfolio/casual-and-insecure-work/>

15

Another area in which the TEU continues to pursue better terms and conditions for

members affected by precarious employment is through collective bargaining. New

Zealand is different from its North American counterparts in that the union is able to

represent all workers in the universities.30 While at this time a national collective

agreement for university members is not an achievable goal (although it was actively

pursued in the early 2000s), the TEU continues to develop nationally shared goals for

bargaining through its Industrial and Professional Committee and these include

limiting the use of fixed-term and casual labour.31 At some universities the union has

been successful in negotiating restrictions on when fixed-term agreements may be

used, such as

relieving for a substantive position where the incumbent is on approved leave,

filling a vacancy pending permanent appointment, including emergency relief

positions, undertaking a finite task for a period not exceeding two years, or to

trial a new course for a period not exceeding two years.32

In other institutions goals for bargaining include extending to those on continuous

fixed-term employment agreements the right to redundancy entitlements and

accrued sick leave.

The barriers to “decent work” for New Zealand university staff remain similar to

those in other areas of the public sector and the neo-liberal economy more

generally: employment law that favours the employer and restricts the power of the

workers to organise and take industrial action, and a preponderance of top-down

managerial systems that restrict the ability of departments and service units to

employ new staff in continuing positions. Teaching and research positions are often

tied to fluctuations in demand and supply (students and funding) that mean work

30

See above n 13. 31

This committee also includes representatives from polytechnics, institutes of technology and wānanga. 32

TEU “Survey shows widespread insecure work in tertiary education”.

16

continues from year to year without continuous employment.33 This in turn

produces among members disillusionment with the employer and sometimes the

union itself, along with financial restriction, career limitation and personal hardship.

The strengths, both potential and actual, of the Tertiary Education Union in

representing its members in the struggle for “decent work” include its ability to

represent all staff in tertiary education,34 to bargain collectively and to promote

solidarity nationally through its member networks and organisers. These are the

wide-scale activities that support the organisers’ work of identifying, supporting and

pursuing the cases of individual members who wish to challenge their employment

arrangements, itself a process both “resource-consuming” and, for new members or

the many without experience of challenging the employer, “scary”.35 To help the

members shoulder that burden of fear, to increase solidarity and collectivity and to

continue to campaign locally, nationally and alongside other unions for better

conditions of employment for workers is the union’s mandate and its responsibility,

expressed in the TEU waiata, “Tū Kotahi”36:

Tū kotahi

Tū kaha

Tātou tātou e

Ngā piki

Ngā heke

Tū kotahi e

Stand as one

Stand strong

Everyone together

In joy

and sadness

Let’s stand together

33

See Baker, above n 22, for an example of this. 34

See Berry, above n 11 at 31-37 for some of the historical context of “competitive unionism” in higher education in the United States. 35

Email from the TEU Deputy Secretary to Megan Clayton regarding organising for precarious workers (21 October 2013). 36

TEU “Tū Kotahi” (23 July 2009) <http://teu.ac.nz/2009/07/tu-kotahi/>