What’s going on with fair pay at Warwick?

A lot has been going on with the fair pay campaign at Warwick recently. Here, the Boar gives you a rundown of all that’s been happening so far.

The Guardian

A recently published investigation by the Guardian into precarious employment at Russell Group universities, found the majority of teaching staff at Warwick are on “insecure contracts”.

The article – The Guardian’s front page headline story on Thursday 17 November – states higher education “is now dominated by zero-hours contracts, temp agencies and other forms of precarious work”.

68.1% of Warwick’s teaching and teaching-and-research staff are on fixed-term or atypical contracts, it is reported – the highest proportion of any Russell Group university, bar Birmingham. The Russell Group average stood at 49.7%.

Other concerns raised in The Guardian’s report included the prioritisation of expensive expansion and building projects over paying staff a living wage – even as students’ tuition fees continue to increase. The Oculus, an £19 million interdisciplinary building, recently opened on campus.

Hope Worsdale, Warwick Students’ Union Education Officer, stressed this was an issue which affected students’ academic experience, as well as workers’ rights: “When staff are over-burdened and put under such pressure, it’s inevitable that teaching and feedback quality will suffer in some way.”

She added: “The extent of casualised, precarious, low-paid work at Warwick is a scandal.”

University Denial

A spokesperson for the university has rejected the report’s findings, however, stating: “They got their figures really, really badly wrong.”

Peter Dunn, Warwick’s Director of Press and Policy, asserted the university’s belief that the proportion of precarious contracts at Warwick, is in fact much lower: “On a full time equivalent basis 15% are on fixed term or hourly paid contracts and the remainder are employed on permanent contracts.”

The University were not contacted prior to the publication of the Guardian’s investigation.

Mr. Dunn explained the data which the newspaper had used, compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, differentiated between “atypical” and “fixed-term contracts” – something which the Guardian did not do.

He added: “It is not a surprise therefore that we do not recognise the statistic the newspaper quoted for temporary contracts among our teaching staff.”

HESA have released a statement in response to The Guardian’s report, making it clear “their data does not distinguish ‘zero hours’ contracts or measure the ‘precariousness’ of individuals’ employment as this is not the purpose of the data collection.”

A full definition of what constitutes an “atypical” contract was also provided by HESA. On their terms, such contracts include: those which do not run for more than four consecutive weeks, “any one-off/short-term tasks”, and those which require “a high degree of flexibility often in a contract to work as-and-when required”.

Warwick Students’ Union (SU) Postgraduate Officer, Nat Panda, has responded directly to university’s rejection of The Guardian’s investigation, stating: “Rather than contesting the legitimacy of such reports, the onus should be on the University to tackle the problem in the first instance — the irony of quoting “full-time equivalent” figures when talking about the countless members of staff who do not work full-time has apparently been lost on them.”

Nat continued: “Warwick’s record on fair working conditions for postgraduate teachers — first with TeachHigher and now with the Sessional Teaching Project — has thus far failed to adequately address the root causes of widespread dissatisfaction among staff and students on this issue.

“Actions ultimately speak louder than words, and until we see concrete steps to improve this situation, all their rhetoric is little more than defensive bluster.”

Petition Launched

A petition demanding fairer conditions for teaching staff at Warwick University was started by Warwick Anti-Casualisation (WAC) on 22 November 2016.

Launched by a coalition of hourly-paid staff and PHD students, WAC have set out 6 demands for fairer pay, including: to not require PHD students to work for free; to pay teachers for compulsory training; and to pay teachers for all hours of work – including preparation and marking.

A small protest was also held on Library Bridge, with supporters holding up the demands.