Pandemic Precariat
We ask you to support the Pandemic Precariat Campaign to put people before profit at the University of Edinburgh
Our Campaign at a Glance
We ask you to support the Pandemic Precariat Campaign to put people before profit at the University of Edinburgh. We are petitioning to oppose cuts at our University, to protect precarious workers and students, and for practical, humane and democratic planning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Any financial sacrifices to be made in this time of crisis must come from the top and be channelled into ensuring job security and diminishing pay inequalities.
Current Covid-19 Response Planning
University senior management has been “urgently identifying priorities for how we can continue to effectively adapt our practices for the next academic year” (Mathieson 22/04) behind closed doors, without any union representation or any other form of involvement of precarious staff .
Management is modelling a 50% reduction in international entrants and 30% reduction in continuing international students. Currently, income from International Students is £210m, making up 20% of the university’s income. As such, the university faces will have to make serious changes to make up for the financial impact that this will have.
Peter Mathieson affirms that “As the hits on our income in the next few years hit home, we will have to think the unthinkable”.
A Programme of Cuts at Edinburgh
As things stand, the university is planning to implement long-term reductions in staffing and non-staffing costs, such as by limiting recruitment and suspending annual increments and promotions.
Senior management have declared temporary pay reductions; specifically a pay cut of 20% for 6 months for Mathieson, with all other members of the senior team (<10 people) taking a 10% cut for the same period.
As for teaching, the university is currently planning for a “hybrid-teaching” Model for 2020/21. This entails dual provision of online teaching with on-campus teaching, which in turn would necessitate significant financial investment in additional expensive technology infrastructure. It is also likely to mean reductions in the number of courses offered for undergraduate students, loss of graduate teaching jobs for PhD students and increased workload for all staff to redesign and deliver courses for face-to-face, hybrid, and online teaching.
Implications for precarious staff
The University of Edinburgh is heavily reliant upon the labour of casualised staff who are employed on ‘atypical’ or fixed-term contracts.
- 48% of academic staff were on fixed-term or atypical casualised contracts in 2018/19
- 22.5% of all staff at the University of Edinburgh were on Guaranteed Hours contracts in 2018/19.
- The majority of GH staff (67.1%) are employed as tutors and demonstrators in the Colleges.
- 75.1% of GH staff are employed on “Student Experience” contracts.
EDI implications
Casualisation disproportionately affects BME staff. According to the University of Edinburgh’s Equality and Diversity Monitoring and Research Committee (EDMARC) 2019 report: For academic staff, non-UK nationality BME staff are most likely to be employed on a fixed-term contract and White UK staff the least likely, a pattern has not changed significantly over the last six years. For professional services staff, non-UK BME staff overall are more likely to be on a fixed term contract than their UK counterparts over the last six years, with BME staff being more likely to be on fixed-term contracts than their white counterparts for both UK and non-UK staff.
Casualisation disproportionately affects women. According to the same report, “Women [in both academic and professional services roles] are more likely to be employed on a fixed-term contract (slightly more pronounced for academic staff than professional services staff) and this pattern has not changed significantly over the last six year”.
Visa implications
For PhD students who have visa restrictions on the nature and hours of their employment, cutting guaranteed hours can entail a devastating loss of income and many student tutors could be forced to suspend their studies indefinitely.
Workers on visas risk losing their visa status in an already inhospitable academic market and hostile environment if their hours are decreased or their contracts are cut.
Cuts to discretionary funding often include the withdrawal financial support for visa applications. For those on casualised contracts, the cost of paying visa fees and the NHS surcharge each time they secure a new contract is already unsustainable.
Staff on fixed-term contracts who have been building towards establishing permanent residence will be drastically impacted by proposed cuts and hiring freezes, jeopardising long-term visa and employment prospects.
University Austerity is Not a Necessity
University income
“Edinburgh has some of the highest rates of reserves over income (155% in 2017-18) amongst UK universities and the 2nd amongst Scottish universities. The same for assets over income (225%), according to the Audit Scotland Sept 2019 report on Scottish universities finances.
Borrowing has been multiplied by 3.5 since 2015. The current borrowing of Scottish universities represents on average one third of their income. For Edinburgh this ratio was 60% in 2019.
This massive debt is what is underpinning the unchecked competition for international student fees: +28% 2016-2019 growth in non EU fees (22% growth in the number of international students).
This is where the real danger lies – revealed by covid-19, but not caused by it: the University’s reckless growth model is not only unsustainable, it turns the University into an extraction machine, and further removes it from its mission as a public institution.” (Staff-Student Solidarity Letter)
Number of staff at upper pay levels
The University of Edinburgh reported the greatest number of high earners, reporting that 335 staff received over £100,000 in total remuneration; 118 of these staff members receive over £150,000. (The Scotsman, 3 October 2019)
Sources
We’re grateful to many comrades among University of Edinburgh students and staff for their input and insight.
Our Demands
More Solidarity, Less Precarity
- Protect Postgraduate Research Students:
- ensure PGRs have the same access as in previous years to paid teaching work;
- adjust workload models for tutors in accordance with Hybrid Teaching model to ensure all training and work is paid;
- protect and extend existing PGR students’ funding for one year and develop a financial grant scheme for self-funded and international students;
- extend enrolment status as needed and extend scholarships accordingly; suspend fees for self-funded students;
- ensure annual reviews have a purely supportive (rather than disciplinary) purpose.
- Extend contracts for all casualised employees for two years to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 health and economic crisis and, where necessary, apply the UK government’s job retention scheme to all eligible precarious staff, topped up by the University to cover 100% of wages.
- End attendance monitoring of international staff and students in accordance with the recent relaxation of Home Office compliance requirements during Covid-19; following this period, implement the most minimalist possible interpretation of the revised Home Office compliance guidelines. Commit to supporting international staff and students’ ongoing applications and extensions to study and work visas.
- Implement a 5:1 maximum pay ratio (meaning that no one in the University earns more than five times the salary of its of its lowest-paid full-time employee, currently £17,046) as part of ensuring that any burden of post-crisis adjustment falls on those most able to afford it. Increase the minimum hourly wage to £10 as per the unions’ national pay claim in 2019.
- Increase annual leave entitlement for staff on UoE Grades 1-5 to 36 days per year, i.e. bring it in line with annual leave entitlement of staff on UoE Grades 6-10.
- Negotiate a reduction in normal full-time working hours with the campus trade unions, such as a 4-day work week of 29 hours without salary reductions. Review workload models of academic and professional services staff and eliminate unpaid overtime. Offer all senior non-/minimal teaching staff early retirement.
- Maintain and increase provision of counselling and mental health support services within the University for staff and students (both remote and on-campus), providing training where needed for staff to provide counselling online and/or over telephone.
- Withdraw from and lobby for the cancellation of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 exercise.
- Include student representatives and campus trade union representatives as a matter of priority on the ‘Adaptation and Renewal’ Team and situate this body within the University’s existing governance structures.
- Take all major decisions in response to the present crisis – including on furlough, voluntary severance schemes and protocols for remote working – transparently and in full and open consultation with Council, Senate, the campus Trade Unions and the Students’ Association, and that all such decisions stand up to robust scrutiny from an equalities perspective.
- Devolve teaching, research and pastoral-support decisions to Schools. Enable and empower staff and students to democratically choose their teaching and learning priorities.
- Negotiate a retention policy with campus trade unions for materials created for online and hybrid teaching.
Pandemic Precariat 