‘University staff working conditions are student learning conditions – let’s build better for us all’

There is a week in March of 2020 which will be etched in society’s collective conscious indefinitely. We all watched with uncertainty as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded with the increasing realisation that we were about to face something unprecedented.

In the same week, the University College Union (UCU) – the UK’s main trade union in the higher education sector – had been in dispute with Universities UK over four fights: pay, workload, casualisation and equality. All of these are reasonable and all essential foundations of a healthy workforce and, in a bid to gain them, we had voted for industrial action culminating in multiple strikes.

On recognising the gravity of the pandemic and the collective impacts it would have, the UCU decided to pause further action in a bid to prioritise the wellbeing of students and move our energies to provide as feasible, accessible and regular a learning experience as could be possible during a global pandemic.

We did so in good faith, expecting that the powers that be would recognise the surreal efforts of the whole situation and eventually our collectively monumental efforts would be recognised.

Just like students, staff have faced severe disruption during the pandemic both personally and professionally. The most obvious is the human impacts of illness, for some loss, and for many a fear of loss. The overnight changes to everyday life were difficult for many to grapple with, as were new technologies and endless hours in isolation away from colleagues and friends. Safety was our priority, but it also came with implications for many people’s mental health.

Alongside dwindling working conditions and ever bulging workloads – none of which seemed to map on the scores of extra hours that teaching online can take, especially for those who had not experienced it before – stress became a significant factor for many people.

So serious has it become that a recent report found that over half of staff surveyed showed probable signs of depression (53 per cent); almost eight in ten (79 per cent) respondents said they need to work very intensively, often or always; almost a third (29 per cent) reported feeling emotionally drained from work every day; one in five academics (21 per cent) work an extra two days (16 hours) per week on top of contracted hours.

For me, this was not an abstract or vague issue. After endless hours, days and weeks of stress culminating in panic attacks – something I have never experienced before – I was forced to take time out of work in November 2020 for the sake of my own mental health.

It was my first time on sick leave for stress in my whole 14 years working at UK universities. To put that in perspective, back when I was studying for my PhD full time, I also had the equivalent of a full-time job accumulating hours of 10.5 working days every week for around three years. Stress and extra work were no stranger.

Academia is regularly high pressured, and that is something people working in higher education are accustomed to – much more than anyone should be. In 2021, exploitation, casualisation, unfeasible workloads and endemic stress should be the exception to any workplace, not the norm.

Yet as the report above shows, staff are becoming more stressed than ever. Pressures around the Research Excellence Framework, increased intakes, multiplying roles and unprecedented emails and new technologies are taking their toll.

Like a lot of people, many lecturers and professional staff at universities got back to three-dimensional working in autumn this year with real colleagues, real students, and far fewer screens. After 18 months of life online and more monotony than most humans can handle, the excitement was palpable.

It was palpable because that is where we love to be: in the lecture theatre and seminar rooms, speaking with students and bouncing ideas around in ways that bring learning to life.

Much to the complete dismay of many of us, we are back to square one, asking for an end to casualisation, inequality and pension cuts. Staff pay has been eroded by below inflation increases for 13 consecutive years – that is a 20 per cent reduction in salary in real terms.

One third of academic staff are on insecure contracts. Unnecessary cuts to pensions means that staff will receive 20-50 per cent less pension than they have planned for. In a situation that continues to slide, only this week UCU-obtained data that suggests vice chancellors have been mislead over the real impacts of pension cuts. Meanwhile, senior staff at universities have been compared to corporate CEOs whilst others live on precarious and often substandard wages.

Staff and students should be building universities, not corporations. Many of us said so back in 2010 and 2011 when unreasonably high student fees were being debated and introduced. University should be a right for students, not a pressurised privilege that causes economic and emotional harms on people who wish to learn.

This strike is about our pensions, our pay, and our working conditions. Our working conditions are student learning conditions, and if we let our conditions and pensions slide it means student conditions and pensions will slide in time. There is no need for this to be the case because we are on the same side.

As staff and students, let’s collaboratively build better than what has been placed on both of our tables.

 Dr Victoria Canning is a senior lecturer in criminology

This article is the opinion of the author and not representative of any employer or union.

Main photo by Betty Woolerton

Read more: Bristol University staff set to strike over pension cuts and ‘unfair working conditions’

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