if you actually don t do research you re history : casual academic workers and workchoices

1. “If you actually don’t do research you’re history”: Casual academic workers and ‘WorkChoices’ Jayne Keogh, Barbara Garrick and Lidia Fera University of Queensland

3. SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT MACRO POLITICAL BACKGROUND: Globalisation Industrial Reform in ‘New times’: Political forces: Market forces Government initiatives User pays Changes to workplace practices : Quality management Increased accountability Demise of unionism Increased casualisation

4. AUSTRALIAN WORKPLACE TRENDS Rising female workforce participation Increasing incidence of part-time and casual work Increased accountability Increased importance of credentials Shift from manufacturing to service industries Increased competition Increase in individual workplace agreements

5. ‘WORKCHOICES’ LEGISLATION Senator Stephens predicted that: the effects of the new legislation would be particularly negative for “those working on minimum wages, casual workers, young workers, single parents, women, unskilled workers, those with poor English and rural workers” (debate regarding the new ‘WorkChoices’ Bill, Hansard, 30 November, 2005)

6. THE GENDERED CONSEQUENCES OF WORKPLACE REFORM Reduction of core permanent staff (simultaneously with huge increases in stuednt numbers) A growth in part time work in Australia 3/4s part time workers are women Of Australian women, 44% work part time compared to 24% in OECD countries (OECD, 2002) Women are disempowered by neoliberal workplace reforms such as masculinist enterprise bargaining processes, increased competition Unions are masculinist, largely representing male workplace interests (Pocock, 2005)

7. THE ACADEMIC WORKPLACE Mirroring the nation’s workplace trends: (increased accountability; increased competition; increase in individual workplace agreements; rising female workforce participation; etc) Pressure for universities to become self-financing and entrepreneurial Encouragement for alliances with outside agencies and industries Change in management style from collegial to managerial Decline in career choices for academics increasing incidence of part-time and casual work

8. ACADEMIA: A GENDERED ISSUE The language of neoliberalism has become normalised within the academy (Gale & Densmore, 2000). Women advance more slowly and earn less money than men” (Valian,1998: 217). Women disproportionately leave before earning their PhDs, are slower to be tenured, and earn less than comparable men (Krefting: 2003, 272). Female academics tend to spend more time on lesser-valued activities than men (Acker & Feuerverger, 1996: 273). there is a persisting under-representation of women at the top and an over-representation of them at the bottom of the academy (Benschop & Brouns, 2003) “women remain on the margin trying to prove they have the skills to ‘play the game at all’ while men realistically presume to support and focus on strategizing reputation” in academia (Krefting, 2003).

9. A cut in staffing costs through: The increased employment of casual workers in Australian universities an increased number of individual workplace contracts

10. Definition of a ‘casual worker’: “a person engaged by the hour and paid on an hourly basis that includes a loading related to award benefits for which a casual employee is not eligible” (HECE Award, AIRC 1998: Clause 2.4). Casual academics often work on undervalued tasks such as teaching and marking This may well detract from the possibility of obtaining tenured positions

11. STATISTICS Casual academic staff numbers rose by a FTE of 49% between 1994 and 2000 Casual staff and make up 20% per cent of university academic staff (DEST 2003) In terms of head-count, the Australian casualisation rate is between 23% and 27% An estimated 40% of academic staff were appointed as casual employees using these terms (far higher than this rate of the general workforce (Pocock, Buchanan & Campbell, 2004) In 1997 there were nearly 101,000 casual employees in education, of whom 76 per cent were females (Junor & Wallace, 2001: 162).

12. PREVIOUS SURVEY RESEARCH FINDINGS ABOUT CASUAL WORK Cost less to employ than tenured staff Receive little more than half the pay of colleagues with identical responsibilities – in some instances less experienced people whom they were mentoring Qualifications and experience are frequently under-utilised or used without recognition - a sense of bitterness at a wasted investment in qualifications” (Junor, 2000: 27) Notion of the ‘ivory basement’ (Eveline, 2004)

13. PREVIOUS FINDINGS (continued) Feelings of marginalisation - “the underlings in a caste system” Sub-standard working conditions. The recruitment on an ad hoc basis, from semester to semester - feelings of insecurity Their work - largely undervalued and invisible (Junor, 2000: 27) The work of casual academics “symbolically feminised as both less important and essential” “The glue that binds”(Eveline, 2004: 160)

14. THIS RESEARCH PROJECT: TALKING CASUAL WORK INTO BEING Casual staff invited to meet via bulk email Seven people attended the group meeting, in addition to the two researchers All but one of the attendees was female, aged between 27 and 52 years Their years of working in a casual capacity ranged from three to twenty years We sat around a table, and the conversation was audio-recorded and later transcribed Conversation was initiated asking the attendees to talk about why and how they started work as casual workers The talk was largely unstructured, but there were no gaps or silences

15. FINDINGS As a result of a first pass through the transcribed data, particular themes emerged through the talk The participants talked about the same issues as had been identified by earlier survey research How the nature of casual work was “talked into being”: extracts from the talk focusing on 6 of these common themes (The participants (P) are identified by numbers for the purposes of confidentiality)

16. FITTING IN WITH PERSONAL SITUATION, BUT EATING INTO FAMILY TIME P2: “I was offered a part-time position, well a casual position and so after when my first child was born so I agreed to do it because when I was still pregnant with my first child and it sounded like a really good opportunity at the time” P2: “Well its not 27 hours. It’s 27 hours contact by three plus the stuff they don’t account for. It could be a 90/100 hour week. My partner certainly reckons that I am working a 100 hour week. Definitely”.

17. A CARING PROFESSION: AN EXTENSION OF TEACHING P3: “And you see, I’m on call 24/7and students do call me 24/7. Not all of them, but a few. And its not just a quick phone call cause its often when they’re in distress…and so you’ve got to sit there…it could be the mother in me too

18. A LACK OF INFORMATION P4: “Listen I’ve worked hard, (tears) not…for…myself… I really find this very distressing…I actually think that no-one tells you what you need to know…and all this stuff about work against yourself. Yes you have. But all those men who have mentors didn’t work against themselves …”

19. APPRENTICVESHIP VIEW BUT DASHED HOPES P1: “if you do your job really when then your sort of type cast, is that the right word, into that role (Absolutely). Great tutor. Let’s get her in for this and I think you know there is not that recognition for them being incorporated into research projects that are happening because you’re always needed or required in one area. So you know you have to do the search and get on to teams and do the negotiating which you know is again another thing. But its sort of like if you do move into the area of doing this type of work you then at some point forego becoming involved in projects” P4: “But I think if you actually don’t do research you’re history. Look at me”.

20. MAKING A DIFFERENCE: DASHED HOPES P3: “Because I work in the three universities so that gives me a wider network and through that I have been able to do other things. So I haven’t had the opportunity to do here, which has distressed me because I really wanted to do things here. But, no-one was interested”.

21. OVERWORKED AND UNDERPAID P2: “When I started I was coordinating a course for 140 students but I was not paid one dollar. It’s amazing. And that was I think my naivety on my part for not finding out and then it was like well it’s your problem”. P3: “That’s right. I had that same thing as well. Yeh, I did the same thing. I didn’t know I was entitled to coordinating fees even though I was coordinating three subjects and I had no idea”. P2: “ And nobody told you”. P3: “and nobody told me”.

22. PERCEIVED BENEFITS OF CASUAL WORK Choice Flexibility Intrinsic rewards

23. PERCEIVED COSTS OF CASUAL WORK A lack of financial security Workplace marginalisation Limited staff development Inadequate working conditions Feelings of disempowerment

24. SUMMARY OF MAIN FINDINGS Talk revealed a gendered view of casual work Participants positioned themselves as an underclass, conversationally constructing themselves as undervalued, poorly paid and insecure within their workplace situations these casual academics talked their taken-for granted commonsense views of the world into being as though they were merely ‘the way we do things around here’

25. CONCLUSION Casual work in academia is largely feminised The often undervalued and invisible work of casual academics can be viewed as the cement that works to underpin and maintain the future existence of universities Females will continue to be positioned as an underclass unless such views are made visible and challenged. Only by such activity can discriminatory practices be challenged and addressed. There is a need for professional development programs that facilitate and support casual academic staff to obtain permanency to be offered This is particularly important in the light of contemporary neoliberal workplace reforms