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Victory for the Anti-Casualisation Campaign: the new GTA contracts

On March 1st 2021, the University of Nottingham’s People & HR Committee voted to approve a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) model for hiring postgraduate researchers (PGRs) to teach, to begin in the 2021/22 academic year. These roles will be exclusively offered to PGRs, and are intended to replace the Teaching Affiliate roles that previously existed, involving the preparation and delivery of seminars; provision of student contact hours; and marking responsibilities. Teaching Affiliate roles were hourly-paid and subcontracted to UniTemps, the University’s outsourced temporary engagement agency, offering none of the employment rights that come with having employee status with the University. While still hourly-paid, the new GTA contracts will be fixed-hours, in-house contracts of employment with the University; will grant employee status to PGRs who teach; and will secure pay and employment rights accordingly. This should be seen as a massive win in the fight against casualisation in higher education.

This win comes off the back of several years of successful campaigning. The work began in November 2015, with the launch of UoN’s Living Wage Campaign. Following on from this, a UoN Anti-Casualisation Campaign was formed in 2017/18, and remains active. In July 2019, grassroots campaigning by this group – in coordination with the UoN UCU branch – helped agree a set of principles with the University for the fair employment of Teaching Affiliates, establishing a faculty-wide Hourly-Paid Task & Finish Group to oversee its implementation. The subsequent work of this Task & Finish Group – which included representatives from UoN UCU, UoN Students’ Union, HR and Faculty management – produced several positive outcomes. These included the role of Teaching Affiliates being clarified so that no PGRs with teaching responsibilities were doing work for which they were not being paid, and the Faculty of Arts committing to recognise lecture attendance as required Teaching Affiliate work, resulting in an additional hour of weekly pay. When Teaching Affiliate positions were drastically cut across the University in 2020, a series of letter-writing campaigns and petitions to the Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Director of HR – organised by PGRs and supported by UoN UCU – resulted in a reconvening of the Task & Finish Group, opening the door to a conversation about how PGRs should be employed. The combined work and solidarity of PGRs on the ground, UCU members and representatives, and the officers of UoN’s Student Union resulted in the outcome we have today. This successful combination of grassroots collective organising, alongside the efforts of UCU and SU branch officials to lobby management and support members’ demands, provides valuable lessons for future campaigns.

We should celebrate this achievement, but there is still work to be done. With GTA contracts now approved, it is essential that they are implemented quickly across the University, to make up for a year of lost teaching opportunities for PGRs, and to help reduce the enormous workload which permanent staff have had to shoulder following cuts to PGR teachers. This is also part of ensuring that all teaching work is properly paid, and that PGRs are not asked to volunteer their labour for free as a result of cuts to previously paid positions. To this end, the recent GTA motion moved at the UoN UCU Branch meeting on 10th March called on the Branch Committee, Reps, and members across the University to work within their faculties and schools to ensure management widely and effectively implement the GTA model. This motion passed with 99% of attendees voting in favour. The implementation of GTA contracts needs to be carefully overseen so that they will be fair and effective. It is vital that, while these new contracts greatly improve the conditions of PGRs who teach, we must insist they go hand in hand with improvements for all precarious staff. Hence, we continue to demand that all post-doctoral, full-time, and part-time teaching staff, should be offered more secure forms of employment as a rule, and should not be placed on the same short-term contracts designed for PGRs who teach. Finally, we need to ensure that the hourly-paid teaching roles that are not presently covered by the GTA model – such as lab demonstrators – are being fairly paid, do not ask PGRs to do work which should be covered by GTAs, and can eventually be moved onto similar contracts of employment with the University. 

In solidarity,

Daniel Edmondson (UoN UCU-Nominated Teaching Affiliate Representative) and Joe Kearsey (UoN UCU Anti-Casualisation Officer).

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Alternative Financial Strategy

The following motion on UoN Finances was passed at the branch meeting on 10 March 2021

This meeting notes:  

∙ The document by the UCU committee on UoN finances An Alternative Financial  Strategy: Establishing Sustainable Finances at University of Nottingham.  

This union branch believes:  

∙ That UoN’s ‘lean financial management’ with its focus on profitability and maximizing  annual surpluses has put the University at great financial risk, as evidenced by the  panic-driven cuts in response to the pandemic; 

∙ That UoN’s ‘lean financial management’ fails to live up to the requirements of a  public, charitable non-profit higher education and research institution;  

∙ That UoN’s ‘lean financial management’ has undermined staff’s working conditions  and students’ educational experience;  

∙ That the UCU’s proposal as set out in the Alternative Financial Strategy document  provides a concrete and feasible alternative.  

Therefore, this meeting resolves:  

∙ To demand that UoN abandons its ‘lean financial management’ and replace it with a  strategy based on careful, long-term borrowing for key infrastructure projects,  supported by broad consultation amongst staff and finalised in a democratic decision making process. This should involve the University agreeing a budget for 2021-22  that reflects the principles and approach set out in the Alternative Financial Strategy. 

This meeting asks the branch committee to develop a campaign strategy along the following  lines: 

∙ That immediately after this branch meeting: a) request a meeting with the 15%  savings group for a detailed discussion of the alternative finance proposal; b) request  a meeting with Council to present and discuss the UCU document An Alternative  Financial Strategy;  

∙ To campaign for the AFS among UCU members and the wider University staff  community. This campaign to include locally organised Town Halls and relevant  publicity materials. The campaign to also focus on explaining the case for the AFS to  Heads of Schools and Departments through specially convened meetings; 

∙ To work with the Students’ Union, and sister campus unions, to win support for the  AFS, and to organise practical campaigning activities jointly with the SU, Unite and  Unison;  

∙ Approach public stakeholders including local councillors and MPs in support of the  campaign;

∙ Acknowledging UCU’s commitment to work beyond the union’s membership, and to  provide everyone with an opportunity to show their support for the alternative strategy  being proposed, the Branch instructs the Committee to establish a ‘Statement of  Support’ for the AFS and to secure the maximum number of signatories among staff,  students and the wider community. 

∙ Finally, the branch instructs the committee to keep members fully informed of the  campaign and the progress of discussions with University management. At the  branch meeting on 14 April, the committee reports on the outcome of discussions  with management and plans to escalate the campaign should this be necessary.