Fixed-term contracts and financial insecurity are no way to treat committed staff, insists Chris Kynch.
Many employers have learnt from the downsizing of the early 1990s that insecure contracts do not pay. Not so managers in higher education. They have flouted the Bett recommendation to reduce fixed-term contracts. Their Guide to Good Practice , rejected by the Association of University Teachers, is a charter for casualisation. It is time to call their bluff and for casualisation to be rooted out as a cause of shabby treatment, higher costs and lower productivity.
A mindset that views people as disposable is in the driving seat. Employers fail to recognise that they should not treat people this way. It beggars belief that financial insecurity should be paraded as the choice of those with families and mortgages.
Universities have cultivated a seedbed for discrimination in which casualised status is mistaken for lower capability. Women who do not follow career tramlines may be confined to more casualised positions, such as hourly paid lectureships. Job insecurity makes people frightened to claim fair pay, holiday and maternity rights. It is contemptuous for employers to pretend to address inferior treatment without tackling casualisation.
Secure employment hardly exists for research staff. Keeping committed researchers for up to 30 years on short-term contracts, on the grounds that their funding is precarious, is insulting. The continuity of work flies in the face of the claim that fixed-term contracts are necessary. The expertise of such researchers provides the flexibility to procure funding and pursue leading research. Indefinite contracts are appropriate for the research work generated by the stable aggregate flow of funds.
Universities accept credit for the "productivity hike" underpinning the expansion of degree study. But management is loath to admit the ongoing need for teaching - or for the army of dedicated part-time lecturers meeting it. Instead, they subject staff to serial temporary contracts, inadequate resource provision and paltry pay. Employers boast of bargain basement costs. Some even suggest that such staff are not academics, perhaps hoping to escape the new part-time worker regulations. The implication - that universities have short-changed students - could prove costly. The contribution of teaching-only staff should be recognised by transfer to indefinite contracts.
Insecurity fosters compliance, not creativity, and undermines academic freedom. This is not the way to attract talented people or to generate cutting-edge research.
Chris Kynch is chair, Fixed-term Non-contract Research Staff Committee, Association of University Teachers. Trade unions and employers are currently holding talks with the government prior to consultation over the EU Fixed-Term Directive.