The number of UK academics on zero-hours contracts has risen, as experts warned that the sector’s dire financial state means that the “unjust” practice will continue.
Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) figures show that 4,075 “typical” UK academics were employed on zero-hour contracts in 2023-24 – 1.7 per cent of all scholars.
This was up slightly from 3,915 (1.6 per cent) the year before, but below the 6,520 (3 per cent of the total) in 2017-18. Since then, the number of people employed on these contracts has remained broadly the same.
“The sector has been stubborn to reduce this practice because it suits managers to have this kind of flexibility, where the economic risk of there being no work to do at some point in the future falls entirely on the worker,” said Ruth Dukes, professor of labour law at the University of Glasgow.
Given the financial pressures that many institutions are under, Dukes said the use of such agreements could become more popular in the 2024-25 academic year.
“Cost-cutting of this sort is likely even more attractive to management and has been allowed, apparently, to override considerations of fairness and gender equality,” she added.
Zero-hours contracts cover “a multitude of sins” and have notably proliferated in traditional pre-92 universities, according to Martin Myers, assistant professor of social sciences at the University of Nottingham.
Despite being seen as “inequitable and unjust”, their use persists because they are a “useful means of maintaining the status quo within a highly precarious sector”, he said.
His research found concerns that zero-hours contracts are a way to deflect the risks within a department towards less-established academics – often protecting predominantly white and middle-class staff.
The Hesa figures show that 52 per cent of academics on zero-hours contract are women, despite making up just 49 per cent of those on other contracts.
Labour had pledged to ban zero-hours contracts in the UK, but campaigners have warned that the Employment Rights Bill currently making its way through Parliament falls short.
Half of the zero-hours contracts were classed as fixed-term in the data. This was up from 46 per cent in 2022-23 and just 30 per cent in 2019-20.
In addition, 95 per cent of the contracts were paid hourly – a slight increase on the year before and the highest level across the seven-year period under scrutiny.
The fact that those on zero-hours contracts are hourly paid only reinforces concerns around fairness, said Dukes.
“Paying workers by the hour means treating their labour like a commodity, and having no regard to people’s need for income security and fair treatment.”
Because it excludes academics on “atypical” contracts, which represent the bulk of zero-hours employment, Myers said the Hesa data reflected the “tip of the iceberg”.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, said any university that claims to care about its staff ought to ban “scandalous” zero-hour work.
“The sector has stubbornly refused to end these contracts because keeping staff casualised forces them to deal with fluctuations in student numbers through lost wages, rather than having to manage workloads effectively,” she said.
