Jobs for life, or decent, stable, working rights and conditions? The paper by Louise Ackers and Liz Oliver urges moving academics on to insecure, compulsory casualised contracts. Oliver and Ackers suggest that such casualisation improves the status of those on research-only fixed-term contracts by putting academics on industry-style contracts. A bit like improving the status of short people by chopping tall people off at the knees.
And for David Guest to suggest that temporary contracts are not "necessar-ily damaging" is a bit like saying kneecapping can improve your sense of balance.
Policies aimed at casualising academic labour, need to be contextualised within broader neo-liberal policy attacks on workers' rights, pay and conditions.
Dave Hill
Professor of education policy
Northampton University