[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”off” specialty=”on” _builder_version=”3.17.6″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″ specialty_columns=”4″][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column_inner type=”4_4″ saved_specialty_column_type=”2_3″][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=”3.17.6″ featured_placement=”above” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.17.6″]<\/p>\n
Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Professor Keith Brown, discusses University employment contracts.<\/strong><\/p>\n I would like to spend some time on one particular issue that appears to have gained traction within the sector over the last year or so. That is the issue of so-called precarious employment within universities. I\u2019ve been considering writing on this issue for a while, and I\u2019m conscious that with the current industrial action this could be seen as provocative. That is not my intention, rather I hope to engage in the debate and clarify some of the issues. I have a specific view which is wholly based on my own experience and the evidence I see as Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.<\/p>\n Another opinion is represented by one of our own Professors, Steve Jones, who wrote about precarious employment in The Guardian last month. You can read his views<\/a> under the provocative title \u2018UK academics must stand up to stop universities becoming sweatshops\u2019. Really? I doubt if many of us have ever seen the inside of a sweatshop, far less come close to working in one. As a student I worked on the floor of a very hot steel rolling mill and sweat there meant exactly that. Steve assures me the headline was imposed by an editor keen to grab readers\u2019 attention and he agrees that it is not very helpful so on that we have a consensus. In fact, Steve and I have had a number of very useful and productive discussions over the years, and I welcome his efforts to encourage debate. However, I happen to think that his substantive argument that universities have adopted a business model that requires a greater use of fixed term contracts is mistaken.<\/p>\n I imagine we can all agree that in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is very difficult to become established in an academic career. It is also true that fixed term contracts have always been an important entry route within the HE sector. Let me start with some personal background. I finished writing up my PhD at the University of Glasgow in the autumn of 1982 and had no job. To save me from taking employment selling door-to-door insurance, the Head of the History Department found enough cash to keep me on as a teaching assistant for six months. It was the first of many short term contracts which saved my academic career. I won a three year Fellowship at St Andrews, but the salary was extremely low and by the end of the first year we, my wife, our new-born child and myself, were so much in debt that we were literally living hand-to-mouth. At this point I nearly quit, but was saved when the funders agreed to a modest increase in my salary. By the time the Fellowship was coming to an end in 1986 I had two children, a crushing mortgage and, given the depressing state of HE in that decade, no career prospects. And then the British Academy rode in with the new BA Post-Doctoral scheme and I was awarded one in its first year of operation. Three years later I faced exactly the same situation and this time it was an Edinburgh Royal Society Fellowship that kept me in the game. Finally, in 1990 I was appointed to a Lectureship at Stirling University, the first new appointment in the History Department since 1972! At the age of thirty-three I had finally made it.<\/p>\n Now I am not saying, \u2018There you are, it has always been tough, you have to pay your dues\u2019. No, it was a grim experience, it left very deep scars, and it was intensely worrying and distressing. When I walk into a room you possibly see an old, well-paid, institutionally powerful Vice-President and Dean, but I know that I got there by the skin of my teeth. To this day I cannot say unequivocally that it was worth it. My point is that I get it, starting out on an academic career can be very hard, especially if it involves periods of temporary employment. In some respects I was fortunate but would not wish on anyone what I went through during those eight long years.<\/p>\n Fixed term contracts have long been part of the academic career, but the situation for staff today is so very much better. This is one of the reasons I find the rhetoric around precarious employment difficult to reconcile with what I have seen and support across this Faculty. Terms and conditions for all of us have greatly improved, due to progressive employment legislation and employers realising that you get better results from treating good people well. I regularly sign off requests to extend contracts or convert temporary posts to standard contracts when permanent roles open up. This is often because activity has stabilised, or because staff are doing such a great job that we want to ensure we keep them.<\/p>\n Yet it is unavoidable that we will have some staff on short-term contracts. In the Faculty of Humanities, currently there are a larger than normal number of Professional Services (PS) staff in this situation because of all the uncertainties around role changes associated with the Student Experience Project. That has taken longer than originally planned, hence people have been on these contracts longer than anticipated, but we hope to resolve this in the next few months. I regret that is where we are, but it has been necessary.<\/p>\n As for Academic Staff, in Humanities we have 139 staff with temporary contracts (as of Jan 2020). That is 11% of the total academic workforce. This compares to 16.1% in 2014\/15. Of these 139 staff there are underlying reason for their temporary contracts.<\/p>\n We have 77 temporary staff employed primarily to address teaching needs. This happens for a number of reasons. It may be that someone has resigned at short notice and the Department needs time to reflect on what it wants to do in terms of a replacement, a member of staff may be off work for a prolonged illness, it may be that we failed to recruit a suitable candidate but still have to plug the teaching gap, or we may have over-recruited in an area and have to get people in quickly. This last example occurred in the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) in the autumn when we recruited five temporary staff, but have since decided to consolidate the higher numbers and are placing those staff on standard contracts. Another example would be the nine posts in Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) associated with a fixed term NHS teaching contract and five posts associated with a similar fixed term Teach First contract in SEED. Very occasionally, we deliberately make temporary appointments where there is uncertainty around the likely success of a new degree, but again if the initiative is successful the posts are switched to standard contracts. There are also numbers of individuals who are employed for specific pieces of work where a School faces bulges in work flow, for example marking a set number of dissertations for an agreed price. This is the group of people for whom such an arrangement fits with their own lifestyle or career stage etc.<\/p>\n Another 29 are covering gaps created by individuals who have won fellowships that releases them from normal duties for a period of time, or where a research grant requires very significant portions of their time. A smaller number, 16 in all, are overseas, fractional appointments designed to raise the standards of a local research culture which is a valuable part of our research strategy.<\/p>\n Another 17 staff are covering maternity leave which is an obligation we are happy to meet. Finally, as you all know, we employ Teaching Assistants, the vast majority of whom are PGR students. This is done within fair and agreed terms and conditions and is beneficial to the students who earn additional income and gain valuable work experience.<\/p>\n Please let us keep some perspective on our working environment. We work in an incredibly supportive institution and, notwithstanding all the pressures we face, academics still have great freedom to choose how to spend our time. We have a dispute about pensions and there is the usual round of pay talks, but The University of Manchester is not an exploitative employer that engineers precarious employment to suit its business model. We have an outstanding record in converting people to standard contracts where possible, and we treat those on temporary contracts with dignity and respect.<\/p>\n Professor Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”3.17.6″ prev_text=”Previous” next_text=”Next” in_same_term=”off” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=”3.17.6″ custom_button=”on” button_text_color=”#ffffff” locked=”on” \/][et_pb_text admin_label=”Related posts” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ locked=”on”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=”Subscribe” _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”et_pb_widget_area_3″ locked=”on” \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=”3.17.6″ area=”sidebar-1″ show_border=”off” locked=”on” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I would like to spend some time on one particular issue that appears to have gained traction within the sector over the last year or so. That is the issue of so-called precarious employment within universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":3227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" [et_pb_section bb_built=\"1\" fullwidth=\"off\" specialty=\"on\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"][et_pb_column type=\"2_3\" specialty_columns=\"4\"][et_pb_row_inner admin_label=\"Row\"][et_pb_column_inner type=\"4_4\" saved_specialty_column_type=\"2_3\"][et_pb_post_title _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" featured_placement=\"above\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text _builder_version=\"3.17.6\"]<\/p> When I\u2019m out and about meeting staff I hear much debate about the why, what, when and how of change in our University. I wanted to share my thoughts on this often contentious topic \u2013 and hear your views too.<\/p> Early in 2020 we will launch our University\u2019s new vision and strategic plan \u2013 Our future. In order to fulfil Our future we need to ensure that we are in a financially sustainable position so that we have the funds to invest in the new staff, facilities and infrastructure which will be needed to bring our plans to life.<\/p> Our Financial Statements<\/a> for 2018\/19, which have been published following approval by the Board of Governors, confirm that more than 95% of our \u00a31.1bn income is spent on our core goals - on our staff and our students - to deliver research, education and social responsibility; with the remainder invested in the long term sustainability of our University. You can find a summary<\/a> of the Financial Statements on StaffNet.<\/p> However, this is a testing time for UK universities, due to the many external factors that have an impact on us - current home tuition fees are falling in real terms, whilst our costs (not just pay but non-pay too) are increasing. There are further and even greater tuition fee funding risks outlined in General Election manifestos as well as a range of Brexit-related risks that could affect our operations. The Office for Students (OfS) demands that we demonstrate both value for money for our students and our financial sustainability (in the sense of being able to invest to deliver our ambitious strategy, rather than survival). There are, of course, also ongoing unresolved national issues around pay and the continuing challenges around funding pensions in the higher education sector.<\/p> Our Financial Statements show an improved operating surplus (3.7% of income compared to \u00a324.7m (2.3%) in 2017\/18), with a rise in income from tuition fees, education contracts and research. As I mentioned earlier, we re-invest the surplus we achieve each year in activity in line with our strategy. Recently our funds have been used to create some new academic and Professional Services posts; to invest in key infrastructure including IT; to invest in some new buildings like our student accommodation at Unsworth Park; to improve the student experience by funding more full-time Residential Life staff and to upgrade a range of buildings and research and teaching spaces and resources. Increasingly it is also invested in environmental sustainability and meeting our ambitious carbon targets. So even when we are making difficult decisions in some parts of the University we continue to invest our surplus.<\/p> Whilst we have reported an operating surplus, our Board of Governors expects us to deliver a much larger surplus than this (at least 5%) if we are to be sustainable in the long-term. Our strategic change programme (including IT Modernisation<\/a>, the Student Experience Programme<\/a>, and the Research Lifecycle Programme<\/a>), alongside our continuous improvement plans, will ensure that we create the financial headroom to invest in people and facilities. The strategic change programme will also enable us to embrace new technologies and new ways of doing things that better support all our staff and students to be the best that they can be.<\/p> Yes, this means that some individual roles will change. New roles (some that we haven\u2019t yet identified) will be created and some roles will no longer be required. I appreciate that this will cause some uncertainty and where that is the case we will do everything we can to support staff, but the alternative is that we never change anything. If we fail to take advantage of advances in technology and develop more joined-up ways of working we will ultimately find ourselves outdated in the eyes of future students, funders and other stakeholders. Staff want to work for a progressive and successful institution, of which they can be proud. This means we cannot stand still.<\/p> When I talk to staff and students I often hear their frustrations about how difficult it be can be to get some straightforward things done, grappling with paper-based, manual and repetitive processes, on outdated systems and infrastructure, all of which serves to increase staff workloads. Everyone wants to do a good job, but regularly feel that our world-class status is earned in spite of our internal systems and processes, not because of them.<\/p> To deliver our new vision and strategic plan we will need to embrace new opportunities and face challenges with courage and determination. That will sometimes mean we have to make tough decisions and no-one is claiming it will be easy or that mistakes will not be made along the way. But where we do have tough choices to make we will commit to implementing changes fairly and with compassion to support the wellbeing of all our colleagues.<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" prev_text=\"Previous\" next_text=\"Next\" in_same_term=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" custom_button=\"on\" button_text_color=\"#ffffff\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Related posts\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" locked=\"on\"]<\/p> [related-posts-thumbnails]<\/p> [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_3\"][et_pb_sidebar admin_label=\"Subscribe\" _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"et_pb_widget_area_3\" locked=\"on\" \/][et_pb_sidebar _builder_version=\"3.17.6\" area=\"sidebar-1\" show_border=\"off\" locked=\"on\" \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-of-humanities","category-slt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3222,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions\/3222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe cannot sensibly build into the workforce planning a number of staff who will provide the anticipated cover across the Faculty \u2013 a flying squad of subs, teaching Economics one year and French the next year, is simply not practical.<\/p>\nRelated<\/h1>\n
Related posts:<\/h3>
Andy Westwood: Levelling up the economy post Brexit<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Colette Fagan and Angus Hearmon: Investing in research support at our University<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
Nalin Thakkar: Decarbonising our investments<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/div>
Improving our financial performance will help to deliver our ambitious future plans, but we must also increase our capacity to create the funds and time to invest in our core goals. One of the ways we can do this is by changing what we do and how we do things.<\/p>Related<\/h1>