In the Dark

While we await confirmation of the next 24-hour strike planned for Thursday 12th November, I’ve been making contingency plans for teaching. A recent article in the Irish Times states that the Government’s offer is worth about 7.75% over 20 months, which is so far short of the cost-of-living increase required that it is insulting. Given the gap between the two sides I think the strike is highly likely to proceed. On that basis I went out and bought some thermal underwear in anticipation of standing on a cold picket line.

The public sector unions have been talking about escalating the work-to-rule (aka work-to-contract) which some unions, e.g. those involving teachers, have been implementing since the start of the dispute. My own Union, the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), has not been engaged in a work-to-contract for the very practical reason that academic contracts say very little about working hours or duties. It’s hard to do a work-to-rule if you don’t have any rules! Our technical and administrative staff are in a different situation as their working hours are fixed, but they are not yet involved in a work-to-rule.

The Director of Human Resources at Maynooth University recently wrote to all staff demanding that they state whether or not they worked on the last strike day (11th October) before “close of business” today. Having no idea when the University’s business is supposed to close, I asked for clarification and was told it meant 5pm. That must be when the administrative staff go home, but it’s not close of business for academic staff. Indeed there are lectures timetabled at 5pm every day. I rarely leave the office before 6.30, actually. While acknowledging the positives of flexible contracts I feel obliged to point out some of the ways that university managements exploit the goodwill of academic staff.

Take the next couple of weeks. Next week is Science Week (8th-13th November) at Maynooth University which involves several evening events, including Science Night, which is on Friday 13th November from 6 to 8.30, well past “close of business”. If we (by which I mean academics, technicians, etc) did work to rule then all those events would be cancelled. The following week we have two Open Days. The first on Friday 20th is in normal working hours, but the second is on Saturday 21st November. A work to contract would rule that out too. You can also respectively add our Space Week event, on Wednesday 9th October in the evening.

The University Management sees such events as recruitment exercises, required because the University has to recruit huge numbers of students so it can use the income they generated pay for the President’s luxury VIP taxi service and other perks, as well as the ever-increasing band of Vice-Presidents. All these events rely on ordinary staff giving their time freely to undertake these activities on top of the usual teaching and research and without remuneration, let alone unsocial hours payments.

All this however pales into insignifance compared to the grotesque exploitation of staff during the Covid-19 pandemic during which teaching staff were required to transform their working methods, undertake countless hours of unpaid overtime, and suffer long periods of isolation and stress. They did it because they knew there was an emergency and because they actually care. In return for this sacrifice they have received nothing but insincere platitudes.

Over the years that I’ve worked in universities, I’ve seen them systematically taken over by people who really don’t care at all about the important things that universities do, i.e. teaching and research. The effect on ordinary staff is exhaustion caused by the overwork required to meet arbitrary criteria of productivity imposed by a remote and uncaring managerial class. Universities are thus a microcosm of neoliberal society at large, with the management being the propertied class, the academics being the workers, and the students being mere commodities.

While most academic staff have enjoyed having flexible contracts, the lack of defined duties and responsibilities has allowed managers to use them systematically to exploit us. I am now definitely of the opinion that we should have real contracts as opposed to what we have now which basically says “do what your Head of Deparment tells you to do.” If we had proper contracts, by which I mean of a sort we could actually work to, then that work cause a fundamental shift in the balance of power within higher education institutions.