The erosion of job security in higher education is a critical threat to the public university – this was the conclusion drawn by the academics and PhD students who came together at the second national conference of Fighting Against Casualisation in Education last month.

The higher education green paper confirms the analysis of Andrew McGettigan and others that the great transformation being wrought in the sector should be understood as several related processes, including the commodification and privatisation of education, the outsourcing of labour, the introduction of private companies, and changes to the corporate form of universities themselves.

Some aspects of this transformative process have received a great deal of attention, notably the tripling of tuition fees in 2010. Such measures have inspired large student protests and occupations of university buildings.

Others have not – including the role of universities as employers, which has been comparatively neglected. Not only has an increasingly meek workforce been forced to accept a double-digit, real-terms pay cut and an attack on pensions, but the security and conditions of the work itself are being undermined.

According to figures obtained by the University and College Union (UCU, pdf), when taken together, further and higher education are second only to the hospitality sector in their use of casual contracts (meaning those which are hourly paid, fixed-term or otherwise insecure). More than 24,000 university academics are on zero-hours contracts (pdf), according to the union. Even permanent staff (such as those at UCL), have seen attempts by managers to reform their statutes of employment to reduce protection from redundancy.

The destruction of job security is central to the long-term transformation of the sector. Universities are encouraged – with the enthusiastic co-operation of their vice-chancellors – to think of themselves as businesses. This means running increasing surpluses, recruiting more students in popular courses and cutting whole departments where numbers are lower. Eventually, the green paper imagines, we may even see some universities “exit” the market and be replaced by private providers. In order to achieve these aims, workforces have to be flexible and disciplined, just as they are in the private sector.

If you hop from one badly paid, short-term ​contract to another, it’s far harder to publish

Many of the green paper proposals pose extra challenges for casual staff, as outlined in a recent article by Jess Patterson. She argues that the pressure to “go the extra mile” to perform well in the flawed metrics of the Teaching Excellence Framework will be most keenly felt by casual staff, who are often already working more hours than they are actually paid for.

And these measures will have marked effects on groups who have been historically excluded from the academy. Although no data is available on the gender, ethnicity, age and disability breakdown of staff on hourly paid and zero-hour contracts – little data is available on casualisation at all, in fact – the effects are clear. If you hop from one badly paid, short-term contract to another, it’s far harder to get the publications necessary to win one of those elusive permanent jobs. Thus, those who have fewer resources – financial or cultural – to support them through periods without work will become caught in a cycle of poorly paid jobs and no time for research.

Casualisation also undermines the development of supportive pastoral relationships between staff and their students. This is particularly troubling in a context in which academics are forced to spy and report on their students, either to enforce the policies of the UK Visas and Immigration authority or to meet their obligations under the Prevent legislation.

Although the agreed policy of the UCU is to oppose Prevent, casualised workers are less likely than their permanently employed peers to be able to do so as they are more easily victimised for non-compliance. In this sense, as in others, the casualisation of the academic workforce is an effective tool in forcing it to accept new working practices.

The fight for decent, stable jobs must take place in addition to the fights for public funding, grants not fees, and autonomy from policing and border control agencies. It must occur alongside a firm commitment to make university education available to all regardless of race, gender, citizenship, and economic background.

The fight against casualisation is the fight for public education. It is a fight we must win.

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