‘Dignity at Work and Study’, or: Oxymoron 101

While cuts to academic staff, course closures and student occupations receive the lion's share of attention, the treatment and response of non-academic staff to worsening pay and conditions is often overlooked. Here, Mute discusses the situation at University of London institutions with an anonymous employee and Unison representative

Mute: Could you briefly describe the non-academic employment structure at the University of London colleges, e.g. permanent/in-house, casual/agency contracts?

Unison Rep: Until recently everyone has been employed permanently in house, apart from the cleaning and catering staff, who are employed by Ocean and Sodexo respectively. Thanks to a campaign led by Unison, the Ocean and Sodexo staff are now paid the London Living Wage. All staff employed directly by the college are on at least grade 3, which starts at around 16 and a half thousand. Everyone has the option of paying into a final salary pension, either SAUL or USS. But recently it seems that all new staff go onto fixed-term rather than permanent contracts.

Mute: By ‘it seems that...' do you mean a systematic change in hiring/contract policy was introduced unilaterally without being announced as such?

Unison Rep: This is one of the things the unions are in the process of raising with management, but time restraints mean it happens more slowly than it should: a college might have five or six active, confident union members who are also trying to do things like surveying admin staff about overwork and solving the problems with understaffed new student facilities which open and promptly go into meltdown. There have always been some staff on temporary contracts: they aren't a totally new thing, and sometimes there's a fair enough reason for it. But recently the line has been that all new hiring has to be on short-term contracts until the institution 'knows what the long term situation will be'. This is one of the top issues to be discussed at our new joint unions committee. In addition to the temporary contracts becoming the norm, we have people on one-month contracts, and they leave it till the last minute to renew them. Not only is this unfair to the people involved, it also means we lose people as they are going to take another job if they can. Something worrying that I have heard on the grapevine is that now that staff on fixed term contracts have the same rights as permanent staff when it comes to redundancies [since January 2010, under UK implementation of the EU Agency Workers Directive], institutions are starting to get round this by using open-ended contracts [i.e. not 'short-term' but subject to ad hoc cancellation at any time] instead.

Mute: What kind of union representation exists across the various job categories?

Unison Rep: UCU represents staff on grade 7 or above, Unison on grade 6 or below, and Unite represents technical staff: lab technicians, plumbers and I think some of the photographic unit. Everyone is graded on the same scale under the National Framework Agreement, with a few partial variations at academic level.

Mute: Where do the college attendants [doing essential all-round practical/logistical work] fit into this system? Is it true that management have been reluctant to confront this group because of their reputation for belligerence?

Unison Rep: The attendants are almost all Unison members; this is combined with (and not unrelated to) their perceived belligerence and their high profile in the colleges (a lot of people like and appreciate them, one of them is the staff representative at Governor's level). Having said that, their overtime makes them very costly, and the college is likely to have another go at changing them to a rolling schedule so that instead of weekend work being voluntary and lucrative it will be compulsory and paid the same as week days. Obviously we will resist this, but they have just advertised a new job there which is on a fixed term contract, so I imagine management hopes this will be a gradual way to break down a unified group of people who have been there ages and are all union members, so that one day they can try to make changes again and we'll be in a much weaker position than last year, when the college paid loads for a consultant but couldn't implement any of the proposals as we wrote a report telling them why they were stupid and the attendants were very vocal.

Mute: What has been the effect at non-academic level of cuts/funding shortfalls so far?

Unison Rep: The main thing has been a voluntary severance scheme. So far no compulsory redundancies, and they say none are planned, but I have heard that the VS scheme isn't getting enough takers (because there are not many jobs out there), and we would be pretty stupid to think there won't to be compulsory redundancies given the way things are going.

Mute: Is there any relation between funding constraints and (a) the switch to fixed-term contracts for new hiring or (b) volume of casework over-work overload, job organisation etc.?

Unison Rep: Yes, funding constraint is pretty much the reason for fixed-term contracts. Casework is increasing, I am fairly sure, and it's because of the restructuring, for the most part. It is likely to get worse, as the restructuring has meant people are overworked.

Mute: Has there been any kind of organised collective response to these things so far?

Unison Rep: There is an organised, collective response to everything, in as much as the three unions are consulted about everything and we talk to each other and respond to management. If compulsory redundancies are attempted we will need to do more than this of course, but the unions have not discussed this together and organised, as we are pretty much struggling to keep up with the day-to-day work of negotiations and casework. A concern raised at the HE conference was that institutions are now making sure that they do not take all the unions on at once, so they will concentrate on academic redundancies and then admin redundancies, so that there will not be a collective response from all staff. A pitfall to be avoided, but not easy as there are a lot of support staff who will not be motivated to act if academics go, and possibly vice versa.

Mute: What does 'day-to-day negotiation and casework' consists of?

Unison rep: On a day to day basis, it not just individual union members who take up my time. HR constantly want to renegotiate policies, which takes hours of sitting in a small room arguing about the wording of a particular paragraph. Management 'welcome' my input and suggestions to the extent that they ask me to write a report to them giving union members' point of view. This combined with casework means I have no time to think, let alone plan long-term strategies. Management and HR are skilled at co-opting our talents and knowledge.

Mute: Are cases of petty harassment, aggressive use of disciplinary procedure, etc. (the kind of thing newspapers call 'bullying' in order to reduce industrial relations to schoolyard level) a recurring problem?

Unison rep: I haven't directly seen many cases that I would call aggressive use of the disciplinary procedure. One, arguably two, that I don't think should have gone to a formal procedure. I have heard of more cases involving ‘bullying', but a lot of people do not want to use the formal grievance procedure, or the specific procedure for ‘bullying', which is the ‘Dignity at Work and Study' policy (sigh). My concern about the whole ‘bullying' thing is that it can mean that issues that are actually something like an attempt to get someone to leave their job, or a manager's incompetence, is called ‘bullying', which reduces it to a simple matter of two people's relationship when in fact it is a failure of an organisation, or part of an organisation.

Mute: Is it possible to say anything about wider attitudes among non-academic employees to present or impending threats?

Unison rep: At the moment it is hard to judge, as we have so far not faced redundancies. Morale is low, and everyone is expecting things to get worse, some people of course will be interested in collective action, some will think only of holding onto their jobs. To the extent that the two things are thought of as separate, it's mostly a case of people not looking beyond the immediate perceived threat. There's a need to interest and involve people more in what is going on, but this is very hard, particularly considering the overwork. At this stage I think any organised action would be initiated and led by the union; some people would participate as a matter of course, while others would need a lot of persuading.

Mute: Are there any distinguishable differences in these attitudes between job categories?

Unison Rep: I find that where there are staff on lower grades who all work together in similar roles and have a high level of union membership they are more likely to think in terms of collective action. Where there are a lot of people working together in non-'career' jobs it's more likely that they will be inclined to think and act collectively. The attendants casually tell me they are thinking of walking off the job if a door doesn't get fixed, or something. They generally don't, but it is indicative of a tendency to think in terms of taking collective action.

Mute: Is there any difference in management/HR aggressiveness/deference to various job categories?

Unison Rep: Senior management are capable of recognising the need for them to be careful with large groups of staff on lower grades who are angry and organised.

Mute: Is there much or any solidarity between e.g. permanent/fixed-term/outsourced workers/students? In the SOAS cleaners campaign for example?

Unison Rep: Yes, the living wage campaign had a lot of support from academic and non-academic staff, although some unionised lower grade staff resented the union spending time helping contract staff who were not union members. However if you explain that making outsourcing more expensive puts them in a stronger position they see the point of it. With the student union we've worked together on some things, as in the living wage campaign, but on more prosaic issues they haven't always shown so much interest in the concerns of academic or (especially) support staff.

Mute: Is it widely felt that non-academic education workers are a likely target for fiscal cuts, given the promises already being made that 'frontline services' will be spared at the expense of other public sector jobs?

Unison Rep: No, I think we are expecting to have a lot of teaching staff made redundant, the rest of us will just be worked harder, and as support staff leave they will be replaced by staff on lower grades on fixed term contracts. But pensions are probably the one thing our staff would strike over. Although closing the scheme to new members would cause less concern, and might be seen as ‘inevitable'. I think in general everyone is aware that our jobs are vulnerable in the long term, and the biggest worry is the threat to institutional survival, which is a real concern and thus is constantly used as 'emotional blackmail' in negotiations.

Mute: Is it possible to say at this stage what kind of response, if any, to future cuts is envisaged (a) in informal talk between workers, and (b) at union policy level?

Unison Rep: I would love to say that there are discussions of this kind going on. Clearly there should be, but the fact is we are all too busy with day-to-day union work, and dealing with the immediate problems on our hands.