TATF Anti-Casualisation Meeting

About sixty staff members from at least 12 different schools met on Wednesday to discuss our working conditions and the changes we’re facing. We connected across departments to learn from each other and decide what steps to take next.

We learned about the history of Teaching Associate and Teaching Fellow (formerly called Associate Lecturer) roles at QM. We also learned about a supposed new “policy” affecting TA and TF teaching roles that has not been introduced through HR as all other employment policies are. Bypassing HR means this new policy has not gone through the normal consultation process with trade unions. It also effectively treats the work of teaching as part “student development” instead of what it is, work.

A ‘policy’ like this could lead to a loss of hard-earned employment rights and protections, including annualised contracts that protect your continuity of service and pay for training, holiday and/or overtime. When members challenged this in one department, they discovered that it was not even a policy and that it had failed to be formally adopted because many departments had pushed back against its introduction. However, the head of HSS has stated in correspondence that even though it is not yet a policy, departments should go ahead and introduce its key principles. This means the policy that isn’t a policy may still be active in your department and where this is the case we encourage you to get in touch so we can help you challenge it.

We heard from TAs in History, Maths, Engineering, SED, Computer Science, Business & Management, Medicine & Dentistry, Population Health, Geography, Politics, Film and Economics. The story varied between schools but the same themes kept coming up:

Contracts, allocations and pay are consistently late;
Hours are threatening to be cut, blamed on “the policy” and student intake;
Many TAs have been shifted onto lower-paid Demonstrator roles despite no change in their job role;
Annualised contracts that protect continuity of service have been increasingly replaced with shorter contracts lasting 8 or even 6 months;
If your contract starts in Semester B, your training in Semester A is not included in your contract
The hours you are paid do not match your workload demand, in other words, you are not paid for all the work you do;
You are excluded from many of the decision making committees in your department and the all-staff mailing list so communication is last-minute and vague, if it comes at all

What next?

We agreed to report back to PGRs/TA/TFs in our schools, including setting up WhatsApp groups to communicate with each other and organising meetings within departments to share experiences. QMUCU can provide a rep to come along and help with queries – if you would like someone, email ucu-coordinator@qmulac.uk

We decided to create knowledge-share resources that are accessible to us all, so we all know how to challenge these changes. We set up a whatsapp group to keep in communication, join us here.

We agreed to organise a follow-up meeting, details of which will be circulated.

Questions for each department:

Are there any changes to the way you are doing your TA work this year? E.g. Has your department adopted any new guidelines, or have you heard anything about what has been called ‘new policy’? Is your school planning any changes for the coming academic year?
Do you know what Grade and Spinal point you are on as TAs?
If you worked last year have you still got continuity of service
Are the people who want work getting work?
What training do you get, is it adequate, when do you get the training and how is the training paid?

Use QM UCU Casework surgery

If you as an individual or group of individuals would like to discuss your contract or employment related issues in more detail, you can book a slot with our QM UCU case workers. These slots are available on Wednesday after 2-5pm.

Info on how to book is on our casework page.

How else can I help?

As part of our action, we’re arming ourselves with information. In particular, we want to know how everyone’s contracts look. We want everyone who can to upload redacted versions of their contracts via this form.

You can use this free redaction tool to easily block out your name and employee number.

Then, upload any contract you have, ideally with the name “school-year-role”, e.g. “SMS-2023-TA” or “Geography-2020-Demonstrator”.

If you don’t have a Google or Yahoo email and can’t upload to the form, you can send your redacted contract by email: ucu-coordinator@qmul.ac.uk.

TATF Anti-Casualisation Meeting