As QMUCU’s casualised members enter negotiations with management, more and more permanent academics are joining the call for an end to Queen Mary’s misuse of fixed-term contracts.
When permanent and fixed-term staff stand together, real change is achieved. The following letter was sent from a permanent member of staff in S&E, in response to a delay of several months in pay for TA work. After this letter was sent out, all TAs concerned were paid correctly, and their school has approached HR with a proposal to annualise contracts.
The problem arises from our system of re-employing them on new contracts each term. The reason given in their contract is “The student or other business demand can be clearly demonstrated as particularly uncertain”. This is manifestly untrue, as we know we will reemploy a significant number of them every term. It creates a huge amount of unnecessary work, and results in delays in payment and in giving access to payslips – because they have a new ID each term, their login details change and these don’t seem to be being communicated promptly by IT. Therefore the students are not only not being paid, they can’t verify that their pay correctly reflects their hours.
This has to change. Can we organise a meeting in the new year to address this? If this cannot be dealt with effectively by the School before the next academic year, I will consult with the Union to see what they recommend, but I expect that the next step would be to raise a formal grievance against the University, which I am happy to support the students to do if this is what is needed for things to change.
The immediate change we saw following this letter shows the power that staff have when we come together. Even school leadership can see that fixed-term contracts aren’t working.
Call to action:
We call all permanent and fixed-term staff to come together on Thursday 6 March at 1-2pm to discuss action that we can take. Join the meeting via this link.
In the run up to our meeting we are asking all TATFs/ staff on fixed term contracts to complete this survey. It will take around 5-10 minutes.
qmucu.org 