Framework Negotiations for Hourly Paid Staff
Negotiations with the College on behalf of hourly paid lecturers, teaching assistants, demonstrators and their ilk have been going on for more than three years. Why is it taking so long to implement the National Framework Agreement (NFA) of 2003 for these staff?
It’s partly because the negotiations didn’t start until the NFA had been implemented for other staff groups. They didn’t have a College-wide deal, let alone a national one, so the first task was to establish what the current position was. Then progress was slowed by the ELQ funding cuts, which hit Birkbeck especially hard, and the College is now digesting the outcome of the Browne review of the funding of HE and awaiting the government’s spending review.
The negotiations are not just about implementing the NFA. The College is now seeking to conform to the 2002 regulations regarding fixed-term employees, under which anyone with four years of continuous service usually qualifies for an open-ended contract. Some of us were notified of our new status over the summer. You should note that this means your existing contract (perhaps issued in 2009) becomes permanent and remains in force, so you won’t be given a new contract.
The negotiations have made progress. We’ve agreed new, College-wide job descriptions at grades 6-9 for these teaching staff. We’ve agreed the way people will be matched to these descriptions, and we’ve agreed many new terms and conditions. Everyone who maintains continuity of service will enjoy incremental progression. The definition of continuity is disputed, but this group will certainly include everyone who works for two terms or more each year. This is one of the reasons why some people may find that their contractual period has been extended: your working hours haven’t changed, but it’s to make unambiguously clear your claim to continuity of service. We had hoped to have a payment period that was shorter than this, but apparently Payroll’s systems couldn’t cope. On balance it seemed best to secure continuity of service for those who qualify for it, since this has implications for one’s claims to an open-ended contract, to redundancy pay, and to certain kinds of special pay, such as maternity pay. However, we realise some people may find the increase in the payment period awkward. If you’ve got a serious problem with this, please let us know. Those who remain on fixed-term contracts will find their payment period is the same as the teaching period.
We also felt obliged to agree a Variation in Hours policy, whereby the hours of people on open-ended contacts can be increased or reduced by up to a third for no more than a couple of years (though there are provisions for one’s hours to increase by more than a third and for longer than two years, if the opportunity arises). In a sense this is an improvement: until this year many departments varied sessionals’ hours at will. But the possible, if temporary, reduction in hours is not ideal. We agreed it to save jobs and to protect people’s longer term interests. The alternative would have been for someone teaching, say, three modules, who found one module had failed to recruit, to be made redundant. The Variation in Hours policy is meant to ensure that they would, instead, go back to their normal hours the following year or the year after.
After this policy had been agreed the College sought redundancies in several areas. We are challenging these as best we can: successfully in some areas, not so successfully in others. Solidarity of Academics with their teaching colleagues is crucial to fighting redundancies effectively.
The main issue we’ve yet to agree concerns the way actual working hours relate to contact hours. A figure for actual working hours is needed to work out what fraction of a normal 35-hour week someone is working and therefore what their pay should be.
Hourly rates for sessionals across the sector were often ludicrously low. To make an income equivalent to that of a full-time Academic at the bottom of the lecturer A scale by delivering hourly paid teaching at £40 an hour (more than many receive), one would have to teach 794 hours a year, or over a typical 20-week teaching period one would have to be in class for 40 hours each week. Even if the College could adjust the teaching period so that it included every week other than one’s leave and College closure days, one would still be teaching for 18 hours a week, 45 weeks a year, allowing just one hour of preparation, marking, and administration for each hour of teaching. Anyone who has ever researched and written a lecture knows that’s impossible. In other words, we’re starting from a position in which the majority of teaching staff at Birkbeck are underpaid.
The NFA promises equal pay for work of equal value. That’s what we’ll be seeking in the next stage of the negotiations.
To do that we need your help. We need as much information as possible about the working practices of teaching staff across the College. What pattern of contact hours do you have? What are the real hours that you have to work? What are the different tasks that you perform? How are those tasks spread across the year?
In the meantime, for one more year, existing pay rates and arrangements for payment should continue. We’re trying to negotiate some improvement for those on the lowest rates. For everyone else, everything stays the same. If your department is making changes at this point, please let us know.
There are some other issues about which your comments would be welcome. Have you had concerns over the accuracy of contractual documents? Have you had problems with communications? For example, have you been told everything you need to know clearly enough and soon enough, and do you know to whom you report? There have been some cases of people having part of their pay defined as an ‘honorarium’. This may be done with good intentions, but it could have nasty consequences, since it could lead to part of one’s work and pay being disregarded in later years. Any information about the use of ‘honoraria’ would also be welcome.
UCU FNG negotiating team. Contact: James Brown jpcbrown@yahoo.co.uk
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