ATTENTION ALL HOURLY PAID LECTURERS:
'Saying No! The 'what', 'when', 'why' and 'how' of avoiding overwork '
9 October, 3-5pm, Room 152 Malet Street
Hourly paid lecturers (or ‘sessionals’) as committed members of the Birkbeck teaching team are often willing to go the extra mile. However sometimes staff feel under pressure to do work they are not paid for and unable to say ‘no’ despite being at liberty to do so.
In response, Birkbeck UCU are organising an informal workshop in which hourly paid lecturers can share experiences and address practical ways of 'saying no' to increasing unofficial workloads in a constructive way.
The workshop will be held on 9 October from 3 to 5pm in Room 152 in the Main Birkbeck building. All Hourly Paid staff, union members or not, are invited to this event.
We hope to provide refreshments, so please RSVP to ucu@bbk.ac.uk so that we have an idea of numbers.
For information on the HPL network please see below.
HPL Network
The Birkbeck HPL network aims to maintain contact between hourly-paid staff and to provide a forum for discussion alongside the work of the UCU Framework Negotiation group. If you are not already on the mailing list, and would like to get more involved - or merely receive more information beyond occasional emails from UCU, or if you would like the opportunity to express your views and influence policy and events, please join the network.
The convenor for the HPL network is Danny Rye and you can contact him at d.rye@pol-soc.bbk.ac.uk telephone 07847 897629
Issues affecting hourly-paid staff raised recent meetings include:
- Have you received notice of your grade? There was disparity in terms of who had received information about their pay grade (everyone should have received notification from the college of their grade if it is changing). Those that had received notification said the letters did not contain much information explaining what the grade change meant (e.g. no info on hourly rates of pay).
- Have you received your 5% pay rise? Many people in the group were not aware that there had been a 5% pay increase in their hourly rate last year. Many did not think they had received that pay increase, with some people saying they had been on the same pay since they started, many, many years ago.
- Have you received notification of permanent employment? You are entitled to a permanent contract if you have delivered ‘continuous service’ for four years. If you only teach one term per year, however, this is not considered continuous service and therefore you could have been teaching for 20 years, one term per year and still not be considered a permanent member of staff. People felt it is important to put pressure on management to consider 1 term’s teaching a year over 4 years as continuous service so that more permanent contracts could be issued.
- Are you treated as a researcher? There was concern over the fact that HPLs and their research interests were absent from the course websites. Similarly, some felt left out of the loop and weren’t sent emails about research events at Birkbeck.
- Is the info on your payslip clear? It was felt there is a lack of clarity on pay slips as to what deductions / calculations are used, making it difficult to work out what you’ve been paid and what you should have been paid. Importantly, holiday pay should be itemised on payslips and if it isn’t you could claim back pay for up to six years.
- Do you have enough space to work at Birkbeck? There was concern over the lack of space for HPLs to prepare classes, hold tutorials etc. Apparently there is a room for HPLs in 43 Gordon Square (room 312), however few people know about this and the room is small and overcrowded.
- Do you feel well supported and managed? Some people said they had noticed a change since the restructuring of the college a few years ago and that they felt like they are ‘managing themselves’ and that they no longer have any institutional support or personal contact with their line manager.
HPL Survey
UCU have also conducted a survey of HPL staff for which we received over 70 responses. These figures are made much richer by the plentiful comments made by people on the survey which adds qualitative information to these percentages. Here’s a snap shot of the results:
- An overwhelming 90% of respondents said that they spend many more hours working for Birkbeck than they are paid for.
- 60% say their hours have not been cut over the last two years but 78% tell us they have not progressed in grade or pay scale whilst they have worked at Birkbeck.
- 60% said they felt the administrative support provided by Birkbeck was adequate.
- 47% would like to have some access to research facilities and funding.
- 43% did not feel adequately engaged in decision-making in their department but would like to be, and 26% that they are involved but not enough. 30% responded that they aren’t involved and they don’t want to be.
- 81% thought marking should be paid separately to teaching pay. Of these, 70% felt that they should be paid per script and 30% said that payment for marking should be on an hourly basis.
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