Cut from the top, protect casualised teaching staff

Warwick University Management's decision to cut 50% of the sessional teaching budget will have a grievous impact on casualised tutors. Please support our campaign to protect casualised teaching staff at Warwick University. Read our statement here and the letter we would like you to send at the bottom. Once you have put in your details on the right hand side, you can click through to the next page where you can amend, sign, and send the letter. The letter will be send to the members of the Warwick University Council.

WAC Launches Letter Campaign against Sessional Teaching Budget Cuts

Warwick Anti-Casualisation (WAC) is a grassroots group established in 2015 to fight against the growing issue of casualisation at the University of Warwick. Casualisation means the move to short-term and hourly contracts. At Warwick almost all seminar tutors work on casualised fixed-term or hourly-paid contracts.

The University has recently announced the sessional teaching budget for the 2020-2021 academic year will be cut at least in half to save around £5.5 million. This will deprive many Postgraduate Research students and Early Career Academics of their livelihood. These colleagues play a huge role in running seminars, providing advice and feedback to undergraduate students, and marking essays and exams. It also threatens the high quality of teaching and support our students rightfully expect from our University.

We need you - students, alumni, colleagues, and members of the public - to help us in asking the University’s management to reconsider, and ensure their response to the Covid-19 crisis sacrifices neither teaching quality nor the most precarious members of staff.

As WAC, we have already expressed our concerns about the University’s plans to the Provost, Christine Ennew. In an email sent a month ago, before these cuts were officially confirmed, we outlined the dramatic consequences such a decision would entail for casualised workers and their permanent colleagues. We expressed our fear that precarious members of staff would be ‘left out to dry’. On 22 June, our colleagues at Warwick UCU delivered a letter signed by over 500 members of staff to the University’s management demanding salary cuts for the highest paid to save low-earning teachers.

Yet, we have simply been ignored.

This is why we ask you for help. By sending a letter, you can show to the University’s decision-makers that our concerns are shared by many people across the board.

As current or incoming students, your voice carries a lot of weight for the university. These cuts to sessional teaching budgets mean cutting the job of the Associate Tutors who run your seminars, provide you with feedback, and mark your essays and exams. You have a right to demand that your University protects the quality of the teaching you receive, and the livelihoods of those that deliver it. Our working conditions are your teaching conditions, now more than ever.

As alumni and other financial contributors, you have influence over the University’s decisions. We ask you to use this influence to protect the most vulnerable members of staff, and uphold the excellence and diversity of teaching and research at Warwick.

We contend that this budget cut is unjustified, ineffective, and unfair. It contradicts the promise made by the Vice-Chancellor, Stuart Croft, to ‘protect jobs’, signalling casual workers are not valued as much as their permanent colleagues by our University’s management. According to a recent UCU report on precarity, sessional or hourly-paid workers represent 43% of the teaching-only staff at the University of Warwick, which means that over a fifth of our teaching workforce will be discarded. It will reduce PGR students’ opportunities to earn a living and gain professional experience, and force Early Career scholars out of academia.

It also goes against the University’s commitments to diversity, equality, and inclusion. As evidenced by the same report, female and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff at Warwick are more likely to be on a fixed term contract than their male and white peers. It will also unbearably increase the workload of our colleagues - who are expected to pick up the load. This will have consequences on the quality of teaching our students will receive, but also on the research and service that are part of an academic’s job.

While casualised workers across the university see their livelihood sacrificed in a bid to save costs, the top earners at the University, who earn up to £370,000 per year, have refused to meaningfully reduce their own salaries to protect the University’s finances. A salary sacrifice by those who earn more than £90k a year would save as much money as the cuts to the sessional teaching budget.

In consequence, we are launching a letter campaign. We ask you, students, colleagues, alumni, and members of the public, to send a letter to demand that the sessional teaching budget in particular, and precarious workers in general, be protected.

If you want to get involved in future actions, contact us by email at warwickanticasualisation@gmail.com, via Twitter @WarwickAntiCas, or on Facebook: WarwickAntiCasualisation.

In solidarity,

Warwick Anti-Casualisation

This is the letter we would like you to send - fill in your details on the right and click through to the next page to amend, sign, and send the letter to the members of Warwick University Council.

Dear Warwick University Council Member,

As a University of Warwick’s [student, employee, alumna/us, or as a member of the public], I am deeply concerned by your decision to cut the sessional teaching budget by 50% in the upcoming academic year.

This decision stands in clear contradiction to the University management’s stated promise to ‘protect jobs’ in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. It places a significant portion of the cost-saving efforts on the shoulders of casualised staff, predominantly PGR students and Early Career academics, who are the least able to afford it, and in the current climate, will struggle to find alternative work. Meanwhile, the top-earners and managers of the university have not made any meaningful sacrifice, contrary to other universities such as King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, and others.

Not only do these cuts to the sessional teaching budget deprive casualised staff of their livelihoods, they will lead to heavier workloads for academic staff already under pressure, creating a Health and Safety crisis and preventing them from performing their jobs. It will also undermine the quality and diversity of teaching students rightly expect from the University of Warwick.

I therefore support the following demands:

1.     That the University reverse its stated aims of reducing the STP budget and commit to protecting all jobs.

2.     That the University commit to a salary sacrifice scheme in which all of those who earn more than £90k agree to either a salary cap or to a percentage sacrifice.

3.     That University Management open its books and engage with all staff and workers democratically and transparently in deciding how savings can be made.

Regards,

[please sign your name here]


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