This post was anonymously written by a member of Sheffield UCU.
cw: topics related to mental health, self harm
I am an academic with a research/teaching contract, which is generally taken to be 40-40-20: 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% administrative work and service. If we factor in my 0.1 FTE buyout (which can be for things like residency outside of the university, an external partnership, senior admin roles, etc), and apply this to a 35 hour work week, then we end up with the following target breakdown of my week:
I am the convenor for 2 different UG modules this term, plus I teach on an MA module, which amounts to 8 hours of contact time per week, plus 4 hours of prep. That, for the record, is only because I’ve taught these modules before; it would be much more if any of the three were new. If I add in my 2 office hours (which are always full), an average 1.5 hours answering questions on discussion boards and in emails, and 2.5 hours marking or moderating per week, we are already at…17.5 hours. Now, add in personal tutee crises that can’t be handled within my office hours, which my calendar suggests amount to 0.5 hours per week on average, and an average of 1.5 hours of UG, MA, and PhD supervision per week, we’re at 20.5 hours.
Did I mention that this is my light teaching term? Last term I convened 3 UG modules.
I have two admin roles in my department, and must attend regular meetings of the entire department, various departmental subgroups, and one-to-one planning meetings related to admin. Plus Open Days, which everyone ends up on the rota for. All of this adds up to 7.5 average hours a week. This is actually far lower than my admin hours were last year; I negotiated my workload down by essentially refusing to continue with one of my previous roles.
At this point, my week is at 28 hours, which is pretty far off from the target breakdown, but at least I have 3.5 whole hours remaining for research, right? Wrong. Because now we need to consider all of the things that aren’t “workloaded”, and yet are either required for promotion, to allow your discipline to function, or required by university management to satisfy some type of independently mandated metric: Service.
Peer review. National organisation membership. Journal editorship. Research centre membership/organisation. Working groups. Letters of reference. Online fire-safety/GDPR/out of hours training. Impact training. Impact case studies. Emails about the REF. REF internal audits. It’s hard to measure these things, so I’ve been conservative, but I would estimate that local/national service plus training plus imposed workload for REF adds up to 5.5 hours per week. None of which is workloaded. All of which is, in some way or another, required.
In the end, I have negative 2 hours per working week to conduct my world leading, 4* research during the teaching term. Under-performing in research can lead someone to not pass probation, to be placed under informal performance review measures, or even to be pressured to leave under a voluntary (or not) Staff Release Scheme. And yet: negative 2 hours.
What do I choose to do? It’s a Catch-22 with repercussions for my students, my career, my family, and my health. Do I cut back on the amount of time I’m prepping for classes, not respond to my students’ questions, or not respond to a personal tutee in the midst of a serious medical crisis? Do I shortchange my research and accept the implications for promotion? Or do I work in the evenings and on weekends, which has repercussions for my family, my physical health, my mental health, and ultimately, my productivity — it’s not just unethical to have workloads this high, research on high functioning workplaces has repeatedly demonstrated that it is counterproductive.
I should say two other things about the numbers I put above. First, they will be different for every member of staff. I have a high number of contact hours, but a manageable number of students to supervise — I know staff with PhD students in the double digits, which leads to an equally overwhelming schedule. Second, those numbers represent me operating at peak efficiency. In addition to lacking any time to conduct research (let alone to write it up), they don’t include time for me to read new papers in my field, write grant applications, meet with potential research collaborators, compare pedagogy with colleagues, and — and this is a big and — there is absolutely no space for me to be unwell. If I get ill, the delicately balanced house of cards will fall.
When staff talk to each other about workload, we admit that we employ a combination of many “triage strategies” to survive. First, most of us try to cut back on admin and service, but meetings make up the bulk of those hours, and they are hard to avoid. We next turn to teaching prep — it doesn’t feel good to do this, but it might add an hour or so per week. The next strategies are more painful. We have to decide which student emails to reply to, and some go entirely unanswered. We have to decide between getting enough sleep, or finishing our marking on time. The already high amount of emotional labour in our day to day jobs becomes overwhelming when faced with a constant flow of these decisions.
Underpinning all of this is guilt. The drip, drip, drip of Who am I letting down this week? wears on you, it keeps you from sleeping or wakes you up in the middle of the night, it causes you to choose the option of working tonight, tomorrow, and maybe Saturday — just for a couple of hours — so that you don’t feel quite as guilty. This week.
There is a cost that comes with these hours, and these choices, and the guilt; and that cost grows each year, until the word burnout starts to loom on the horizon. Until we see our friends and colleagues engage in self-harm and unhealthy or self-sabotaging coping strategies: Ignoring problems, self-blame, misdirected anger, high levels of worry, isolating oneself, working longer hours, or alcohol, substance, or food abuse. One in three early career researchers face serious mental health problems.
The worst thing is that we all know we shouldn’t feel guilty, but we do anyway. This cost isn’t of our own making — it has been imposed on us by a government bent on turning HE into a marketised parody of itself, where education is no longer the goal, and students are measured by their financial value to the university.
I don’t have a neat and tidy solution to the problem of workload; it’s a systemic one, requiring structural shifts in the sector, and in government. But one things is very clear: There aren’t enough staff to do the fundamental work of a university. When University management prioritises expensive capital projects over staff, they place all of us at risk. When they refuse to use accurate workload models (or any at all), and when they participate in expensive, ill-advised “efficiency” metrics like restructures, they exacerbate this risk.
Unless we push back, nothing will change. Universities UK has made it very clear they feel no duty of care for their employees, and have no intention of changing their marketised “vision” for HE, despite it being very clear how this vision is harming their staff and students. So we need to be so loud that we make them hear us. I have voted Yes and Yes in UCU’s ongoing Equalities and Pay ballot because a healthy workload isn’t a perk, it’s a right we have to fight for.
However busy you are, however overwhelming your workload is, please take the time to post your ballot today, to give UCU negotiators the best chance fight back for all of us, and to say as loudly as possible that we cannot go on like this — we deserve more.
If you are very worried, stressed, anxious or if you just don’t feel like yourself anymore, you can make contact with your usual GP, who can refer you to support services or you can access the NHS Sheffield Helpline for Mental Health Issues at 0808 801 0440. Without registering, you can work independently on a growing number of excellent online sites for example NHS Moodzone, Mental Health Foundation and Mind. iPad Apps like Unstuck and NHS self-help suite may also prove useful to manage symptoms. If you or someone else is in immediate risk of serious harm or injury, you should call the emergency services by dialing 999.
This post is a follow up to Steffan Blayney’s post, which starkly documented the current reliance on casual contracts in HE, the damage it is causing to the sector, and how the current ballot represents a chance to take a stand for our colleagues on precarious contracts.
In this post, we want to focus on the personal cost of casualisation. We’ve collected anonymised testimony from members and from a local survey on precarity we conducted in 2016. Also, a reminder: UCU is holding its annual meeting for staff on casual contracts; please get in touch with us if you want to get more involved in anti-cas campaigning at a local or national level.
These stories put a human face on the numbers. Over half of all academic staff in the UK are on insecure contracts, and while we do not have concrete numbers on how many professional services staff are in similar positions, the number is rising. In aggregate, this figure is sobering, but we must remember that the real toll that these contracts take is at a personal level.
If you have not yet submitted your ballot for Fair Work and Fair Pay, please do. Whatever your personal feelings on strike action, however you choose to vote, please DO vote — it is only by passing the anti-TU 50% threshold that we, as a union, have the opportunity to take this action for our colleagues, friends, and family members being impacted by casualisation.
Being in precarious, short-term employment has wide-ranging implications I would not have imagined prior to embarking on my current role. I now consider myself lucky that soon after finishing my doctorate I stumbled upon a job I stayed in for more than three years. My actions and experiences in my previous, more stable role provide a good juxtaposition to what I am dealing with now; I will take these issues in turn.
First, due to the short-term nature of my contract I do not feel I belong: since week 5 of my employment I have been applying for the next role. This means that I cannot emotionally commit to the place I would normally want to give all my attention. I do feel that I am keeping a distance from my students too; I cannot have them rely on me too much for support, as I am likely to be leaving at the end of the academic year. I would like to do a good job, as I know I owe it to my students now. However, making substantive changes, innovating, planning for the next academic year are well beyond the scope of my role.
I am not putting much effort into developing institutional connections either, although it would be in my nature to contribute – if I had more stability and long-term reason to do so. Previously I was involved in institutional learning and teaching initiatives, and outreach efforts; however, not in my current post. I keep my contact with colleagues to the minimum, avoid meetings if I can, and do not take on additional responsibilities. I am also aware the degree to which I am being instrumental in my decision-making; not embarking on the dissemination activities from my research as they do not hold currency in my current role or in getting a new one.
Second, I am acutely aware of the aspects of my career I cannot currently develop. For instance, for any future promotion I would need to show I could supervise research students – to which on a one-year contract I cannot commit to. More pressing is applying for grants: as my contract would not cover the duration of fellowships, I am often excluded at the institutional stage. This is of course compounded by the fact that on a (supposedly) research and teaching contract I was lumped with several modules with little support and practically no guidance.
Third, the continuous uncertainty is taking a toll on my personal life too. I cannot predict where the next job will find me: apparently, it is normal to expect early career researchers to move across the country every year or two. I find it hard to plan in multiple different ways: settling somewhere or having a family seem distant thoughts.
I am of course aware that precarity along with the regime of performance indicators is to control; with management dangling a potential future contract (do not think of anything fancy, it is another short-term one to plug teaching gaps), any vocal critique of the institutional system could be working against me. In short, I am not the citizen of my university I would like to be, and this is a direct result of my contractual situation. With this, I also recognise that I am more fortunate than friends and colleagues on shorter or zero hours contracts, with even higher teaching loads, and those who already gave up on academia due to the uncertainties of it.
Last summer I was working as a ‘GTA’ (in theory – I actually earned my PhD 3 years ago), teaching one course. I then picked up a full-time admin job at the University of Sheffield. It was decided that I could deliver my teaching in the lunch breaks of my admin job. Obviously I did my best at both jobs. There was no acknowledgement from HR that I had any cause for complaint. I have basically quit academia now. Everyone who I ever mention these experiences to is shocked. I think overall it has had a profound effect on my self-worth. It has trained me to think that my labour is worth very little.
During the time that I was working full time for the university doing admin and teaching in my lunch breaks, it obviously had a negative impact on my effectiveness. It was challenging to switch between these unrelated roles without any break, and it was upsetting that there was never any acknowledgement from senior colleagues that what was happening wasn’t really appropriate.
The work at the Uni makes me feel rather stupid at times – like a shift worker or like a child minder – I don’t feel valued except by one lecturer. I feel a completely replaceable – just there to fill the space with no real interest in what I might have to offer – my skill set and experience not valued. anyone will do in the end if they are cheap enough and got enough qualifications (that have little financial value in the end). The relationship doesn’t do much for my self-esteem – it does not feel like something that is building towards a career – no progression – no recognition of experience over years. Very poor. Better when the lecturer actually clearly shows you respect … I still consider myself the equal to the dept. staff – I am a researcher with knowledge and experience but demonstrating is not important – seminar work is undervalued and underfunded. The dept pretends to have global significance with many students from across the world – but they are being short changed to suit a reduced financial set up. Students short changed, debate restricted. Not impressed, I’ll stop this year. THE PAY IS JUST SIMPLY NOT HIGH ENOUGH AND YOU STAY ON THE SAME PAY REGARDLESS OF EXPERIENCE.
At the Uni – makes little difference – I get the library card which is useful. I don’t feel valued for who I am or what I offer – except in one module I do feel valued and wanted – but being valued is does not lead to a difference in payscale. This issue makes me feel mean and humiliated as if asking for more pay was greedy and below me. It is horrible. Demeaning. It contradicts the very ethos that the department installs in students.
I currently teach up up to 2 days per week, juggled with supervising a masters student and completing my final year of PhD. I am unpaid as I only was funded for 3 years so have to take on this teaching to try to earn some money. It is extremely stressful juggling these tasks and I still do not earn enough to cover my living expenses. I do not have fixed or regular teaching so I am always stressed about the following months. When I first joined as a PhD student I was in the process of recovering from mental health issues and I feel like the stresses of this year are not healthy to have.
I can not focus on my own PhD as much as I would like or supervise my student as fully as I would like.
Our thanks to SUCU member Steffan Blayney for writing this post on the scandalous reliance on casual labour in Higher Education and its importance in our current ballot.
Have you experienced casualisation while working in HE? UCU is currently conducting a national survey on insecure contracts. We are also collecting anonymous stories to putting together a collection of local stories of how casualisation has impacted the University of Sheffield. If you are intersted in being part of it, please contact us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk.
Strike Against Casualisation
The current ballot is not simply about pay. Like all industrial disputes, it is a claim about the nature of our work, and the relative expectations and responsibilities of workers and management, and like all disputes in our sector it is in the last instance an argument over the nature and purpose of education. As well as specific demands over pay, tackling the gender pay gap, and reducing workload, the current claim seeks to tackle the accelerating problems of casualisation and precarity in higher education.
The national picture
Currently, UCU estimates that over half of all academic staff in the UK are now employed on some form of insecure contract. These might include PhD students who teach during their studies, external or ‘visiting’ lecturers, or the large numbers of academics who depend on short fixed-term or hourly-paid contracts for their living.
In professional services roles, we see similar insecure contracts, plus attempts at cost-cutting restructures, redundancies and consequent increasing workloads in failed attempts of ‘doing more for less’. Students are also faced with zero hours on campus, where they are routinely employed by their own university and by for-profit subsidiaries, often below the living wage foundation rate, whilst being squeezed by lifetime of debt, cuts to grants and bursaries and unaffordable rent. Casualisation is an attack on the HE sector and to the very communities it’s supposed to support.
This accelerating expansion of these conditions hits those of us at the bottom of the academic career ladder hardest. ‘Junior’ staff, from graduate teaching assistants to lecturers, are far more likely to lack job security than their more senior colleagues. Fixed-term contracts are now overwhelmingly the norm for early-career academics, who increasingly find ourselves facing the prospect of regular upheaval, moving from place to place, year on year, to chase a series of low-paid, short-term posts.
For many of us, even the limited reprise of a 9-month contract is starting to look attractive in the face of the alternative, as universities’ increasing reliance on forms of casual employment leaves larger numbers of teaching and research staff on zero-hours contracts or ‘worker’ arrangements, with lower pay, fewer rights and no guarantee of work from week to week.
Two fifths (41%) of staff on casual contracts work 30 hours or less a week and nearly a third (30%) earn less than £1000 a month. Moreover, these amounts are subject to wide variation with staff often unable to predict how much they will earn from month to month. A 2015 report by UCU found that a significant number of academics on precarious contracts struggled to get by. 21% said they struggled to pay for food, 35% struggled to keep up with rent or mortgage repayments, while 42% struggled to pay household bills.
UCU is calling on universities nationwide to commit to a new industrial-level action plan to create greater security of employment for all employees. We want to see institutions commit to ending zero-hours contracts and exploitative ‘worker’ arrangements, transfer hourly-paid teaching staff to fractional contracts, and commit to open-ended contracts for greater numbers of research staff.
Casualisation at Sheffield
The impact of precarity at Sheffield is difficult to gauge, with the University being one of 36 higher education institutions to completely ignore a 2018 Freedom of Information request from UCU on the amount of teaching currently carried out by hourly-paid staff.
From the information available, however, it seems that the situation at Sheffield in many ways reflects the national picture. Last year, our UCU branch won an important victory, by negotiating for a commitment from management to move casual teaching staff onto employment contracts. This is a welcome and positive shift in policy, but has been implemented slowly by management: as of the time of writing, casual worker agreements are still in use in some departments, and the employers are still excluding some teaching from this commitment.
Clearly, there is still a huge amount of work to be done to combat creeping casualisation at our institution. For example, while the University claims it ‘doesn’t employ staff on zero hours contracts’, Sheffield maintains a ‘Registration Agreement for Casual Work’ which leaves large numbers of staff with no guarantee of work, reduced benefits, and limited employment rights.
Across the whole university, only 35% of total academic staff are on insecure contracts. Below the level of professors and senior academics however, the figures are far more worrying. 77.5% of research assistants and teaching assistants are on fixed-term contracts, higher than the national average. 72.5% of lecturers, research fellows and teaching fellows also lack permanent contracts (again higher than average). This compares to figures of only 17% of senior lecturers/fellows, just 3.2% of professors and precisely 0% of heads of departments.
The point of these comparisons is not to divide one set of academics against another, but to draw attention to the deterioration of working conditions across the sector under the current regime of mercenary, ends-focused and profit-driven higher education. In this important sense, the ongoing battle to protect our pensions and the renewed fight against casualisation are two fronts in the same conflict.
The case against casualisation
Where casual arrangements become widespread, employers seek to get something for nothing. Hourly-paid teaching contracts routinely fail to allow enough time for preparation, marking, emails or meetings with students. As a result, unpaid hours become a regular feature of casualised work. Early-career academics are oftenforced to work between different institutions or commute long distances, without being reimbursed for the time or cost of travel. The increasing use of fixed-term teaching contracts of 9 months duration mean that academics are often left without any source of income over the summer.
The passion and enthusiasm of university staff for our work – the lifeblood of any educational institution – has become a resource for employers to ruthlessly exploit. The very qualities on which universities trade – our commitment to our students, our desire to produce outstanding research – have become the conditions of our exploitation, with many of us feeling forced into accepting unfair terms of employment – effectively working for free – simply to remain in higher education.
Of course, this extra labour is not distributed evenly, with the burden of precarious work falling predominantly on younger members of staff, and disproportionately on women, staff with disabilities and those from ethnic minorities. The extensive use of insecure contracts in higher education is incompatible with a commitment to diversity.
The stresses of insecure employment also take their toll on our health, wellbeing and home-life. A 2018 Times Higher Education survey found that keeping a balance between work and relationships was most difficult for research students and early-career academics, with just 5% of doctoral students and 3% of postdoctoral researchers reporting no impact. These groups reported that they would find it difficult to imagine starting a family in their current conditions of work. Early-career researchers were twice as likely as professors to consider leaving the profession, while only 8% would recommend a career in higher education to their children.
Finally, it must be stressed that casualisation and precarity threaten the very purpose of the university, the quality of teaching and research, and the meaning of higher education. Overworked and underpaid teaching staff, hired by the hour and inadequately compensated for their labour, cannot be expected to teach to their best ability. Nevertheless, UCU estimates that up to 40% of undergraduate teaching is currently delivered in exactly this way. Research staff constantly moving from contract to contract, always on the lookout for their next job, likewise can’t be expected to produce the standards of work their ability and training has made them capable of. UCU surveys suggest that a third of researchers are forced to spend 25% of their contracted time working towards their next appointment.
Where academic employment is insecure, universities (now overwhelmingly driven by market forces) are able to cut ‘unprofitable’ courses, reduce departments to a skeleton permanent staff, or dispose of them entirely, regardless of their merit or educational value. It is only by fighting casualisation in our own institutions – ensuring stability and security for all our colleagues – that we can defend the integrity of our workplaces, reverse the trend of marketisation and reassert the value of education as an intrinsic public good.
On 7 November, UCU held an HE Special Sector Conference, with the morning focused on the pay equality dispute, and the afternoon on USS.
If you aren’t sure how UCU democractic structures work, you may find it useful to read Rachel Cohen’s (City University) piece in USS briefs before reading on.
Pay and Equalities
There were 9 motions considered in the morning session, but the majority of the time was devoted to thoughtful and intense debate over motions 1, 2, 3, and 5, and a how best to move forward with the pay and equalities dispute.
The results of our Autumn ballot on pay showed incredible support for industrial action, with a national aggregate of 68.9% YES votes for strike action. Even more importantly, the percentage of members voting for strike action were consistently high across the sector. It isn’t just a few branches that wish to strike against casualisation, unsustainable workloads, and pay inequalities, it’s nearly every one of the 147 branches that were balloted.
Given this, the great majority of the delegates agreed that, without the unreasonable 50% turnout required by anti-trade union law, we would likely be on strike right now, and that therefore we must reballot on pay. Casualisation, workload, gender inequality, and generational inequality in pay are issues that are impact every single one of us.
The main debate centered around the form this reballot should take. Sheffield delegates argued on behalf of Motion 5 (passed at our EGM on the 29th of October), which calls for an aggregated re-ballot, because we believe this gives UCU the absolute best chance of beating the 50% threshold in this dispute. 8 out of 147 HE branches surpassed the threshold, but we achieved an aggregate turnout of 42%. We believe that it is better to work collectively to turn out votes from an additional 8% members in one national campaign than to conduct separate campaigns at 139 separate institutions with differing levels of resources and local activism. It is crucial to prioritise national bargaining on pay equality to support our national pay bargaining machinery. It is crucial to take collective industrial action, rather than leaving behind branches who do not make the cutoff.
As a result of this discussion, motion 5 was passed by the HESC, and in early Spring 2019, UCU will be conducting a national aggregated re-ballot on this dispute.
Important motions were also passed calling for UCU to push back against anti-trade union law (Motion 4), to coordinate with other trade unions to develop multi-year pay and equality claims (Motion 6), and to expand the National Dispute Committee to include the pay and equality dispute (Motion 8): see the full set of decisions here.
USS
The afternoon session switched focus to USS, and started with a notable address from the Chair of the National Dispute Committee, making it clear that while things have progressed a long way there are many aspects that are far from certain and will require our attention.
The main session consisted of healthy debate over substantial motions setting out the potential path of the dispute over the next few months. Sheffield’s motion (Motion 13) calling for the 2017 valuation to be abandoned, and for negotiations to continue based on March 2018 data was passed (and USS have now announced a 2018 valuation, although still plan to push through their 2017 cost-sharing as well).
Elsewhere, it was clear that conference would have no patience with any moves to water-down the JEP proposals (Motion 1), and that employers should pay for any cost increases resulting from this dispute (Motion E1). Motions setting out the stall for a JEP Phase 2 to start as soon as possible, and another reiterating the call for the resignation of USS’s Chief Executive, also passed. There was also time to address the issue of USS’s poor ethical record with a motion which passed unanimously (Motion 17).
Though the conference was well attended, it did fall just short of a quorum, arguably due to rules on quoracy which did not adequately reflect the absence of post-92 delegates. The motions passed do not immediately become union policy, and instead are advisory on the Higher Education Committee. We very much hope, and have every right to expect, that the HEC respects the view of the conference in forming its position.
In advance of Disability History Month, which begins today and will run through to December 22, UCU’s Disabled Members’ Standing Committee organised a national day of action for disability equality in education yesterday. As part of this day of action, Sheffield UCU member Themesa Neckles, who is also a national representative on the Disabled Members’ Standing Committee and the USS Dispute Committee, was part of a UCU delegation that took several demands to Parliament, including: a statutory right to disability leave; placing time limits on how long our employer can take to implement reasonable adjustments; reviewing buildings and outdoor spaces to make sure they are accessible to disabled staff and students; and a reversal of cuts to SEND provision.
Higher education systematically disadvantages students and scholars with disabilities, and as a branch, SUCU must ask how we can make our union more inclusive to our members both locally and nationally, and how we can organise against the discrimination faced by disabled staff and students at TUoS. This will require concerted work over the years to come, at a personal, department, and university wide level. We offer our enormous thanks to a group of members who have developed this pamphlet for all SUCU members, including crucial information on the legal rights of disabled employees, the barriers members and students may face to disability disclosure, and links to a host of detailed resources on how to support members with disabilities and promote disability advocacy. We hope all of you will read it, and the resources it contains. If the embedded links within the PDF do not work for you, we have included them at the end of this post as well.
Five of our members have also written about their experiences, to raise awareness of the conditions here at Sheffield. Each of these stories have been anonymised, and we are very grateful to our members for sharing them.
-SUCU Branch Committee
My disability doesn’t have ‘a look’
I am dyslexic and have other impairments. I have always been praised for my excellent work. It’s been a year now that I’ve been asking for some reasonable adjustments to be put in place to support my teaching and to enable me to work more effectively. The adjustments are considered necessary and have been approved through Access to Work. However, my employer does not think it’s necessary to fund the equipment, although Access to Work provides more than half the cost. The employer cites lack of money, and the excellent work I already do without having any adjustments as reasons for not fulfilling their duty of care.
“I struggle every day to do my work well without the equipment and software that I need. It is stressful and it upsets me that I work so hard but don’t get any support. I am thinking of leaving.”
Don’t take my disability for weakness
Alexander’s condition significantly impacted his day-to-day activities and he struggles to manage in any open plan work environment and wide open spaces because it is visually disruptive and noisy. Three years ago, medical specialists recommended that Alexander access assistive software to enable him to do his work. Negotiating for reasonable adjustments was extremely difficult and Alexander was referred to occupational health on at least 4 occasions, with reports clearly stating that due to Alexander’s visual impairment he will require additional time to complete some aspects of his work and he is unable to complete his work at the same speed as other colleagues. If additional time cannot be accommodated, then an adjustment to his workload will enable him to complete his work in the required time. Alexander was informed by his employer in the first instance that he should make use of the university’s free assistive software, which is in place for dyslexic students. Due to its limited functionality, the software was not appropriate. Approximately 6 months later, it was agreed that a more appropriate software should be sourced to enable him to do his work. The software was put in place but without any consideration that it would take longer to complete most tasks.
In the first instance, his employer took 3 months to agree and purchase appropriate assistive software and then a further 2 months to purchase this software. Secondly, due to the nature of teaching and learning in HE, once the assistive software was in place the employer did not give him extra time to complete his work but asked that he managed his health in order to manage a full workload. Thirdly, instead of trying to relocate Alexander to a separate space on his own to enable him to do his work, the employer insisted that he worked in the open plan environment so he could get used to the space without considering that listening to text and dictating text is not possible in an open plan environment. However, to assist this integration, it was agreed that Alexander could have a flexible work pattern, noise cancellation headphones and a work station located in one corner of the open plan space, but with no provision to utilise text-to-speech software in a contained manner. Alexander attempted to manage the situation by getting to work for 6am, working until colleagues arrived at work. He would leave, returning late in the evening after his colleagues left (5 pm or 6 pm) to continue working. This action increased Alexander’s stress levels and further exacerbated his symptoms and condition. During this period Alexander was constantly reminded that his workload was under 100% although his medical reports indicated that he is fit for work and to continue in his current role, manage a full workload and offer a reliable service as long as the appropriate reasonable adjustments are put in place.
On a number of occasions, Alexander had to rely on a swivel chair and the wall to navigate his way to and from his space and when this was not an option, on the kindness of colleagues to escort him around the space, including getting to and from the kitchen and toilet. The process of managing the situation caused further distress and stress and things appeared worse for Alexander because his work pattern was beginning to disrupt his recovery and rehabilitation. The employer felt hard pressed to consider making changes to overcome barriers created by the physical features of a workplace; providing auxiliary aid and service. Alexander was eventually offered the use of a shared quiet room for whenever he wanted to use the assistive software without disturbing other colleagues. This meant managing two workspaces and without assistive software in the quiet room. A few months into his struggle for reasonable adjustments, Alexander decided to seek assistance from a colleague who works with the Equalities Challenge Unit before formally writing to his employers and then immediately requested support from UCU. He was assigned a case worker and a partial resolution was reached although the employer argued that any provision must be weighed up against factors such as cost, resources and practicality. Alexander was allowed to have an alternative room, which was appropriate and accessible without assistance but he was still expected to find ways to integrate and adapt to the open plan environment.
After some time, it was agreed that Alexander would occupy this room permanently. However, to date the reasonable adjustment remains incomplete as he still has not been able to successfully negotiate for extra time for doing some aspects of his work. Despite informing his employer of the length of time it takes to complete aspects of his work due to the assistive software, his employer has refused to give him extra time or an appropriately adjusted workload. Alexander still has a case worker and has been asked again to account for the amount of time it takes him to complete aspects of his work. He still waits for his ‘reasonable’ adjustment to be complete; three years and counting. He feels frustrated, angry and mentally stressed on a daily basis.
“Disability isn’t a choice; discrimination is. No one should suffer in silence and I hope my story and the lived experiences of others help to raise awareness to the issues and challenges faced by disabled people who fight to stay in work.”
My abilities speak louder than my disability
A teacher with severe visual impairment had been asking for an assessment for support for several years before the UCU took up his case. They had managed to stay in work only because colleagues helped them every day to read documents and their partner typed up most worksheets or checked and corrected for them what they had touch typed. They used a magnifying glass to mark work. The informal work of colleagues and family members allowed the visually impaired teacher, much respected by students, to stay in work.
Their work became exhausting because things took so much longer and caused increased eye strain.
UCU put the teacher in touch with Access to Work and ensured that the employer allowed access for assessment. However, nine months after the assessment the worker still had no equipment in place and was told that there was no budget available for reasonable adjustments but that they would be given equipment as soon as money was available. Intervention from a UCU rep and threat of further action finally ended the delays.
“It was wonderful to be able to do things myself again. I could not stand the situation I was in, but I could not afford to leave my job. I had been suffering for years because although people knew I was disabled, there was no proactive assessment and even when the union helped me get assessment—my needs were spelled out officially as it were—I still didn’t get anything until legal action was threatened. The law needs to be much stronger and must faster to give us our rights”.
Not every disability is visible
I am Megan, a 4th year PhD student but in my 5th year of study at the TUoS. I am also in my second year working as a tutor on one of the postgraduate programmes. I have epilepsy which means I have different types of seizures. Sometimes the seizures are really obvious and can look quite scary but most of the time I have unnoticeable seizures. Because most of my seizures are unnoticeable it seems that my needs are too. I have to constantly remind colleagues and staff about accessibility issues when organising meeting or conferences as most of the buildings at the university, including the study spaces like the IC and the Diamond are inaccessible to me because of the lighting fixtures that are used in these ‘new – state of the arts’ buildings. Having to remind people about inclusion is highly frustrating. Just as people see me as normal they often expect that I can keep up with the other ‘normal’ people when I often can’t. My unnoticeable seizures make it difficult for me to think or speak coherently never mind write. This often leads to me feeling disappointment and sometimes let down. While I have an appropriate learning support plan in place for study my employer has sent me to occupational health for a ‘fit to work’ assessment, so that suggestions could be made on what reasonable adjustments need to be in place for me to do my work. Although this was noted on my report, my employer has not taken into consideration that or recognises the amount of extra time and effort it takes me to complete tasks which my peers would complete more easily. Having SpLDs such as dyslexia and dyscalculia add to my already complex condition I do not always feel support and so this means that it is often easier for me to struggle on my own and invest more time into what I am doing instead of asking for support.
“I am supporting UCU’s Day of Action for Disability Equality in Education.”
See the person, not the disability
I am an autistic woman Postgraduate research student. I feel there are both positives and negatives to being an autistic woman at university. Primarily, I am part of a minority within a minority. Firstly, by being a woman and secondly, by being autistic. Portrayals of disabled students at university rarely include autistic people and in particular autistic women.
The biggest challenge I have found during university is people’s perceptions towards me. Most people have been friendly, but I have encountered many comments about my ability or their perceived ability of me. Frequently I have been told that I’m doing a PhD and therefore should not have problems with supposedly mundane tasks like buying lunch or working out appropriate clothes to wear. Although the implication of these comments alludes to the fact if I have the skills to do a PhD, I should have skills to cope in the ‘normal’ world. It is really difficult to explain that having the academic ability to do a PhD is not comparable to life skills.
Whenever I attend conferences, few list their accessibility features and of these few most focus purely on physical disability such as emphasising buildings are wheelchair accessible. Although, physical access needs should be highlighted in conference information I would love to see more conferences giving consideration to autistic (and other non-physical disability) for example, having a quiet room and photographs of the conference space. One conference I attended – Ableism in Academia – had all food labelled and wrapped to ensure those with food intolerances were able to navigate food easily. No conference, or any space, can ever be truly accessible to all as access needs are very individual, but academic events can strive to have inclusivity at the centre of the event.
I have found being autistic at university positive in some respects, there is a large camaraderie between the autistic students here. We are mainly united from the difficulties and challenges we face throughout university on a daily basis. I do not know if I would have met other autistic women at university if I had not had challenges in which I needed to find support.
“I can’t change my disability but you can change your attitude!” #IncludeUs
