The elephant in the room: Precarious work in New Zealand’s universities

Abstract

Precarious working arrangements, defined by temporary casual and fixed-term employment agreements, are a complex, often hidden feature of academia in Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa hereafter). At present, little is known about the conditions of insecure academic work, the size of this workforce, nor how these workers have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report provides an insight into the reality of insecure academic work in universities from those who responded to the 2021 Precarious Academic Work Survey. We highlight that in Aotearoa we have a highly trained, casual and fixed-term academic workforce who are engaged in long-term cycles of precarity. Among the 760 participants surveyed, more than one-quarter (28.9%) had been precariously employed for five years or longer. Further, nearly sixty percent (59.2%) had accepted extra work to support themselves or their whānau, even when it jeopardised their other responsibilities (e.g., completing their degrees). Over half (52.7%) of all students, and nearly two-thirds (64.4%) of PhD students surveyed, had held three or more employment agreements at a university in the last 12 months. Financial need (71.6%) was most frequently cited as an important factor in participants’ decisions to engage in precarious work, and over half (52.4%) of participants experienced a rise in their living costs due to working from home during the pandemic. Our report also adds further evidence of inequities present in the academic pipeline. Just one in ten Māori (10.8%) and one in thirteen Pasifika (7.7%) participants were PhD graduates, a smaller proportion than the nearly one-third (31.5%) of New Zealand European/Pākehā. Over two-thirds (66.8%) of international students indicated they were employed in the most insecure forms (Casual or fixed-term contracts of six months or less) of precarious work, compared with 60.5% of domestic students. Of those precarious workers completing a PhD, domestic students in our survey were far more likely to be receiving a stipend (73.9%) compared to international students (50%). Further, 63.2% of participants who were international students without a stipend reported that they lacked confidence in having sufficient ongoing academic work in the next 12 months. Instances of discrimination, bullying, and harassment were also reported by survey participants, with 33.7% citing that they had been impacted by such issues. Other workplace safety concerns were evident: nearly half of participants (45.7%) described their workloads as always or often unsustainable and negatively impacting their health and wellbeing. Meanwhile, one-quarter (23.9%) of precarious staff rated their current stress level as an eight, on a scale of zero (no stress) to ten (completely stressed). Two-thirds (66.3%) of participants were not confident they would receive adequate support from their employer in the event of a future crisis (e.g., a natural disaster or outbreak of infectious disease). On this basis, we encourage universities to do better for their casual and fixed-term employees through increasing job security, reducing inequities for Māori and Pasifika precarious staff, and improving conditions for postgraduate students, both domestic and international. In our final recommendations, we implore the government to work alongside universities to realise this change by investigating workloads, increasing, and rebalancing sector funding, and reinstating the postgraduate student allowance.