Flex teachers are tired of it
While universities are promising more permanent positions, job boards are full of temporary, high-demand snippets of jobs, but no job security. Flex teachers no longer accept it.
Picture: Type tank
The University of Groningen is looking for five to ten philosophy teachers, each with their own specialization, such as ethics or the history of philosophy. They will teach bachelor's and master's students for a minimum of one and a maximum of three days a week. Candidates must have a PhD, have extensive teaching experience, have a perfect command of English and be satisfied with an annual contract and scale 10. While under the collective labor agreement, PhD candidates should receive at least scale 11.
Universities pull out all the stops to prevent teachers with only teaching duties from getting a permanent appointment
Just before the summer holidays, the job site Academictransfer.com offers many more snippets of jobs in which high demands are placed on applicants, without any job security in return. For example, Radboud University is looking for psychology lecturers who can supervise two to three first-year working groups. The workgroup supervisors are appointed from 0,18 to 0,24 FTE for 9 to 12 months, but these hours are not evenly distributed. The future teachers should take into account peak load from March to July when the assessment of students takes place.
Utrecht University has a vacancy for a PhD in Turkology who can teach the course 'The Ottoman Empire and the Origin of the Modern Middle East' from 1 September to 15 November. This concerns an appointment of 0,47 FTE for 3,5 months. The Turkologist may be able to teach another Bachelor's course from 1 February to 15 April. Reward: scale 10 or 11.
Jan Overwijk is taking a fight on Twitter against the cut jobs that universities offer. “They're not even jobs, I call them odd jobs,” says the social philosopher who will be awarded his doctorate at the University of Amsterdam this fall. Overwijk is involved in the 0.7 action group, a collective of teachers and researchers who work on temporary contracts. “We are called 0.7 because that is the maximum appointment you get if you only teach. With such a teaching job you already lose more than 40 hours a week. So you work full-time for 70 percent of the salary. That is not an official policy, but everyone knows that this is common at universities.”
Fluff jobs
Overwijk itself is a bit better off. He has been a lecturer in liberal arts and sciences at Utrecht University for a year, a full-time appointment with a term of four years. That is why he dares to speak out openly about the bad employership of universities. It bothers him that they keep offering 'fluff jobs', when there is plenty of work for decent, permanent jobs. The number of students has been growing for twenty years. That is why more and more temporary teachers are being recruited who only teach. They do teach at a university, but they are not university lecturers because they do not conduct research. As a result, they cannot climb the academic career ladder.
Over the past five years, the number of teaching onliney teachers by 22 percent to 4700. Nationally, 60 percent of these flexible teachers have a temporary contract, according to figures from the Association of Universities. At Utrecht University this is even 90 percent, Erasmus University and Leiden University follow with 79 and 78 percent.
“Education is organized in such a way that temporary teachers teach a subject for three years, spend a lot of time there because it is the first time that they teach and have to stop again if they should be given a permanent appointment after three contracts,” says Overwijk. . “Then another flexible teacher takes over the course and he has to familiarize himself with it again. That is a very inefficient way of working that is not only bad for the teachers, but also for students and education.”
We no longer do free overtime. It's not a hobby
Flex teachers have kept quiet for a long time. “It is very difficult for individual teachers to say no to these silly jobs and free overtime,” says Overwijk. “They even do research in their spare time to keep a chance at a career at university.”
“The situation of temporary teachers is unacceptable, it is a form of exploitation,” says Tim de Winkel, PhD candidate in the media and performance studies research group at Utrecht University. He is one of the founders of the 0.7 network, which consists of one hundred to two hundred active members at seven universities. “The problem, of course, is underfunding. This spring, consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers calculated that universities are annually short of 1,1 billion euros. But they pass that on to employees who are in the weakest position: the teachers and researchers at the bottom of the academic ladder. They succumb to the pressure of work. I see more and more people around me failing with a burnout. I am really angry about that.”
De Winkel wants to give these vulnerable colleagues a voice. “I am a PhD student and have a four-year contract. So I have a bit more security than temporary teachers.” 0.7 is preparing for 'unsympathetic actions'. “We're going to stop helping keep this sickening system up and running. We are going to cause disruptions.”
revolving door
Universities often pull out all the stops to prevent teachers with only teaching duties from getting a permanent appointment. The temporary lecturers are desperately needed to keep education going, but they do not fit in with the research-driven education that Dutch universities have in mind. In that classic model, students are taught by teachers who spend a significant amount of their time on research. Leiden University therefore applies the policy that in principle only lecturers with a PhD can be given a permanent appointment. Because the vast majority of flex teachers do not have time to do research, they do not have a PhD and they have to look for other work after three temporary contracts.
The judge denounced the revolving door construction with which Leiden prevents teachers from getting a permanent appointment
Except for Arnout van Ree, who forced a permanent appointment in court in July. The lecturer of the fast-growing international studies program took Leiden University to court after his temporary appointment was extended by two years. Because Van Ree's contract had already been extended twice before, he would automatically be given a permanent appointment. To prevent this, the university changed the end date of his current contract. As a result, there was no question of a new contract, the university thought. The subdistrict court judge put a thick line through this reasoning. Any change in a contract is a new contract. By changing the end date, Arnout van Ree has a permanent appointment with retroactive effect.
The judge also criticized the revolving door construction with which Leiden prevents lecturers from getting a permanent position. After three temporary appointments, lecturers are employed by the university employment agency Jobmotion for six months, after which they can be rehired by the university. A trick that other universities also use. In doing so, they stretch the rules to the extreme. Under the guise of a flexible shell, they present a large part of the employees with an uncertain future and create a dichotomy in society, the subdistrict court stated.
Morally reprehensible
The ruling is not only a win for Van Ree, but also an important achievement for Casual Leiden, the movement of flexible teachers founded last year to which Van Ree is a member. Casual Leiden originated from international studies where many flexible teachers work, but now also has supporters at other Leiden faculties and other universities. The Utrecht 0.7 network and Casual Leiden joined forces this summer and hope to set up a national organization with local departments under the name Casual Academy that will fight against the extreme flexibility.
Labor law and European regulations do not have to give way to your own policy
“My lawyer was really shocked by the abuses at the universities,” says Arnout van Ree. “What universities are doing to keep lecturers on a temporary basis is not legally correct and is also morally reprehensible. Universities do not receive enough money for research, but that does not mean that they have to maintain a flexible shell of 70 percent.”
The fact that Leiden University says that temporary lecturers cannot become permanent employees because they do not have a PhD made little impression on the judge. Of course, employment law and European regulations do not have to give way to this own policy.
Moreover, it is a visionless policy, according to Elisa Da Vía, one of the initiators of Casual Leiden. “Leiden University strives for research-driven education, but has very old-fashioned ideas about how to implement it. We are second-rate teachers because we do not work on scientific publications, which are often read by almost no one. While we teach undergraduate students research skills, we teach them academic writing, but that doesn't count. Here you are not a real scientist if you teach alone, while at a university you are always busy with science,” says the Italian who worked at American universities for ten years before coming to Leiden three years ago. “We simply want more permanent contracts, also for teachers with exclusively teaching duties. They do structural work, if they are fired, new temporary teachers are already available. Permanent jobs are part of this structural work.”
To strike
Enforcement requires collective action and that is difficult because flexible teachers are concerned with survival. Van Ree: “Temporary teachers work very hard to prove themselves and they are also always looking for other work. As a result, you have no energy left to be an activist as well.” People with a temporary contract are also difficult to organize, explains Da Vía. “We now have an active group, but its composition is constantly changing. Next year these people will be gone again because they have a temporary contract. This also makes organizing a counterforce difficult. That is why we are now launching the Casual Academy and reaching out to student organisations, trade unions and permanent employees.”
This article previously appeared in the September issue of the Education Magazine. As a member of the AOb you will receive the Education magazine monthly with stimulating interviews, revealing investigative journalism and tips that you can apply immediately. Become a member.
