A lecturer at the University of Bristol has said casual contracts and cuts to pensions mean he will never be able to afford to retire. While another lecturer and PhD student has said the salary he is paid by the university is so low - and some of it he has to give back in tuition fees - he cannot afford to put the heating on in his home.
They are just two members of staff who are on strike this week over an ongoing national dispute impacting lecturers across the country. Union members are participating in the third round of strike action this academic year, along with 26 other UK universities also participating this week.
Their frustration over decreasing salaries is coupled with anger over last month's cuts to pensions. University staff across the country will be retiring on an average of 35 per cent less than they had anticipated, according to the union. Bristol University law lecturer and PhD student, Kit Fotheringham, is on a casual contract. He told Bristol Live that he is effectively working two full time jobs for £16,000 a year.
READ MORE: Bristol University students occupy iconic Wills Memorial Building as staff continue to strike
Despite his tuition fees effectively paying for his own salary and working all hours of the day and night, he said he can’t afford to heat his mould-infested, rented house share. Although the stress has impacted his health to the extent that his doctor has advised that he take sick leave, his casual contract does not allow him to take full sick pay.
Kit said: “I am doing a PhD and teaching so I’m effectively doing two full-time jobs worth of work for half time pay. I’m in this building on weekends and just to get through the preparation alone it has taken me until 10 o'clock some evenings.
“We’ve had such a huge expansion in student numbers, meaning that you have to plan different activities and with a subject like law you have to update all the time because things change. We get a lot more students coming to us with queries and problems, especially mental health and of course we want to be there for them but that takes time.
“Pre-covid we would have had 300 students so we were already at capacity as a law school. We’ve now got well over 500 students, that’s too many. We’ve not had the same increase in the level of staff.
“I have to house-share and our energy bills doubled. We’ve got mould in our property, our landlord said, ‘you need to put the heating on,’ I said we can’t afford to put the heating on.
“We’re paying an arm and a leg for the rent, the landlord doesn’t want to do anything about it and tells us to turn the heating on which we can’t afford to.
“Because of burnout, because I’ve been overworked, I have had to suspend my PHD on two occasions. My GP has said, ‘I want to sign you off from work’ and I said, ‘I can’t, I can’t afford not to work because I wont get sick pay.’
“Being part student and part worker means that I’m recycling money in and out of the university. What I earn, I pay in tuition fees. I get the worst of both worlds.”
Kit’s frustrations are not unique to younger members of staff, his colleague, Jeff Pocock has been on casual contracts for the last twenty years and although he now has a permanent contract, he has not been given full-time hours.
Jeff has to work a second job “to make ends meet”. He is currently working 50 hours per week which he said is “exhausting”.
Jeff, who began his career 20 years ago in Further Education, moved into Higher Education because he believed the pay and conditions would be better. He said there is now only a minority who enjoy high salaries in universities, while the majority struggle on part-time or casual contracts.
“Every other university friend that I have is fine but none of them work in education, they work in finance or IT. They have lovely big houses and no money worries.
“There is a minority who is earning but the rest of us are not earning. There is a two-tier university staff system.
“The cutting of the pensions for example, that just leaves me with no retirement whatsoever. I don’t think I’ll have a retirement, I just think I’ll be teaching until I drop dead.
“We weren’t able to have children any earlier, I’m an older dad because we couldn’t afford it. On an hourly paid contract you can have a child but you can’t raise money for a mortgage.
“As lots of people realise nowadays, having a child when you’re renting it puts much more pressure on you. We decided to delay it as much as we could.
"I have to travel four and a half hours because I couldn't afford to live in Bristol. I'm up at 5.30am and often not home until 9pm.
“That’s my life, I’m an academic and I’m surviving but the younger generation are not going to want to do it. This is an open secret and it’s becoming public knowledge now that we’re all suffering.
“Students are suffering because the more experienced staff will leave and the ones that stay are all stressed out and struggling to pay the bills and they’ll see it and they won't themselves benefit.”
Another issue addressed at the rally held by Bristol University UCU members at the Victoria Rooms on Monday 28 March was that of grant funded staff. They highlighted the fact that some lecturers could be working in such a way for 10 years.
Staff who relied on grants to fund their salary could go months without any salary and end up moving up and down the country each year to remain in academia. The insecurity of these contracts means that they are not able to get a mortgage and need to reapply for job roles each year.
Kit, who alongside his teaching and research volunteers as one of Bristol UCU’s anti-casualisation officers, said that the university has refused to discuss the research only contracts, despite the huge financial benefits they bring to the university.
“These contracts mean that you’re in a job that’s going to have a termination date within a year and you might have to move across the country just to keep a job. People get trapped in those kinds of contracts for 10 years and can’t afford to pay a mortgage or can’t get a mortgage.
“You get contracts stopping over the summer and then you’ve got nothing coming in. We want the employer to talk to us about these issues and admit that it’s a problem but they’ve absolutely disagreed to talk about.
“HR at the University of Bristol, came to a trade union member event after being invited. Members were asking questions about the contract, their response was that it is a good thing that the university is getting all that grant money but they can’t do anything about those contracts.
“Which is just so callous coming from someone who works in the HR department and has a full time job and a permanent contract which sticks in the core a bit when they are saying there isn’t a problem with casualisation.”
Kit said that other than the Human Resource department joining them for a few trade union member events, they have felt largely ignored by management at the university. He said that the only time the university felt the need to talk to them was after the students occupied Wills Memorial building in support of the strike on February 28, 2022.
“That was the first time that the university thought, we need to talk to people about this. It goes to show that the University is more scared of it’s students than scared of paying staff properly which is almost laughable,” added Kit.
There is likely to be further strikes in the summer
The five-day Bristol strike is set to continue until Friday, with an April Fool's Day rally planned at 11am during which members, students and supporters are encouraged to show up at the Victoria Rooms in fancy dress. National strike action started last week when 40 universities took industrial action in an ongoing dispute over pension and pay cuts and an increase in insecure and zero-hour contracts.
The University and College Union (UCU) is likely to be taking strike action for the remainder of 2022, including action short of strike, such as a marking and assessment boycott. They say this could stop hundreds of thousands of students from graduating, unless an agreement can be made between the university and the union.
What has been called 'the four fights' also opposes an increase in workload, with many staff saying they are worn out due to regular unpaid overtime. Union members at the University of Sheffield International College called off their strike action on Monday after the union reached an agreement with employers, but Bristol's action is ongoing.
The UCU is demanding that universities reverse the pension cuts and re-enter negotiations. They are also demanding an end to race and gender pay gaps and and end to the casual contracts impacting over 70,000 academics across the UK.
A recent report conducted by the UCU found that the majority of the 7,000 university staff who took part in the survey were not optimistic about the future of academia and were considering leaving the sector. In the coming months, university staff could be joined by college staff who are also not happy with their pay and conditions.
Although this year’s round of pay negotiations are fast approaching, university staff are still in dispute over last year’s one per cent pay increase, which campaigners say is effectively is a pay cut with inflation currently at its highest rate for 30 years. In real terms university staff are earning 25 per cent less than they did in 2009.
University's response
A University of Bristol spokesperson said: “Regrettably, the University and College Union (UCU) has planned further industrial action at the University of Bristol and other UK universities this week. It’s part of the ongoing and complex national dispute over staff pensions and pay.
"We have been listening carefully to our staff's concerns and today [monday, 28, March, 2022] published a joint statement with Bristol UCU which outlines how we will be working together to lobby for key changes to be made to the USS pension scheme. Ultimately, we want to secure a future valuation outcome that is sustainable and that more colleagues are likely to support.
"It is important that the next valuation is concluded in the shortest possible timescale to deliver potential benefits to staff and rebuild their confidence in USS.
"As a University, we are proud of the way that we have worked with the local branch of UCU and the other trade unions to make things better for staff. We are open to continuing the conversation and being pro-active in addressing their concerns.
"During the strike action, we hope that most teaching and learning will proceed as usual but ask that students keep a close eye on their email for any last-minute changes to their timetable as academic colleagues do not have to inform us in advance if they are taking action. Libraries, study spaces, and wellbeing services remain open and available to students.
"We appreciate that some students may be worried about the impact of the dispute on their studies. If they have any concerns, we’re asking they raise these with their school office or personal tutor in the first instance."
