Casual change on campus

August 8, 2001
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BY VIV MILEY

The number of casual staff in Australian universities has more than doubled since 1990, a report by the Australian Vice-Chancellors, Committee has revealed.

The report, released on July 20, showed that the proportion of casual university staff has more than doubled over the 1990s, from 7% to 15%. Most affected are non-academic staff and staff who are only engaged in teaching.

While teaching and research staff, the largest staff group, remained steady at 98-99% of the full-time or fractional full-time positions, the number of staff has only increased by 3000 over the 1990s to 23,000.

AVCC chief executive John Mullarvey has said the increase in the number of casual positions was the result of government cuts to university operating grants and, associated with that, the problem of attracting people to academic positions due to inferior salary levels.

In response, federal minister for education and training David Kemp stated "universities have just as much money as they ever had from the operating grants to employ staff".

According to Kemp, the reason behind the increase in casualisation is "a result of the universities' own decisions. The universities have been seeking increased flexibility in staffing so that they could respond to the changing demands of students for courses and of industries for skilled professionals".

While commonwealth funding has increased in dollar terms, as a percentage of gross domestic product, total commonwealth outlays to universities have declined by 0.3% since the Howard government's election in 1996. Market turmoil and the falling price of the Australian dollar have also meant universities have had to do more with less.

Commenting on the effect of increased casualisation on teaching and staff workloads, National Tertiary Education Union assistant secretary Ted Murphy said: "On a teaching level, casuals are much more limited in the range of tasks that they can do. And insofar as teaching is informed by research, when you do have such a growth in casual employment, then you are changing the nature of teaching."

In a related matter, the University of Tasmania has put to non-academic staff an enterprise agreement which would allow it to pay below-award wages to casual staff.

The agreement, put to workers on July 25, would reduce the minimum non-student casual rate of pay to below the rate paid in 1999, meaning, if the agreement is approved, casuals will receive $1.37 less an hour.

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