UvA junior lecturers demand greater consideration for their position in collective bargaining negotiations
Last week, a new collective agreement (cao) was concluded between university employers and employees. Jos Verbrugge argues that the position of junior lecturers has once again been grossly overlooked. “Trade unions need to take a long, hard look at themselves and ask who they actually represent.”
As presumably the most experienced junior lecturer at the UvA, last week I once again had to say goodbye to colleagues without a permanent post. These are professionals with a Basic Teaching Qualification (BKO), whose line managers were keen for them to continue teaching, but who were forced to leave whilst a vacancy for their replacement was advertised online during the final weeks of their contract.
Nothing to show for it
In the collective labour agreement negotiations concluded last week, the trade unions called for permanent appointments for permanent work for lecturers, to prevent this utterly unfair and illogical situation from recurring in the future. They were given nothing in response and are calling this a successful outcome.
That is hardly surprising. To begin with, the position did not originate from the trade unions but from Casual UvA, a growing group of staff who have joined forces to denounce the unfair treatment of early-career academics. Ultimately, via the youth wing of the trade union FNV, the position found its way onto the list of demands, but since then not a word has been said about it. Trade unions ought to take a long, hard look at themselves when staff they are supposed to represent start organising themselves independently of them.
The negotiators who represent trade union interests in the University Local Consultation Committee (UCLO) are, without exception, staff on permanent contracts, and their focus, unfortunately, still appears to be primarily on the interests of other staff on permanent contracts. For instance, one of them let slip in my presence that junior lecturers are “just a D4” who “shouldn’t want a permanent contract at all”. I have never experienced a more embarrassing, humiliating and painful moment in my time at the UvA.
Flexible workforce
The argument you will hear from both the trade unions and the universities is that a “flexible workforce” is needed to prevent reorganisations when student numbers or income decline. This is a non-argument that sounds quite reasonable and plausible but which is actually an attempt to conceal an ugly aspect of a perfidious system.
To begin with, most people will agree that a decline in student numbers should not, by definition, be offset by cutting back on seminar-based teaching, given that – in an age of AI, digitalisation and the growing importance of academic skills – this is precisely a form of teaching that is becoming ever more necessary and important. Moreover, the “flexible workforce” has never been used as a justification for offering temporary contracts to staff in secretariats and teaching offices; it is only in the case of PhD students and junior lecturers that we make such a fuss about it.
Research
The reason seems clear to me: to climb the ranks within a university, research is the only thing that counts; and so a small clique of academics – who like to surround themselves with familiar, permanent faces for the organisational office work – decides that the troublesome teaching and the less inspiring legwork involved in research must be ‘pushed down’ as much as possible towards research group lecturers and PhD students. Rather than a core team with a “flexible outer layer”, the current university could therefore be much better described as a research rocket with a small crew at the very top, pulling the strings in their quest for stardom. Below them lies a large fuel tank full of young researchers and lecturers who are burned up and expelled as efficiently as possible, like cheap fuel.
Rat race
“Yes, but,” I hear you protest, “what do you want then? Not everyone can become a professor.”
To which my reply is: No, perhaps not, but how logical is it to call someone a “distinguished scholar” for life when knowledge and experience are becoming obsolete at an ever-faster rate? How logical is it that everyone just looks upwards when life sometimes takes a turn that means you can’t focus on the rat race of grant applications for a moment?
Education as a side quest
And how sensible is this excessive focus on research? When Vossius and Barlaeus founded the UvA, they did so because they believed that a shared knowledge base unites society. In that philosophy, passing on knowledge and skills is at least as important as acquiring them. Yet this collective labour agreement demonstrates once again that teaching is now viewed more as a burdensome ‘side quest’ by an inward-looking research elite that seems to have become deaf to the social role a university ought to fulfil.
But let’s turn it around for a moment. What would happen if you were to offer junior lecturers and PhD students permanent posts? Wouldn’t that force us to consider how we can facilitate a career based on teaching? Wouldn’t it force us to treat PhD students with greater respect and to think about their prospects after they have completed their PhDs?
And just imagine what would happen if, when income is falling, it were not only the vulnerable young staff – without permanent contracts, without a home and without prospects – who bore the brunt, but if the broad shoulders of the well-paid professors with permanent contracts were also required to shoulder part of the burden. Wouldn’t we start to function more as a team, and place greater value on social security and manageable workloads, if we were all responsible for the well-being of our colleagues? Wouldn’t we pay more attention to public support if those at the top also felt the pain of budget cuts?
Example
I may be “just a D4”, but as a lecturer I have learnt that you can teach a great deal by setting an example. In the same way, universities should understand that the choices they make also set an example for society. Do we want to be yet another example of an established order that, using fallacious arguments, shifts its burdens and uncertainties onto the younger generations, the vulnerable, and staff with no voice in the various decision-making bodies? Or do we want to be a beacon of hope in dark times and, swimming against the tide whilst remaining true to our principles, continue to champion the importance of a common ground and connection?
If it’s the former, so be it. If, on the other hand, you don’t want to walk past that ugly reflection in the mirror with blinders on, and if, like me, you’re deeply ashamed of the way universities treat their younger staff whilst claiming to set an example, then you still have until 10 July to vote against this agreement in principle. You might not be quite “summer-ready” straight away, but I can assure you that you’ll head into the summer in a better frame of mind than the tearful colleagues I had to bid farewell to this week on their last day at work. The choice is yours.
Jos Verbrugge is a junior lecturer psychology at the UvA.
