Work overload in universities could compromise quality
10 November 1998
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has welcomed the national campaign on Work Overload initiative launched by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in Melbourne this week. \"Say No to Work Overload\" is the message of the week long campaign which has been organised to highlight the increasing problems associated with work overload across a number of industries.
\"The tertiary education sector shares concerns about work overload,\" said NTEU General Secretary Grahame McCulloch. \"University staff, both general and academic, have borne the brunt of some of the most brutal funding cuts of any public sector over the past few years. Not only that, student numbers have risen over the same period and so fewer staff are straining to cover increasingly unrealistic workloads.\"
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the tertiary education sector has the second highest level of workforce casualisation in the country. \"Not only does this create stressful working conditions for those staff who are not offered secure employment, it also increases the core workload for the decreasing complement of full time staff.\"
\"Clearly we are concerned for our members,\" Mr McCulloch said, \"but we also concerned for the reputation of the industry and the quality of education offered to students.\"
\"Students have been paying more for less in recent years - for example fees have increased but staff numbers are down and class sizes have increased. And this situation is not passing unnoticed by the students themselves,\" he added. \"As fees have increased, there has been a justifiable demand that quality must be maintained.\"
\"In this context, it simply does not make sense from a management perspective to expect the same standards to be delivered to increasing numbers of students with less staff resources.\"
Anecdotal accounts from General and Academic staff about unreasonable workloads have become so common that the Union has recently commissioned an independent survey to assess current trends in universities. It is anticipated that the results will have input into the third round of enterprise bargaining which is due to commence.
An issue for Academic staff in particular is the need to develop strategies which encourage more reasonable hours of work but which do not allow management to regulate their time in ways that undermine the professional autonomy of their positions. \"For instance, research is a basic requirement for career development for an academic\" Mr McCulloch noted, \"and if time for that work is not structured into an employee’s workload, if all of their time is assigned to teaching and administration, then that individual is being denied the opportunity to work for promotion.\"
\"Clearly there are some management issues to be addressed in work overload problems in universities,\" Mr McCulloch noted. \"But,\" he added, \"make no mistake - the real problem is a Federal Government which continues to underfund the infrastructural needs of tertiary education.\"
\"This is no less than an abrogation of a fundamental duty of care to both individuals and the community as a whole because the sector plays a key role in enhancing employment opportunities for the former and in the overall economic development of the latter. These responsibilities cannot be met on the backs of a demoralised and under-resourced workforce.\"