The Academic Gig Economy: Defending Casualised Workers in the Lockdown
View video here
The jobs massacre has started, fightback now!
- Welcome: Mark Abel,UCU Left Secretary, Brighton University UCU
- Chair: Bee Hughes Sessional lecturer LJMU & UCU Branch Committee
Panelists
- Richard Burgon MP
- #Coronacontract petition organisers: Jordan Osserman, fixed-term Postdoctoral researcher, Birkbeck & Aimee Le, Fixed-term Lecturer Exeter
- Elaine White, UCU Rep Bradford College, Chair of the UCU Anti-casualisation Committee & NEC
- Lesley Kane, UCU Secretary Open University & NEC
- Jordi López, IWGB Organiser and Caseworker
Join the national webinar
7.30pm Monday 6 April.
Hosted by UCU Left
We want to host as many campaigns and branches as possible.
Join the webinar and raise your hand to let everyone know what is happening.
Broadcast live on UCU Left Facebook
Organising resistance to attacks on casualised workers’ rights and jobs under Corona is urgent.
The HE strikes brought to the fore collective resistance to the scandal of short-term and insecure employment in our colleges and universities. But with the coronavirus crisis casualised education workers are under additional threat. Bristol, Sussex and Newcastle universities are laying off thousands of lecturers, researchers and support staff. More than 50% of our universities and colleges are staffed by insecure contracts. Many hourly paid staff have had teaching cancelled as colleges and universities have shut down. Staff on agency, short-term, and fixed term contracts are threatened with unemployment during the lockdown. Outsourced migrant workers and agency staff working in catering, cleaning, security, pastoral and academic support, many of them low paid, face an even more hostile environment.
This UCU Left webinar will discuss how we can collectively defend casualised workers during this crisis and organise networks of resistance now. What lessons can we learn from efforts to fight gig economy in other sectors? What demands should UCU branches be making of our managements? How can we force employers not to lay off any staff while the pandemic lasts? What are the pitfalls of colleges and universities furloughing staff under the government’s job retention scheme? And what are the implications for permanent staff if casualised staff are attacked? What does this mean for the for fights, the pay gaps and equality?
The task to defend casualised workers is urgent. Please join the webinar and share the invitation widely.
Please sign and share these petitions:
#CoronaContract: Casualised staff demand universities guarantee two years’ work
Stop Sussex from Sacking their Staff! Covid-19
Open Letter – Covid-19 demands a rethink of Higher Education Funding
Please get in contact to add your petition or campaign.
The next webinar will focus on the new managerialism, homeworking and protecting our digital content rights.