Horst's space

The following article was recently published in the badger:

Associate Tutors face the summer with uncertainty. In January the university added ATs to the new Higher Education Framework Agreement. This new payment structure resulted in pay cuts for many ATs in HUMS and SOCCUL. In a move which appears to discredit management claims that the cuts were an unforeseen consequence of the implementation of the Framework Agreement, the university has moved to prevent Tutors appealing against the decision. In February the university suspended its own appeals procedure, pending, it was claimed, a review of the pay settlement. To the best of Tutors’ knowledge the review group has yet to be constituted, there is no deadline for a report, and there is no information as to whether ATs will be represented on the group. While the university has promised to make up for Tutors’ loss of earnings for this academic year, ATs face uncertainty about October. Now, as teaching arrangements for next year are being put in place, ATs face the prospect of having to accept or reject teaching without knowing either at what rate they will be paid, or what the university considers the job to amount to.

Associate Tutors work on casual basis, with no long-term job security. As the university drags it heels on this issue, the cut in pay for these already poorly paid members of staff looks increasingly like a cynical attack on an exposed group. HUMS and SOCCUL Associate Tutors are calling for the university either to immediately re-open the appeals procedure or to rapidly and transparently conduct a review, so that Tutors are able to make informed judgements about their future. This review should report before the end of the summer term.

ATs pay concerns are twofold. First, the university has changed the way it calculates seminar and office hour rates (multipliers) resulting in a cut in the rate paid for office hours and lecture attendance of £4.63/hour. For many Tutors the marginal (£1.71) increase in the seminar rate fails to offset this cut (neither will the marginal increase in holiday pay).

Second, the majority of ATs in SOCCUL and HUMS have been added to the university’s new pay scale on Grade 5. Tutors consider this grade an insult. According to the criteria for Grade 5, Associate Tutors deliver schemes of work that are developed by faculty, do not develop teaching materials themselves, and have no impact on course development. Students will know that this is a nonsense. ATs spend, and are expected to spend a great deal of time developing handouts, exercises, and researching appropriate audio-visual material, as well as contributing to the development of course programmes.

The university’s grading assumes that associate tutors are handed seminar packs brimming with tasks exercises, questions and handouts by members of faculty. But as both faculty and ATs know this simply doesn’t happen. The successful functioning of undergraduate teaching in HUMS and SOCCUL depends on the good will of ATs, in particular on their willingness to work for far more hours than they are actually paid in order to deliver stimulating seminars. This good will has been thrown back in the Tutors’ faces.

Increasing numbers of departments across the two schools are expressing their support for the Associate Tutors. The majority of faculty members know how much hard work this casualised workforce does for the university and are being supportive of their junior colleagues. Tutors call on all departments that have not done so already to come out and state clearly their support for their ATs.

If with this grading and pay cut the university is signalling a desire to move to seminars-by-numbers, it should come out and say explicitly to students that their education is to be systematically dumbed down. They should make clear to members of faculty that from October they will be expected to spend hours of additional time preparing comprehensive schemes of work.

University management need to stop dragging their feet and try and restore some of the ground they’ve lost. If they want teaching at Sussex conducted by a demeaned, disillusioned and poorly paid workforce, then they simply need to hold their course. Students and Tutors alike will in the end vote with their feet – and they will be right to do so.