- Conference
- 2025 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 10 October 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes UNISON’s long-standing and well established campaigning for better, more secure terms and conditions for all workers. Millions of workers in the UK remain in insecure forms of work, with a TUC study in 2022 showing that 3.7 million workers in the UK were in insecure forms of work such as zero hours contracts, agency or other casual work or lower paid self-employed arrangements.
Conference notes that one form of insecure employment which is particularly prevalent in higher education is the use of fixed term contracts. While government statistics in 2022 estimated that 5% of the entire working population were in temporary employment, the proportion in higher education is much higher. 2022 HESA statistics indicate that 14.1% of non-academic staff were on fixed term contracts, showing that insecure employment of this sort is a particular feature of the higher education sector.
Conference also notes that this form of insecure employment is more common for Black workers, with government statistics stating that, across the whole economy “12% of black employees were in temporary employment – the highest percentage out of all ethnic groups“. It is also much more common for women workers to be on fixed term contracts versus male workers, regardless of ethnicity. Insecure employment is therefore an important equality issue, as well as a question of basic employment rights.
Conference notes the campaigning of UCU on this matter, with the problem being even more pronounced for staff on academic contracts, and the efforts to push UCEA to engage on this issue via clauses in the joint union pay claim.
Conference feels that UNISON should make this a key campaigning aim for higher education specifically, and resolves to ask the service group executive to:
1)Seek guidance and all necessary data to understand the root cause of the use of fixed term contracts for non-academic staff in higher education, including where the similarities and differences are with the situation of academic staff
2)Include information on best practice for bargaining on employment status in information shared with branches, including how best to support individual members in situations where they may have a potential case to insist on a permanent contract
3)Develop a set of demands for negotiations with UCEA specifically around the forms of fixed term contract in higher education, and including the equality implications informed by closer analysis of available higher education workforce data
4)Work with UCU on ensuring joint demands to UCEA around fixed term contracts are fully inclusive of all staff groups, as informed by the above analysis of the root cause for insecure employment amongst the groups of staff that UNISON represents