Unsafe work is not just a problem of sometimes having work and sometimes not having work. Insecurity affects the way work happens: it changes paid or unpaid time, it hinders career planning, and it goes deep into your mind.
The more workers understand that they are competing for a few jobs, the more pressure they will have to work overtime and unpaid overtime to extend contracts or build resumes.
The more people are hired to complete specific tasks, the more likely they are to develop new skills in their own time and use their annual leave for research.
It forces workers to focus on the knowledge and skills required for new contracts, rather than long-term public benefits. When your evening is spent correcting students’ essays, it is difficult to behave like an active citizen.
Radicalism
But how bad is the situation-isn’t the university full of easy work and academic freedom? Not really.
A total of 67% of researchers have signed a fixed-term contract, which ends on the scheduled date. 41% of pure teaching staff are paid by the hour.
More than 3,500 scholars have signed zero-hour contracts. Women, ethnic minorities and scholars with disabilities are particularly affected.
There are even no figures on the qualifications of non-academic staff, such as librarians, professional teams, student support staff, porters, and cleaners. The conditions for continuing education are equally difficult, but that is another matter.
In general, university faculty and staff are opposing a new round of pension cuts. Since 2012, real wages have been cut by 20%. Predictably, these unstable workers did not put climate activism as their top priority.
Decarburization
There is often a problem in trade unions that marginalized workers are spoken and talked about instead of being heard directly.
In this case, temporary workers from higher education and continuing education have been organized clearly: sustainability is a temporary worker issue.
In March 2021, at a public meeting of union members on temporary contracts, democratically voted that their representatives should treat climate change actions as supporting temporary members, rather than creating tensions with their needs.
At the same time, a self-organizing “Climate Action Network” brings together volunteers from unions to establish cooperation between insecure jobs, students, retired members, and those with permanent contracts.
By incorporating climate and ecological emergencies into all trade union training and negotiations, they decarbonize the trade union’s own activities, and support branches to mobilize local actions, thereby increasing the importance of climate and ecological emergencies, including international climate justice.
Sustainable
The combination of anti-temporization and climate activists persuaded representatives of Congress, the union’s highest decision-making body, to commit unions to promote a green new deal that reduces temporaryization.
This will require employers to reduce their environmental impact at the source and pay for transition costs themselves, including paid retraining time, rather than transferring costs to employees.
The importance and success of this campaign initiated by anti-leisure and environmental activists goes beyond the internal politics of a small trade union.
The member’s mandate for climate action enables UCU to promote the improvement of the entire labor movement.
Agreeing with the recommendations made, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) now voted to support the integration of education for sustainable development into the entire education system.
Campaign
It also promised the union to carry out its own education and training activities to support its members in understanding and responding to climate change.
With a total of 5.5 million members, this decision is a historic step forward for the environmental movement and how the labor movement equips its members to cope with fundamental changes in climate collapse.
Leading by example, when UCU members from 58 universities went on strike in the first week of December, UCU actually gathered students, faculty and staff into a national training program to support the development of a “fossil-free career” and mobilize us New Deal for the University.
The lesson of this anti-arbitrary environmental activism is expected to inspire environmentalists to engage with more unions.
Unions are increasingly diverting important campaign and educational resources to take action to combat climate collapse.
voice
Their success will depend on how many people are willing to join them and fight for progress in the workplace. In this regard, eliminating temporary workers will give people time and resources to fight climate collapse.
To many people who care about environmental issues, the scale of trade unions and formal democratic procedures may seem daunting, even mysterious.
But the UCU example shows that a small group of activists can drive huge changes, and they decide, instead of being talked about, they will organize to speak for themselves.
SecondEnvironmental awareness has increased, and people are ready to hear about previously marginalized solutions—as long as they strengthen the power to fight for fairness and good work.
Any environmentalist who agrees that a solution to the climate emergency requires a more equal and safe workplace should join their union and speak out.
This author
Dr. Peter Wood is an associate lecturer in environmental research at the Open University and a co-chair of the UCU Anti-discrimination Committee.He is on twitter @peterhwood.
