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A TOXIC combination of increasing workloads and temporary and zero-hours contracts is forcing university and college teachers to work unpaid for the equivalent of up to four days a week.
The University and College Union (UCU) said its survey of staff found that 93 per cent of college workers and 87 per cent of university workers say workload has increased over the past three years.
UCU surveyed 13,000 workers, some of whom provided first-hand reports of the impact of the workload crisis.
The union has accused employers of “dining off the good will and dedication of staff” and of overseeing “grotesque levels of exploitation.”
More than half of university and college teachers are employed on insecure term-to-term contracts.
Around 50,000 staff at UK universities recently staged 13 days of strike action over workload pressures and exploitation.
Many staff are currently undertaking a marking boycott.
A strike ballot also opened last week at 33 colleges in England over low pay and high workloads.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “To treat staff in this way, all the while holding down pay and attacking terms and conditions, shows the extent to which grotesque levels of exploitation have become commonplace in education.
“These findings must be a wake-up call to employers and governments, not least the one in Westminster, which claims it has put skills at the heart of a ‘levelling up’ agenda.
“If this workload crisis is not addressed with urgency, all education leaders and ministers will have done to set the sector up to fail.
“The survey responses also show that toxic levels of administrative work are a prime cause of unmanageable workloads across every setting including in prison education.”
