Overtime… July 27, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Here’s a piece from the SBP from earlier in the year, and in its own way it is very depressing. Under the headline “Employers ignoring overtime” it says:
The majority of Irish professionals are receiving nothing in return for their overtime, a survey by recruitment consultants Robert Walters has found.
A total of 600 professionals took part in the survey, and were asked how their employer recognised the overtime hours they worked.
Some 62 per cent said that they got no recognition for extra hours worked. The situation has improved mildly in comparison to last year, when 66 per cent of respondents reported no rewards for overtime.
Okay, and for those who do get ‘recognition’ how does that work?
Of those who are rewarded, 12 per cent were paid overtime while a further 13 per cent got time off in lieu. The remainder saw their extra work recognised through career progression while a tiny percentage received gifts from their employers.
‘‘The days of working nine-to-five are long gone. With the majority of Irish professionals working longer hours for no extra remuneration, employers demand more out of existing staff in a downturn, and many would expect their employees to complete their workload irrespective of standard working hours,’’ said Louise Campbell, managing director of Robert Walters Ireland.
The way this operates is on so many levels. If ‘professionals’ are expected, and expect, to work hours in excess of the norm for no extra pay, or time off in lieu, then they will doubtless expect the same of subordinates, subordinates who are paid much less handsomely than they. But what, I wonder is a professional? I was told entirely seriously some years back that people who did the work I do are ‘professionals’ and therefore don’t join unions. This by a colleague. I was completely unable to get a sense of what the work that we did was that it justified that term? Was it third-level qualifications? The person who made the assertion hadn’t been and hadn’t any. Neither had another person doing the same job. Was it the nature of the work itself? Well, the slightest acquaintance with the potential wage spread during the boom from prospective employers would indicate that one might be remunerated across a scale ranging from well below the average industrial wage to a fair bit above it. And we weren’t being paid much in excess of it IIRC, if at all.
That the statement was backed up with ‘people like us don’t join unions’ perhaps serves to suggest the person had a certain sense of class linkages to union membership. And that may well have been true. But regardless it clearly meant there was a set of expectations as to what professionals might expect that would set them aside, and perhaps implicitly above other workers. But again, quizzing this individual as to their working life both in the job and in previous jobs seemed to indicate an alignment with the range of somewhat exploitative practices listed in the SBP article. Long hours, well past 9-5, no overtime or other remuneration for extra hours worked, no clear benefit to a nebulous status.
I never received a satisfactory answer. And in fairness we all wound up joining the union. But given that people considerably better paid than we and with greater supposed ‘status’ than we had were members too that proved nothing one way or another.
Anyhow, that attitude, I think bleeds into the no over time approach as well. We’re professionals (never mind the nebulous nature of that term, and the middling or worse wages) and that means we take one for the team, again and again.
I’ve never had too much of a problem working past five (or whatever time) if something needs to be finished up. But if one is working much past five (and much itself is a loaded term) regularly and for long periods of time then the problem lies not so much in the worker as in the work that has been allocated. Either there’s too great a demand or insufficient resources in terms of personnel or equipment. And it also comes back to the fact that while I value the work I’ve done over the years in both public and private sectors that is only one part of the equation.
And it seems to me that the attitudes described in the SBP article speak of serious dislocations in the work environment, and not to the benefit of workers.
The professions, especially what might be termed the ‘classical professions’, do have unions; they just do not refer to them as such. Instead you have ‘council’, ‘society’, and so forth. There is some difference in that these bodies can also act as regulator, but their activities as a union should not be in any doubt.
They are also the only legal closed shops left.
And even there, neo-liberalism would like to wipe such “restrictive practices’ from the page of time..
This is more likely to be done by stealth and gradual erosion of pay and conditions than by a frontal assault. In the upper reaches of academia you can still find a few ‘little emperors’ of the old school. At the bottom of the academic pyramid, however, much of the actual donkey work is done by a casualised workforce on short-term contracts, or sometimes no contracts at all. . . with all that that implies.
Quite true: UK universities have a clause in the contract saying that academics are opted out of the working time directive. The only limit we have on our hours is that we are not paid for weekends (we know this because when we go on strike, our pay is deducted at 1/260th per day)
I think the key problem lies, as noted above, in the fact that people have adopted these attitudes for themselves. It’s not just working past 5, it’s spending 10 minutes gulping down a sandwich for lunch while continuing to work at your desk, or skipping lunch, or checking and responding to your email at all hours of the day, or on holiday. On top of which, lots of people end up not taking their full holiday entitlement either. The sense in which I hear the term professional being used to justify this the most is not that professionals don’t join unions, but rather that as professionals, the job gets done, even if it means working far beyond requirements, or what you are getting paid for. As a result, people’s productivity rises massively for no extra pay.
There’s a Laffer curve for that:
http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/33/2/189.short
Well I dont want to get into the heavily overloaded professional moniker, but for new-economy knowledge workers, a 5pm finish time is virtually unknown.
Partly this productivity explosion has been enabled by technology, but mostly its driven by a realization on the part of the workers themselves that they are competing in a global marketplace.
If the mothership is in Seattle or the Bay area, one the few advantages we have left over competing outposts in Latvia or Israel is the slight daily cross-over between the PST and GMT working day. And even that only occurs if people are prepared to be flexible and not down tools promptly at 5pm.
In terms of not being paid for the extra productivity, the point is the baseline is not some artificially low, pre-technology local norm … instead those workers are measured against their super-productive international colleagues, so its more a matter of just barely keeping up as opposed to massive leaps ahead.
People who I know who’ve gone to work in Japan in technology companies say that a lot of the day sleeping at their desks so I’m not sure what that tells us.
I’m also amazed, as Fergal points out below, that a stereotype of one sector is taken as reflective of the economy as a whole.
As for the 9-5 thing, that’s clearly just standing in for contracted hours, rather than to be taken literally. Which kind of makes most of what you say irrelevant.
And the point, seeing as you’ve spectacularly missed it, is that people who have terms and conditions set out in their contracts are being forced to violate them for no recompense. The consequence is that they are effectively working for nothing. That’s the case whether people work long hours in high-tech firms, or the same hours but with double or treble the number of students, or are allocated less time to do the same amount of work randomly.
Contracts often specify explicitly that flexibility is required and that the 9 to 5.30 working day is just a guide.
Also it seems exceedingly unlikely that either the number students taught by any significant cohort of teachers has tripled, or that any particular pupil:teacher ratio is codified in anyone’s contract.
Such contracts usually give a concession for extra time worked, either TOIL or pay.
Between 1975 and 2003, the student-staff ratio in UK universities increased from 8.6 to 20.8. The ratio is not contractual, which means it is effectively unlimited.
“if the mothership is in Seattle or the Bay Area”,how many people does this concern out of a labour force of about 2 million?
I wonder how places like France and Germany are managing in this “new economy” where everything is shut on a Sunday and urban life isn’t 2/7
Isn’t there a cultural aspect to this?I know two peopel(hardly scientific!)working fairly high up in US firms here and they tell me that they work late because they’re expected to,but most of the time they’re just surfing the net after 5 or 6pm.
Seeing as much of the additional work is done from home in the evenings, I find it impossible to believe that people are hanging round the office pretending to work when they could be sitting at home pretending to work much more comfortably.
In terms of the numbers involved, there are circa 100k employed by the MNC sector, who have a disproportionate economic impact far in excess of their number.
Bartley,I can only take their word for it,one of them explained that being visible and being seeing to be putting in long hours was crucial.Knocking off at 5 or 6 is just not the done thing,so the guys don’t do it.
Numbers involved- that’s around 5 per cent of the workforce. Of that 5 per cent how many are in contact with the “mothership in Seattle or the Bay area”?I presume the lowly operatives of our pharma firms aren’t or the people in the call centres who are open all the time anyway or the staff at Tescos(which according to MichaelTaft represent around 10 per cent of MNC employment!!).Sounds very much like a minority sport; these busy little bees contacting Seattle or the Bay Area as we fight off those pesky Latvians and Israerlis
Engaging with Bartley is an unproductive use of your time, Fergal. You will receive no recompense or satisfaction for it.
+1
One wonders is there any aspect of the orthodoxy that he wouldn’t given half a chance bow down to, make an apologia for or opportunity to get a dig in at the public sector he would eschew?
Entertaining, in a sort of a way – sure. But utterly pointless.
Though he styles it as a perfectly executed takedown, some of what he says actually reinforces your original point, WbS.
For example, the bit about professionals keeping up with their ‘international colleagues’ can only be understood as referring to a ‘reserve army of labour’. The threat of your job being relocated allows your employer to extract more work from than contracted.
Yes, I usually don’t engage with him, but missing the point so spectacularly made it worth the effort on this occasion.
@WbS
Dig at the public sector, how so?
I was simply pointing out that pupil:teacher ratio is not codified in any teaching contract that I know of.
No dig there, just the reality that an adverse change in the ratio does not involve anyone being forced to violate their contractual T&Cs for no recompense (as claimed above).
@Michael Carley
Between 1975 and 2003, the student-staff ratio in UK universities increased from 8.6 to 20.8.
Sure, that was an inevitable side-effect of mass participation at third level. Which was surely a good thing, no?
But there is only a vanishingly small number of lecturers who were active in 1975 still teaching in 2003, and almost none of that cohort left now. So it doesn\’t support the characterization of unpaid labour being extracted in violation of existing T&Cs.
The ratio is not contractual, which means it is effectively unlimited.
My point exactly.
@Rosencrantz
The threat of your job being relocated allows your employer to extract more work from than contracted.
The point is that the contracts are very fluid in that sector and are certainly not tied down with decades of accreted restrictive practices, demarcation etc.
So its not the forced extraction of more work than contracted, rather the voluntary doing of the appropriate amount of work required to get the job done.
@Fegral
.Sounds very much like a minority sport; these busy little bees contacting Seattle or the Bay Area as we fight off those pesky Latvians and Israerlis
A minority sport it may well be, but theres precious little else going on here that qualify us as an advanced economy. Scare away those busy little bees and/or the foreign bee-keepers, and our productive economy takes a large step back to the 1970s.
The student staff ratio doubled between 1990 and 2003, so plenty of people did see a corresponding increase in their workloads.
As for this being a good thing because it is part of the expansion of higher education, that has very little to do with the quality of life of the staff, and ignores the question of what kind of higher education people are getting.
So its not the forced extraction of more work than contracted, rather the voluntary doing of the appropriate amount of work required to get the job done
Don’t insult our intelligence.
Who wants to scare off the busy little bees?
Why bring up the 70s?Why not the 50s or even the 30s?
Anyway,I suppose the big differences since the 70s are the State has invested massively in education(with no help form the bee-keepers),infrastructure especially the road network(with no help form the bee-keepers again)and massive grants and aids to all kinds of bee keepers with the IDA,Enterprise Ireland, Shannon Free Zone etc etc.
@Michael Carley
The student staff ratio doubled between 1990 and 2003, so plenty of people did see a corresponding increase in their workloads.
They may seen some increase in workload, from an artificially low base (when I was in college in the late eighties/early nineties, the standard teaching load was four hours per week).
However it certainly wasnt a doubling of workload, given that the primary teaching activity of senior staff scales nearly flat (i.e. a lecturing in a hall with 100 bums-on-seats involves little incremental work over doing the same in front of 50 students).
The teaching activities that do actually scale up with student numbers (running tutorials, supervising labs, grading continuous assessment etc) are often fobbed off to juniors far down the academic totem pole, or are separately compensated for (e.g. the Irish system of an individual payment per exam script corrected).
As for this being a good thing because it is part of the expansion of higher education, that has very little to do with the quality of life of the staff
Be that as it may, youre hardly suggesting that the massive societal gains from opening up third level education are rolled back in order to restore the feather-bedded quality of life previously enjoyed by academics?
… and ignores the question of what kind of higher education people are getting.
On many fronts, the quality of education received has improved beyond recognition from the laxidasical standards pertaining when a university education was reserved for a very narrow elite.
Four hours per student, or four per lecturer?
As for the low grade stuff being dumped on junior staff, not true of anywhere I’ve worked (Trinity and Bath). Academics do their own marking and their own tutorials (with assistants). In fact, we would be in serious trouble with the accrediting agencies if we didn’t. By the time a mark is issued, an exam script has been handled by three academics. Incidentally, Trinity certainly does not pay per exam script.
As for rolling back the gains from opening up higher education, why do you assume that university staff can only have decent terms and conditions at the expense of having fewer students?
Per lecturer.
Dunno about good ol Trinners, but in the far larger DIT/IoT sector, exam marking is paid per script: http://bit.ly/MsigtJ
In my experience, tutorials were almost always run by post-grads, while laboratory sessions were 100% supervised by students and lab techs – a lecturer would never be seen in an under-grad lab.
In terms of decent conditions for academics, the payscales are already very decent indeed for those with tenure, as confirmed by an insider here: bit.ly/N4UN17
Were the conditions have deteriorated significantly, its around the casualization and lowering of status in the entry tier. The advent of a lower-paid tier has been a construct of the third level institutions themselves, often with the connivance of the unions (e.g the invention of the new Assistant Lecturer grade in the RTC/IoT sector during the 1990s), in a transparent play to funnel a greater share of the rewards higher up the academic totem pole.
In the institution I lecture in part time staff (including those on CIDs) get paid per script, full time don’t – it’s covered by their salary. The DIT chart notes this is only applicable to certain grades.
Could someone also point out to him that there is a study above which establishes that professionals work overtime for no reward.
His entire contribution to this thread is to deny either the existence of this study or its veracity. All else is just waffle.
@Rosencrantz
Not denying the existence of that survey (study?), rather just debating what it actually means.
@WbS
Sounds like it varies from institution to institution. But the main point was that teachers/lecturers have not been forced into a sudden very steep increase in workload, in violation of their contracts.
Could someone please explain to Bartley what ‘the majority of professionals are receiving nothing in return for their overtime’ means?
He does not appear to know. This has not, I see, prevented him from commenting on the issue extensively.
We truly live in a great society where a lack of ability or common sense are no barrier to participation.
Bartley,
Michael has provided evidence of a very steep increase in workload in UK institutions, which you have chosen to avoid by talking about what you perceive – from the looks of things somewhat mistakenly – be the case in the south. One of my own primary school teachers took early retirement because of the extra work that was being foisted upon him. He wasn’t expected to teach any more children, but what he was expected to do was a hell of a lot more paperwork to do the job he’d been doing for 30 years or whatever. The UK police are always complaining about the amount of time they spend on paperwork, and I’ve heard similar complaints from people working in healthcare. Jobs that involve contact with the public always also involve other forms of less visible work that seem to have completely passed you by.
Erm Bartley, given that you initially said ‘(e.g. the Irish system of an individual payment per exam script corrected)’, then when it was noted that some institutions don’t actually have any such system, and then was further noted that payments are for part timers and not full time staff (as indeed the DIT doc you link to itself implies) I think I’ll make my own determination what the point of any particular exchange is. While one would have to give top marks for po-mo irony for your usage of ‘laxidasical’ the term spoofing wildly comes to mind.
@WbS
then was further noted that payments are for part timers and not full time staff (as indeed the DIT doc you link to itself implies)
Does it actually imply that?
Or did you read that into it?
I see no mention of part-timers, simply certain staff.
Oh and by the way, that document is not from the DIT. Its from Sligo IT.
In the IoTs certainly, this payment is not restricted to part-timers.
A quick google yielded the following:
The Irish Times – Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Teacher’s Pet
An insider’s guide to education
** Speaking of academic pay rates, the following is the text of a letter we received from a senior figure in one of the Institutes of Technology (IOTs).
“In the IoTs, there is no requirement on teaching staff to hold a PhD-level qualifications to be hired, which is as it should be. We have people with trade certificates and basic degrees earning huge amounts of money. There is no expectation on these people to produce any research or do anything other than be present for their basic teaching hours. Once the examinations are over in the middle of May, they are not seen again on campus until the 1st of September, apart from dealing with the exams process, correcting scripts etc, for which they are paid additional, extraordinary sums of money.
If I had kept my payslips from the nineties, I\’d have more direct evidence to present.
@Garibaldy
Michael has provided evidence of a very steep increase in workload in UK institutions, which you have chosen to avoid
Well you yourself got that particular ball rolling by claiming that people were teaching double or treble the number of students and in so doing were being forced to violate the terms and conditions set out in their contracts for no recompense.
Michael\’s evidence actually shows that:
(a) the tripling of student numbers occurred over three decades, so only a vanishingly small cohort of lecturers saw their student numbers triple, and even for the tiny handful of old-timers who did so, it certainly was not sudden (seeing as it spanned nearly their entire career)
and:
(b) the staff:student ratio is not contractual, which means it is effectively unlimited
So it wasnt so much me ignoring Michael\’s evidence, as your good self (seeing as he completely undermined your point with raw data).
The point being that you’re scurrying around now trying to sustain a line of argument which you had insufficient evidence for to begin with. Quoting from an anonymous letter in the IT Teachers Pet stuff says it all. Anecdotal stuff. Could be right in the specific, could be wrong but with no basis for anyone here to make a measured judgement about it it just becomes time wasting stuff.
Well if I am wrong, and you are right … care to explain why exam results were withheld by fulltime & parttime TUI members in WIT back in early 2010?
They were in dispute with the Institute when the per-script payment was unilaterally reduced to take account of semesterization.
Is this also anecdata?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/education/students-urge-wit-to-end-exam-results-row-ahead-of-rallies-111125.html
No mention in the coverage of the payments being limited to parttimers, or of fulltimers withholding exam results from their students in disinterested solidarity with their parttime colleagues.
Bartley, your initial position was that payment for exam scripts was the ‘Irish system’. It was pointed out to you by me and others that it isn’t. That’s the central point. Don’t try to appropriate the point myself and Michael Carley made and pass it off as your intent from the off. It wasn’t. Unfortunately this is typical of your current propensity to exaggerate and distort almost every discussion you enter.
I can’t quite fathom whether it’s for your own entertainment or whatever, but it’s your thing. As I said, for me you jumped the shark some time back and the net result is that on every topic you raise you have no bona fides left for me as an honest interlocutor.
That, I’m sure, doesn’t trouble you in the slightest – and broadly speaking it doesn’t trouble me either, you’re welcome to your knee jerks, but it should provide a great big warning as regards engaging with you for others. It’s just not worth it.