University workers' inquiry

For workers’ inquiry in Higher Education

A practical guide

Analysing your university: first steps

The first thing you want to do is build a general picture of the work that makes your university or college run. Here are some questions which you can begin answering yourself. If you can’t, you might consider carrying out a Freedom of Information request. Public universities are compelled to give you most information, but might say they don’t have the info if they outsource the particular service to a private contractor. The internet is also your friend.

  1. What different sections of workers are there at the university?
    1. Academic (lecturers, teaching assistants)
    2. ‘Professional’ services (IT, admin staff, library)
    3. ‘Support’ services (e.g. cleaners, porters, caterers, security, maintenance, postroom)
  2. What contracts and forms of employment are there?
    1. Does the university use zero hour contracts? How many and which workers are on them?
    2. Does it outsource services to private contractors? Which ones and what are the names of the companies?
  3. What unions are present on campus?
    1. Universities: Unison, UCU, Unite
    2. Schools: also NUT
    3. Grassroots unions like IWW, IWGB, UVW
  4. What conflicts or campaigns have taken place in the particular workforce? In the university at large? The neighbourhood? The town/city?

At the workshop, we mostly talked about support staff organising. But teaching assistants on precarious contracts have also been stirring things up. Consider for example the Fractionals For Fair Play campaign at SOAS, which recently boycotted marking students’ papers and won back pay for all the papers they marked in the previous year.

Establishing contact with workers

  • Make it a point to at least say hi and smile to workers you don’t know. Everyone in general should be encouraged to respect cleaners/security/porters who can feel invisible in the university.
  • You might be surprised how rewarding it is to break down the walls between students and workers, creating a sense of community and some breathing space in these alienated places of study. Asking people how they are, where they’re from and how long they’ve worked at the university can go a long way.
  • It is best to begin as a group: you might want to share and discuss this document with a number of friends who study or work in the university, or anyone who wants to help out.
    • Consider especially friends who work alongside workers you want to establish contact with. Union representatives or branch officers might also be useful.
    • You might also need people who speak languages other than English. In the London cleaning sector, for example, Spanish is more than useful.
  • Bear in mind some people will be happy to talk to you, some will be more reserved. Some will openly complain about the boss, others will say everything’s great. What could be more natural? Talk to as many people as possible!
    • Tip: befriending cafeteria or cafe workers has its benefits ;)
    • Many workers, especially cleaners, work night shifts and you won’t see them except for the early morning.
  • Once you’ve gotten to know some people, begin talking more openly about the issues they face. Eventually, you can propose the inquiry as a tool for collective research on work conditions and how things can be changed. Alternatively, you could propose to write an article for the local/student newspaper, posing the inquiry as a way to gather information.

Workers’ inquiry

What’s the point?

On the most basic level, the inquiry gives you an awareness of conditions and conflict at work. If we put together this information on universities on a national level, it might give us a better understanding of the sector and how to fight exploitation. On the other hand, it encourages both you and the interviewee to reflect critically on what might sometimes be seen as the “mundanities” of the job, uncover the points of conflict and where workers can hold power. Ideally, the inquiry is a tool for workers’ collective self-organisation and autonomous action, as opposed to delegating activity to a union official or other representative.

Looking at these questions might have you worried about coming off as some kind of police agent. Bear in mind that the inquiry is more of a guide to orient your conversation, rather than constrict it. You should also encourage other workers to carry out the inquiry with their colleagues.

The inquiry

There are three sections: 1) Labour process and workplace; 2) Wage; and 3) Representation and politics. The main questions are in bold, and further guiding questions are written below them. I have also put questions in [square brackets] when they deal with wider issues you may chose to exclude, such as those about reproductive labour or more personal questions, and (1e) which encourages a more critical/anticapitalist view of work. I adapted these from an inquiry originally written for warehouse workers, so feel encouraged to shorten it or adapt it to your conditions.

  1. Labour process and workplace
    1. How long have you worked in this university?
      1. Why did you start here?
      2. Do you have a permanent or temporary contract?
      3. Where did you work before?
    2. What do you do on the job? How does your work look like?
      1. What kind of tools, machines or devices do you use (e.g. computer, oven…)?
      2. How is your work organised? How do you know what to do and when? Do you work individually or in a team?
      3. Are certain tasks allocated to certain ‘groups of people’ (e.g. do women do certain tasks while men do others)?
    3. What are your relationships like to other workers? How do people get on?
      1. How is the workforce composed (men/women, old/young, migrants/locals)?
      2. Are there students in the workforce?
      3. Are there ‘groups’ (people who hang out together), and what makes them a group?
      4. What kind of things do you talk about? When do you have these conversations?
      5. Is there bullying between people?
    4. [What do you have to do after work?]
      1. How do you commute and how long does it take?
      2. What housework do you have to do, for whom, and how long does it take you per day? If you live with others, how is it shared out?
      3. How is your childcare arranged?
      4. Do you meet workmates after work? What do you do? What do you talk about?
    5. [Why does your work and the work of your colleagues exist?]
      1. Is your work important for society? Why?
      2. What impact would it have if you and your colleagues stopped working for a day? For a week?
      3. How do you think your work is seen by the ‘rest of society’?
      4. Do you think your work is specific for the period of time we live in? For this part of the world?
  2. Wage
    1. What is your hourly wage and how are your terms and conditions?
      1. What is your sick pay? Holiday pay? Pensions? Paternity/maternity/adoption leave?
      2. Do you work overtime? Is this paid?
      3. Are there disciplinary wage cuts (e.g. for being late, absent without explanation, ‘mistakes’ at work)?
      4. Do you check your pay slip and do you understand it fully? (Do you have to ask for corrections of the payment? Who do you complain to in case of incorrect payment?)
    2. What do you officially have to do for your wage?
      1. Does your work contract contain a clear job description?
      2. Do they control your performance? How?
      3. Are you supposed to do overtime, weekend work? Are there official performance targets?
      4. Have working times and wages changed since you have worked in the job?
      5. How have they enforced these changes? How did they explain them? Did they create any conflicts?
    3. What kind of wage and conditions differences exist in your workplace? What do you think about it?
      1. How are these differences determined and why?
      2. Are there different contract relations (outsourcing, agency work, zero-hour contracts, temporary contracts, permanent contracts)? How many people on what type of contracts? How does this define relationships between people, their status?
      3. Do you know what your colleagues earn?
      4. Are there forms of staff representation and what kind of role do they play when it comes to fix individual wages?
    4. What are you working times and how do you cope with them?
      1. Who determined the working times and when?
      2. Is how many hours you spend on the job on a specific day fixed beforehand, or is this sometimes decided while you’re at work?
      3. Who decides how long you have to work?
      4. What kind of impact do working times have on family, relationships, ‘leisure time’?
      5. How many hours do you work on average? Overtime? Paid holidays? Shift systems?
    5. [How is your household income composed?]
      1. What do you have to pay for with this wage? How much is left at the end of the month?
      2. Who and what do you have to support financially with your wage?
      3. What are you able to afford?
      4. Do you have a second job? Do your partner or other household members have a paid job?
      5. Do you receive any social benefits (working tax credit, child benefit, housing benefit)?
      6. Do you have savings? Do you own your house? Are you in debt?
  3. ‘Representation’/Politics
    1. How do you like your job and what you do?
      1. What type of conflicts exist at work?
      2. What do you and others think are the main problems at work?
      3. Do conflicts relate to the concrete conditions of work and work intensity (monotony, stress, arbitrariness, additional work tasks)? Are there conflicts with superior staff?
      4. What form do these conflicts take (open, hidden, individual, collective)?
    2. Who do you turn to in case of conflicts? And how?
      1. Do you or your work mates have any experience with collective forms of resistance at work? What are they?
      2. What do you do when conflicts arise?
      3. What other ways would there be?
    3. Is the trade union present? Are there union representatives or other forms of representation?
      1. What do they do and how are they perceived by workers?
      2. Has there been an ‘organising campaign’? What do you and others think of it?
    4. Do you know about conflicts by workers in other universities? (e.g. in London: LSE, SOAS, Senate House…alternatively ask them about struggles in the town in general)
      1. How did you get to know about them?
      2. What do you think of them?
      3. What chances do you see for a group of workers organising together in the workplace?
      4. How could you meet and what could you do?
      5. What kind of support would that kind of group need from the outside? Who could support?
    5. Are you active yourself (informally, in a trade union, etc.)?

Towards struggle and organisation

Writing a report

Once you have carried out a number of inquiries, you can summarise them in a general report or article. You may wish to co-write and discuss this piece with other workers and students before publishing it. The report should ideally connect the concrete issues to wider problems of higher education and the world of work, as well as draw some political conclusions. Here are some questions to help you out:

  • What are the divisions and weaknesses among the workers?
  • Where are the strengths? On what experiences, forms of struggle and organisation can we build?
  • Where are the main points of conflict around which to organise?
  • What do workers think they can do to organise?
  • What can we learn about previous campaigns on similar issues in the sector (e.g. Justice for Cleaners campaigns, tutors’ marking boycotts, 3Cosas, etc.)? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Starting a collective

The report (or several reports, e.g. on different sections of the workforce) can then be used as a basis for further discussion and organisation. Call a meeting! Start a group in your university that meets regularly to discuss what you can do.

You could consider starting a workers’ bulletin: this is an opportunity to bring conflicts into the open and generalise them into an open struggle. It could deal with changes to pay, hours and conditions, conflicts felt by individual workers or groups of workers, or publicise other struggles happening in the sector or area, calling workers to take action.

From then on there are a thousand and one ways to expand your base. Open meetings at which workers speak are always effective to gain more visibility among students and lecturers and put more pressure on management. Other tactics include film nights (e.g. if your collective is focusing on cleaners you can screen Limpiadores or Bread and Roses) and the SOAS and LSE campaigns had good experiences having students set up a free breakfast during the shift change at 6am.

Further resources

Readings on struggles in higher education

Guides for organising at work

On the workers’ inquiry

Examples of reports