Sinéad Pembroke: How much do we know about the working conditions of the
educators who look after and teach our children, our family members and
ourselves? For the childcare and third-level sectors, a lot of the media focus
tends to be on the cost of childcare, higher education fees and malpractices
within the childcare sector.
These are all very important aspects that do need
to be highlighted and addressed. However, very little is known about the terms
and conditions of employment, and how much these sectors depend on the labour
of insecure, temporary, low paid workers.
The term “precarious work” has become prominently used to
describe non-standard, insecure, flexible working conditions. Precarious working
conditions continues to rise all over Europe, and can take the form of
temporary fixed term contracts, part-time pro-rata/ zero-hour work and
self-employment.
The main features include one or more of these: insecurity,
inadequate or low pay, and an erosion of social security benefits such as
pensions/ maternity leave and sick leave. Taking two sectors from the opposite
ends of the education spectrum (childcare and third level), we can see
increasing levels of precarious employment conditions for the workers in these
sectors. This is notably in stark contrast to the way that both sectors started
out, where people were employed on more secure contracts.
Childcare workers well qualified and on minimum wage
If we start off with the childcare sector, there are 23,000
workers, mostly female with a minimum qualification of FETAC level 5. There has
been a big push to professionalise the sector, and as a result there has been
an increase in the amount of graduates working in childcare. However, the
average rate of pay is 10.27 euros per hour. Consequently, there are many early
years’ educators who are well qualified and employed on the minimum wage, with
no entitlements to wage increments and no career progression.
There are 4,500 providers; about a third of the services are
community providers and two thirds are private providers. Private providers are
usually small, employing 4 or 5 people, and a lot of the older operators are
self-employed. While parents pay high fees, most are only just about staying
afloat, and as a business it is not sustainable. State investment into the
sector is low by European standards; 0.2% of GDP funds childcare whereas the
European average is 0.8%. The UNICEF goal would be 1% of GDP being invested
into the sector.
State funding comes in the form of the Early Childhood and
Care Education programme (ECCE) scheme, which gives a free pre-school year to
all children. Approximately 95% of all childcare services offer this.
On this
scheme, early Years educators are employed on a fixed term contract of 38 weeks
a year working part-time for 15 hours per week, (3 hours per day). Once the 38
weeks are over, educators go on the dole for the summer months, after which
they will either be issued with another 38-week part-time contract or not;
there is no guarantee they have a job to go back to. Generally, there are no
employment benefits such as a pension, maternity pay, and little if any sick
pay.
Policy driven precarity in childcare sector
Workers employed on the ECCE scheme, get paid for 3 hours of contact time
with a child, but there’s a huge amount of work that goes on outside of the
paid 3 hours such as observation reports, preparation work and other
administrative responsibilities they have to complete.
Consequently, the precarious nature of the childcare sector
is policy driven because a lot of providers are dependent on this funding. More
and more services are going towards the ECCE scheme, and that by nature is more
precarious. Community not-for-profit providers were traditionally funded by the
childcare subvention scheme, and this model provided for full-time, permanent
positions with much higher rates of pay. The latter funding model shows that government
policy can be used in a positive way to drive employment practices in the
childcare sector.
Lack of security in third level teaching and research
While third level has a different set-up, it has also become
equally reliant on precarious workers to fulfill teaching and research duties. Fixed
term, temporary contracts are one of the predominant forms of employment in the
sector, but so are casual, hourly paid workers. Many who work in this way do
not have a contract other than what’s basically called a pink slip or a yellow
slip, where you fill in your slip for the hour you did and you get paid for
that hour. And the most security you would have, is you would know that in the
first term you might get X amount of hours, but you wouldn’t know whether you’d
be getting any hours in the second term. Researchers are employed on fixed term
contracts; none are permanent.
While it is difficult and virtually impossible to get data
on precarious employment in universities in Ireland, anecdotally, it’s
beginning to look as if you could have at least as many people on precarious
contracts as permanent contracts.
Casual lecturers (adjuncts) are technically
paid to give a lecture for an hour and they’re not paid for preparation. The
case is made in the universities that the hourly rate covers preparation time,
however, it doesn’t cover any follow-up with students or the administrative
work that has to be done. So, like early years’ educators, precarious lecturers
and tutors are also performing free work.
Again, like the childcare sector, recent precarious
employment practices have been driven by state policy. The Department of
Education, through the HEA is the paymaster; not only was there restrictions
put in place on employing more tenured staff, but the state also reduced
funding to higher education.
The Department of Education also refused to extend
any benefits from the Cushe Report to researchers. Consequently, third level
institutions have also become reliant on research funding in order to fill the
funding gap, which drives precarious employent because it only covers a
particular project that has a finite objective.
While we often talk about the need to provide good quality
childcare and third level education, this needs to include improving the
working conditions of workers in both these sectors. Both sectors have been
professionalised, yet there’s no professional terms and conditions for many of
the workers.
Impact on lives of workers in third level and childcare
We also have to think about the effect this is having on the lives
of these workers; they are not able to plan for the future, such as start a
family, buy a house or apartment, or even to afford some independence to rent
on their own.
Many workers love the work they do, but do not see a future in
either sector. If their working conditions are not changed to give them more
security, better pay, entitlements and career progression, then they will have
no option but to leave. If we want better quality, professionalised services in
these sectors, then we need working terms and conditions to match.
Dr Sinéad Pembroke is
a researcher in TASC working on the social implications of work project
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