Here are some nice words and a pat on the back for you, teacher and researcher
Freshly inscribed names adorn the collective bargaining agreement paper. The solution was fast-tracked by a strike day organised at the Tampere University. The Universities of Helsinki and Turku did not have time to carry out their strikes.
Following a couple of waves of strikes, the government sector reached a solution in accordance with the so-called general line, and the municipal sector negotiated the continuation of a salary programme exceeding the general line. The university sector’s salary solution is along the general line. It is obvious that teachers and researchers have earned their salary development. However, compared to the general salary level of the education sector, universities are stuck firmly in a pit. You can only live on your calling and passion for science for so long.
The employer side, speaking through various university rectors in their series of blogs, has been awfully concerned about the well-being of university teaching staff. This is definitely a concern, but perhaps I am unable to find the same enthusiasm as these rectors for their proposed solution, which is to run working time regulations into the ground permanently. Here, we may even be heading to an individual manager’s arbitrary level regarding the number of different work responsibilities – especially teaching – in the emerging total working hours framework. The goal, as is abundantly clear from the aforementioned blog series, is to get more performance out of the machine. A teacher toiling away underneath a full teaching workload is not going to benefit a whole lot from a concerned pat on the back.
Well-being and coping at work might be improved by allowing teachers and researchers greater autonomy over their own work, and this work would have sensible limits. It would also help if boundaries were agreed on together and always automatically respected.
New rounds of negotiations are, of course, inevitable. The employer side is responsible for the attractiveness of university teacher and researcher jobs. Now, working time trials have been agreed upon, with their content and implementation to be decided by each university and their units. If salary progression fails to keep up and worse working terms and conditions are on the agenda during each round, it should come as no surprise if other sectors start to look more attractive. University worker, join a union! There is only strength in numbers.
