Sinn Féin will lobby for postgraduate students to be recognised as workers, after the passing of a motion at its Ard Fheis over the weekend.
The motion states that Sinn Féin “calls for recognition of postgraduate researchers in Ireland as workers with employee status, contracts of employment and collective bargaining rights”.
“Contracts should cover research, childcare and administrative work and include paid maternity, paternity and sick leave.”
The motion also contained a clause to end all teaching without pay, and to ensure that postgraduate salaries would be set at a living wage.
“[This Ard Fheis] Calls for and end to all unpaid teaching & academic work by postgraduate researchers. Postgraduate researcher salaries should not be below the living wage.”
Trinity’s Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance welcomed the news, writing on Twitter: “SF join @pb4p [People Before Profit] as parties who have taken a clear stance in favour of #postgradrights – others should follow suit.”
People Before Profit was the first political party to support granting workers’ rights to postgraduates.
Trinity’s new Dean of Research Wolfgang Schmitt last month that PhD students should be considered workers and receive the benefits to match, opening the door for a major rethink of how Trinity’s doctoral candidates fit into the research process.
Schmitt’s comments represent a significant departure from College’s current orthodoxy on doctoral candidates, who have grown increasingly vocal about their low pay and poor working conditions in recent years.
Schmitt completed his first degree in Germany, where he says they “did not see PhD students as students”.
In an interview with The University Times, Schmitt said: “I see my PhD students as co-workers within a research environment – we are part of a team. It means we need to look after our PhD students, we need to provide an environment, first of all, where PhD students can work and are paid appropriately, particularly in Dublin.”
“Whether you pay them in a stipend or in a salary, it probably doesn’t directly make so much difference, provided that we offer an environment that is actually suitable, that the salary is adequate for what we are doing”, he said.
“We need to put structures in place that also see the human being behind the research”, Schmitt added.
The Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance launched a petition earlier this year on the issue.
Around the same time, Trinity introduced a new policy under which it must provide occasional staff – many of whom are postgraduates – with the terms and conditions of their employment within five days of their work commencing.
As part of the terms and conditions, occasional staff will be considered employees of the university.
The policy also states that the casual payroll is “not appropriate” for regular or ongoing positions.
The policy document – seen by The University Times – states that “occasional staff are employees of the university” and “must be issued with terms and conditions of employment within five days of commencement”.
“Occasional” jobs in College include demonstrators in labs, teaching assistants and administrative and technical work.
The new policy states that the employment of casual staff must comply with principles of responsiveness, fairness and transparency and “organisation requirement”, meaning that a position has to be filled on a temporary basis such as covering sick leave.
