Seanad candidate Sadhbh O’Neill has expressed doubts over granting workers’ rights to PhD students, saying “we should be slow to jump onto a bandwagon” of calling doctoral candidates workers.
The former Green Party councillor is herself in the process of completing a PhD at University College Dublin (UCD) which she began in 2016.
O’Neill weighed in on the subject today after her opponent in the election Hazel Chu said that PhD students could leave Ireland if they continued to be paid less than the living wage.
Speaking to The University Times, O’Neill said: “I’m in complete agreement that the stipend should be higher,” but said she believes “there’s ways of supporting students and postgrads with those rights and benefits as part of the package”.
O’Neill said she would “have to give that a lot of thought” to the question of granting workers’ rights to PhD students.
While working full-time as a PhD student, O’Neill was a single parent and at one point broke her arm. She was unable to claim sick leave and had to take an unpaid leave of absence.
“I couldn’t drive and I couldn’t write because I needed surgery on my wrist”, she said. During her unpaid leave of absence, she worked another job “even though I had a broken arm”.
“It was really, really hard for me”, she said, “and that’s the reason why it’s taken me so long to finish my PhD”.
But O’Neill does not see worker status as the solution.
Except … that is misleading. As a former recipient of an IRC PhD scholarship I know that
– the stipend is tax free thus worth more than €30k gross
– most postgrads teach a little too
– biggest barrier to completing is cost of housing / childcare
Instead I propose… https://t.co/eFbmHpkPAU— Sadhbh O’Neill (@SadhbhO) February 6, 2022
“It’s not a wage”, she said. “If it was a wage, then that miserable stipend would have to be taxed. And I think we just need to be really honest about that.”
“I don’t know that it’s right to call ourselves workers. I don’t know that that’s the relationship I feel I have with either UCD or the IRC [Irish Research Council]”.
“I don’t feel like I’m at work”, O’Neill said. “You’re engaged in a certain type of work, it’s knowledge production.”
“I think we need to be just a little bit more humble about what it is we actually contribute by way of knowledge production, you’re getting support to do a project or research projects. That’s what you’re involved in.”
In a Twitter thread this afternoon, O’Neill called for universities to fund pay-related social insurance (PRSI), health insurance to be included in awards as well as an increase in the overall value of stipends.
Earlier today, Seanad candidate Hazel Chu told Newstalk’s On The Record programme that “we need to start providing PhD and postdoctorates [with] a living wage, otherwise they’ll end up going abroad.”
Chu also said that despite not being a Trinity graduate herself, she has strong ties to Trinity graduates, who will vote in the upcoming bye election to replace Ivana Bacik.
Chu said: “I’m a Pembroke councillor – a good portion of my constituents are Trinity graduates or are graduates that were living in Trinity Hall. And last year as Lord Mayor, Trinity College was at my doorstep.”
“I spent a long time talking to graduates … a lot of people go: ‘Well, why this seat, now?’. I spent the last year talking to graduates on what we could do better. And even in terms of third-level reform, we need to start providing PhD and postdoctorates [with] a living wage, otherwise they’ll end up going abroad. We need 40 per cent of women on boards in university.”
