Precarious Work, Invisible Labour

The expansion of Australia's higher education system in the past three decades has been built on a model of student-centred funding that has made universities heavily reliant onenrolments. In response to fluctuating student numbers and funding uncertainty, universities have expanded their reliance on temporary forms of employment. The result has been extensive fragmentation of the academic labour market, and the reorganisation of the academic role and professional identity. Knowledge...
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The expansion of Australia's higher education system in the past three decades has been built on a model of student-centred funding that has made universities heavily reliant onenrolments. In response to fluctuating student numbers and funding uncertainty, universities have expanded their reliance on temporary forms of employment. The result has been extensive fragmentation of the academic labour market, and the reorganisation of the academic role and professional identity. Knowledge workers in temporary employment are contracted to undertake specific, time-limited tasks, the bulk of which are in teaching. However, research remains central to professional identity formation, career progression, and future employment. Through engagement with the research process, precarious knowledge workers develop their disciplinary scholarship and expertise, and build a portfolio of publications that demonstrates their grasp of abstract knowledge in relation to a profession. Precarious knowledge workers are generally not paid to develop their professional scholarship or produce research, yet these activities remain central to academic professional identity, disciplinary expertise, and career progression. Consequently, precarious workers engage in research and publishing in an unpaid capacity. This adds value to the knowledge economy by extracting unpaid labour time, and subsidises the higher education sector. As the contributions of precarious workers to knowledge accrue benefits to the sector and its institutions, labour insecurity erodes professional identity, hinders career progression, and creates social and economic precarity for the workforce.This self-published report on precarious work and knowledge production examines the results of a survey conducted in 2018 under the title 'Insecure Work and Research Outputs in the Australian University Sector'. The report reflects on the unpaid and undervalued contributions of precarious workers to research and knowledge in the university sector by drawing on existing literature in light of the survey results. The findings of the survey demonstrate that (1) precarious employment operates on a continuum, with respondents working across roles and forms of employment over many years, (2) professional identity is being reshaped by precarious employment, (3) precarious knowledge workers make an important and undervalued contribution to research, (4) precarious work subsidises the higher education sector and undermines the sustainable production of knowledge.