Precarity and the pandemic: an inquiry into the impact of Covid19 on the working lives of non-permanent educators in post-compulsory education in Ireland

ABSTRACT

The paper analyses how educators employed on non-permanent contracts in the non-compulsory education sector in Ireland have fared during the Covid 19 pandemic. These employees were starting from a low base in relation to the terms and conditions of their employment when their places of work dramatically pivoted online in March 2020. We argue the impacts of the pandemic were disproportionate, with people reporting such things as increased workloads, exclusion from HR update communications and little supports in creating workspaces in their homes. In this sense, we foreground how participants’ places of work often assumed that all employees, precarious and permanent, had the same level of access to resources.Furthermore, given the gendered nature of caring responsibilities and the high proportion of women respondents in the research, we highlight the extent to which the pandemic increased caring responsibilities and impacted on female participants’ capacity to work. Overall, we demonstrate how the Covid 19 pandemic hasn’t, in itself, created unsatisfactory working conditions, rather, it has both exposed and accentuated existing shortfalls and further proved, if such proof was needed, that short-term actions compound the many problems with precarity in post-compulsory education work.

KEYWORDS:

• Precarious employment
• Covid 19
• trade unionism. professional identity (the impacts on)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. IFUT have been particularly proactive in advancing workers entitlements through Cush and have settled several cases through this process.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camilla Fitzsimons

Camilla Fitzsimons is an Associate Professor in the Department of Adult and Community Education at Maynooth University. She describes herself as an academic-activist and has a particular interest in education within social movements and community spaces. She has a strong record of engaged, collaborative research where the focus of her inquiry is inequality and social justice. Her hope is that, in harmony with grassroots activism, adult education can contribute to creating a different, more equal society.

Sean Henry

Seán Henry is a Lecturer in Education at the Department of Secondary and Further Education, Edge Hill University. He has research interests in critical higher education studies, philosophy of education, and social justice education. Before joining Edge Hill University, Seán worked at Technological University Dublin and Maynooth University.

Jerry O’Neill

Jerry O’Neill returned to education as a mature student in the mid-1990s and has worked with adults in further, community and higher education ever since. He has a particular interest in educator development across the career span that is collaborative, creative and critically reflective with a focus on personal and socially transformative ends.