The General Secretary, Joan Donegan, and the President of IFUT, Dr Angela Flynn, are attending the 8th World Congress of Educational International in Bangkok. The EI World Congress is the supreme decision-making body of Education International. The World Congress determines the policies, principles of action, programme, and budget of the organisation, and elects the President, Vice Presidents, and General Secretary as well as other members of EI’s Executive Board. The World Congress is composed of delegates nominated by and representing its member organisations. IFUT has and continues to play a significant role in Education International for many years.

At the Further and Higher Education Caucus event on Saturday 20th July 2019 a specific parallel session focused on Countering Precarious Employment. Contributions from delegates around the world confirmed that there has been a significant growth of casual and fixed-term employment in most countries. Delegates also heard that in particular women and minority groups are over-represented amongst the growing ranks of casual staff, constituting a further inequality issue.

Having heard contributions from a number of speakers, the caucus group was invited to contribute examples of how their organisations were working to counteract precarious employment in the workplace. The IFUT President spoke about the ‘Charter for Casuals’ that has been developed and adopted across IFUT. Angela Flynn emphasised this unique approach which petitions secure and tenured colleagues to demonstrate solidarity with their precarious colleagues. Furthermore, the charter requires members to refuse to be complicit in the exploitation of casually employed academic colleagues.

This approach compliments the traditional attempts to challenge casualization involving lobbying employers, governments, funding bodies, and human resources departments. By appealing directly to permanent colleagues, this approach has the additional benefit of strengthening solidarity and raising awareness of the issue.

More details of the charter can be found here: IFUT Charter for Casuals