Sixty-one percent of further education colleges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have teaching staff on zero-hour contracts, according to the University and Colleges Union (UCU).
200 colleges responded to Freedom of Information requests from UCU. A further 75 failed to reply within the 4 weeks required by the Freedom of Information Act.
We’ve obtained the UCU FE data (published here) that shows the numbers of teaching staff or assistant staff per college on zero hour contracts and how the contracts are used in the industry.
Data: Further Education Colleges’ use of zero hour contracts
The UCU said of the figures:
“Without a guaranteed income, workers on zero-hour contracts are unable to make financial or employment plans on a year-to-year, or even month-to-month basis. Employers cannot hide behind the excuse of flexibility — this flexibility is not a two-way street and, for far too many people, it is simply a case of exploitation.”
Their FOI requests asked the question: ‘Of those on zero hour contracts, how many teaching staff have no hours work at the moment?’
As the employer has “no obligation to offer work and guarantees no minimum hours of work,” said the UCU, they wanted to see how this was applied.
A selection of the data can also be seen in the table below.
What can you do with this data? Let us know!
Number of lecturers/teachers who currently have no work set
| COLLEGE | 1. RESPONSE- YES, NO or NO RESPONSE | 2. TOTAL No of LECTURERS or TEACHING STAFF on ZERO HRS CONTRACTS | 3. NO OF L/TS WHO CURRENTLY HAVE NO WORK SET |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lakes College West Cumbria | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 8 | 8 |
| Lambeth College | No. We do employ Visiting Tutors, hourly paid, but they are always given set hours. Agency staff used if p/t staff are unable to increase their hours. | ||
| Lancaster & Morecambe College | NO REPLY | ||
| Leeds City College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 10 apprx | 10 apprx |
| Leeds College of Building | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 45 | 44 |
| Leicester College | No. Flexibility is obtained by offering overtime to staff or by utilising staff who are under their contracted hours | ||
| LeSoCo (formerly Southwark/Lewisham College) | No. | ||
| Lincoln College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 11 | 0 |
| Liverpool Community College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 0 | 0 |
| Loughborough College | NO REPLY | ||
| Lowestoft College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 131 | 34 |
| Macclesfield College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 79 | 19 |
| Manchester College | YES. SEE RESPONSE | 645 | 447 |
I would like to make it known about the prevalence of poor working conditions for work based tutors delivering government funded accredited courses under the ‘nil hours’ or ‘zero-hours’ contracts. Many private training providers who work in partnership with colleges are only paying for successful completions/submissions on ‘zero-hours’ contracts which means that the tutors have to meet very strict and heavy demands such as: working ridiculous hours, incurring costs that should be the responsibility of the training provider, spending more time on administration than teaching. Stressed out because of the uncertainty of how much pay is due month end. This exploitation must stop NOW!