The Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance of Ireland has launched a petition outlining its aims as a movement, including the recognition of PhD students and other postgraduates working in higher education as workers.
The group is a coalition of postgraduate workers’ alliance groups founded by Trinity, University College Dublin and NUI Galway, and which has expanded to the University of Limerick, Waterford IT, Maynooth University, University College Cork and the TU Dublin.
The petition – launched three days ago – currently has 242 signatures.
In a press statement, TCD Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance Chair Tom Dineen said: “This petition seeks to create a mandate for postgraduate workers’ rights and reforms.”
“This fundamental system change is desperately needed and affords postgraduate workers the respect and financial security they deserve. Postgraduate workers are essential to both research and teaching in our HEIs and should be given the appropriate recognition.”
He added: “Failing to recognise postgraduate workers as workers could further increase inequality in our higher education sector, damage our research output and relegate Irish research as an outlier compared to our EU counterparts.“
The group now plans to conduct a major campaign around the petition in the coming months. It will also seek to formalise its relationship with the trade union movement – its members are also members of SIPTU.
The alliance currently consists of postgraduate students in the three colleges, but hopes to expand to gain “the support of academics and other staff members” within the universities.
The group’s statement added: “While senior academics and other staff were successful in campaigning for the creation of a department for higher education, they must also recognise that with additional funding must come reform.”
“Their voices will be pivotal in this campaign.”
Recognition of postgraduates as workers, as opposed to students, is not common in the EU, or abroad, but the alliance insists that countries such as “Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands” have successfully adopted the concept into higher education.
The Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance of Ireland launched two weeks ago, and hopes to “lobby the Government and higher education institutions for reform of the pay and working conditions of postgraduate workers across Ireland”.
Correction: 16:39, May 25th, 2021
An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed a quotation about the Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance’s plans to formalise its relationship with the trade union movement to PhD student and member of the Alliance Conor Reddy. In fact, this information came from a press statement from the Alliance.
