Casualisation of contracts
At a local level, alongside participating in national discussions, UCU concerns regarding casualisation are being addressed through our efforts to enhance support for early career staff and key groups.
The majority of fixed-term contract positions are developmental roles (including Graduate Teaching Assistants and LSE Fellow positions) that allow PhD students and early career academics to gain teaching and / or research experience that will support them in pursuing a career in academia.
These are fixed-term in nature to allow different cohorts of aspiring academics the opportunity to gain such experience. For some roles, LSE uses hourly paid contracts (rather than zero hours contracts) – all staff employed on these contracts are guaranteed a minimum number of hours.
For our PhD students, we have also significantly improved the scholarships we offer, which have the condition that if they do teach, they are paid for this on top of the enhanced scholarship funding they receive. Via the work of our Research and Policy Staff Committee, we have also been enhancing the career development support we provide to early career researchers, such as Research Officers and Fellows.
LSE is a London Living Wage employer, and we value everyone who contributes to our School. Whilst there is much taking place outside of our control, we are committed to proactively doing what we can to support the LSE community.
Of course, there is still more we can do and we continue to look at ways to support our community and develop the next generation of academics and researchers who are a part of it. LSE and our local UCU branch are engaged in discussions aimed at improving the working conditions for these staff.
Addressing pay gaps and increasing representation
LSE is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and to promoting a positive working culture which celebrates difference, challenges prejudice and ensures fairness. All School staff should have the opportunity to excel, and to be respected and valued for their unique perspectives and contributions.
Our School has worked hard to reduce its gender pay gap figures and ensure equal pay within the organisation is maintained. Since the start of Gender Pay Gap reporting in 2017, LSE has seen steady year on year improvements in its median gender pay gap from 14.89% in 2017 to 9.52% in 2020, to our most recent figure of 6.11%. Our School continues to work hard on improving all aspects of its gender pay gap and this can be seen further in the latest gender pay report action planning and LSE’s Athena Swan action plan.
Our commitment to building a diverse community is written into the School’s 2030 strategy and a core aspect of this is around increasing representation across our School. This is embodied in the creation of LSE’s Race Equity Framework, which we have been rolling out since September 2020, in consultation with staff and students across the School.
As of June 2022, 33 per cent of our Assistant Professors came from BAME* backgrounds. This is where we can make the most improvement as approximately 90 per cent of academic hiring takes place at this level, creating a pipeline for talent into more senior academic roles.
For the recruitment of senior professional services staff, last year we introduced our Fair Recruitment Advisers, and dedicated academic attainment leads in departments are contributing to diversify our education practices. This is in addition to our anonymous application process, already in place.
We will continue our work to explore and address racial inequality in the recruitment and progression of our BAME academic and professional service staff, as well as diversifying our PhD cohort.
In addition to the measures described above, over 45 people around the School have been recruited for LSE’s BAME mentoring scheme, which was launched in January 2021 and works alongside EmbRace, LSE’s BAME staff network, to support career progression in BAME staff through the sharing of knowledge, skills and experience. Work is also underway to refine our data and further School-wide consultation is building on the extensive conversations and community input that has already taken place.
*A note on terminology: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) are umbrella terms used by the UK government and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to refer to all non-white people. However, we recognise that these terms are problematic, in that they mask differences in lived experience and outcomes for many different ethnic groups. Improving our community’s understanding of these differences will be part of our work on race equity at LSE.