Rundale

By Claudia Peroni and Jack McNicholl

Postgraduate researchers are among the most specialised workers in the labour market: we conduct independent, thorough research which complements and advances existing knowledge in fields as crucial and diverse as cancer treatment, human rights law, sustainable development policies, Irish history and many more. There are about 12,000 postgraduate researchers in Ireland, and we make fundamental contributions to science, research and higher education. We research, publish and teach undergraduate students. We are the backbone of most third-level educational institutions, and without us, they could not churn out graduates or publications at a sufficient rate to maintain their ranking and funding. Although we are workers in all that we do, and although postgraduate researchers already enjoy workers’ rights in several European countries, Ireland continues to see us as students for the purposes of employment and tax. 

Precarity is an essential part of the PhD experience in Ireland. Postgraduate researchers are entitled to none of the protections that apply to workers under Irish employment law. What does this mean in practical terms? Despite carrying out labour and having responsibilities that to most sensible minds amount to a full time job, PhDs have wildly varying levels of funding, ranging from zero to €25k per annum. The maximum stipend currently available to a PhD researcher in Ireland is still below the minimum wage of €27,378 per annum, and far below the living wage of €29,913 per annum. 

As postgraduate researchers, we have no guarantee of pay parity and equality in funding opportunities: a researcher may earn half the pay of a colleague working in the same lab or department for the same (long) hours and the same (difficult and demanding) labour. Sick leave, paid holidays and parental leave are not enshrined in any type of formal law or policy, as are adjustments for researchers with disabilities, or who are parents or carers. Any form of protection in this respect is left to the goodwill of supervisors and university departments, which in many cases are supportive, but are not in any way mandated to be. 

Postgraduate researchers from outside the EU face these and additional obstacles in the form of Ireland’s hostile policies toward non-EEA “students”. They are required to cover their own Irish healthcare insurance and the annual renewal of their residency permit, additional financial burdens on an already tight budget that can be as low as €6,000 per year. Their time here does not count towards residency or citizenship applications, meaning that in many cases, after making important contributions to Irish society for four years or more, they are afforded no opportunities to progress their careers or lives here. Furthermore, their spouses are not allowed to work legally should they decide to come to Ireland, although it is near impossible to support one person on a PhD stipend, let alone a couple or family. Some of our members have even been denied child benefit as they do not pay tax here: the precarity of postgraduate researchers thus extends to their families, as further evidence of the short-sightedness of current policy.

This lack of codified protections exposes PhD researchers to different forms of vulnerability in their workplace, from poverty and financial insecurity, to a general lack of transparency which fosters inequality and uncertainty, to blatant cases of intimidation and workplace bullying from supervisors and other colleagues. Besides having to sustain themselves on ridiculously low stipends in one of the most expensive countries in Europe, postgraduate researchers’ working life is at the whim of people and institutions who have all the power an employer has, with none of the duties or limitations. Policymakers and universities are failing to realise that an impoverished researcher facing instability and uncertainty in every aspect of their job cannot be the researcher they want to take Ireland to “the cutting edge of science and innovation”, as the Impact 2030 strategy states. They fail to realise that far from making Ireland an attractive destination, their inaction in protecting PhD rights is pushing promising researchers away and jeopardising the future of Irish research, which is heavily based on the exploitation of precarious work even beyond the PhD stage.

What we are doing about it

Postgraduate researchers started organising in 2022 in the face of this abysmal situation. Two pre-existing organisations (PCAU and PGWA) decided to merge into PWO, in order to join forces and guarantee united representation to PhD researchers across Ireland. The merge was preceded by a massive effort to collect updated and comprehensive information about the status of PhD researchers across the country, including on stipends and funding sources, working hours, informal leave arrangements etc. This process resulted in the Fair Research Agreement (FRA), a proposed contract modelled after existing contracts in higher education, which guarantees fair and equal pay and transparent working conditions to PhD researchers. The FRA was agreed upon by the Union of Students in Ireland, and includes provisions such as a limit to working hours per week and recognition of overtime, minimal workplace provisions such as a dedicated desk, paid leave, sick leave and parental leave in line with Irish law. 

Since then, PWO has recruited approximately 1500 members in universities and higher education institutions across Ireland, and has been constantly active at both the local and national level. The issue of PhD rights is now on the political radar and has been vocally championed by various opposition parties,. National PWO protests resulted in DFHERIS commissioning an independent report on the status of PhDs in Ireland in 2023; this was followed by stipend raises for PhDs funded by the Irish government through its research agencies, IRC and SFI. These raises were painfully inadequate and only applied to a minority of PhDs: nonetheless, they are proof of what the PWO can achieve as a cohesive union. At the local level, PWO branches obtained substantial victories in PhDs’ working conditions: for example, Trinity College Dublin was compelled to introduce for the first time a clear separation between a tax-free research stipend and taxable teaching stipend, ensuring that teaching work is adequately paid and regulated; in Maynooth University, the PWO was involved in resisting the cancellation of the John and Pat Hume doctoral scholarship, and is now pushing to ensure its recipients receive a stipend increase. These have been important steps in opposing the neoliberalisation of our public universities, ensuring the continuation of public funding for research and academic freedom, and protecting the interests of some of our union’s members. 

The challenges we face in the Irish labour relations context

Researcher and union organiser Jane McAlevey has argued that successful unions see workers and employers as having a serious conflict of interest, and embrace confrontation as the necessary means of improving working conditions. This runs against the theory of “social partnership” predominant in the Irish context, which argues for the “collaboration” of workers and employers with the government acting as a mediator. The government establishes what kinds of collective and labour actions are permissible, which is why the contradictory phrase “illegal strike” now and then surfaces in the public debate. 

Social partnership generally deteriorates into collusion: Governments end up being swayed or co-opted by employers, who can more easily influence them in a capitalist system. The restrictions imposed on labour action thus become more favourable to industry, business and capital, while unions that treat the government as a good-faith broker hobble themselves by accepting government-imposed terms: for example, they limit themselves to state-sanctioned means of restitution or address, which can prove prohibitively expensive, time-consuming or ineffectual. As a result, union power is eroded, unions become weaker and more compliant, working conditions deteriorate, and membership declines. In the Irish context, unions have been criticised for their skittishness in engaging in proper industrial action. These nominal restraints must not become self-imposed. 

While the PWO does engage with political parties and policymakers, the current government refuses to truly engage with PhD researchers on the matter and to pursue a concrete policy of change, preferring instead to keep promising piecemeal raises in stipends which do not address systemic issues, do not solve inequalities between researchers and, often, do not even come when they are promised. Therefore, even if social partnership were desirable for the PWO, it is not an option we have available to us. Instead, the PWO currently aspires to grassroots organisation and class struggle, and ought to remain on that track.

Furthermore, the PWO has faced significant union-busting efforts as our campaign continues to be opposed by universities. The Irish Universities Association (IUA) has published an official document listing several reasons why PhDs should continue to be registered as students: among those reasons, the alleged “relationship of pastoral care” between the institution or supervisor and the PhD researcher, which is precisely the kind of blurred, open-ended power imbalance that allows all sorts of mistreatment and neglect. Universities refuse to recognise local PWO branches, and the organisation remains therefore unfunded and supported exclusively by the voluntary efforts of its members. Union-busting and efforts to silence, shame or diminish PWO activities and postgraduate researchers have taken place in almost every university where we have mobilised. In April 2024, TCD threatened disciplinary sanctions and a hefty fine for the leaders of the local PWO branch and of the supportive Students’ Union, in relation to protests organised during the year to bring attention to postgraduate researchers’ conditions and demand more transparency and equitable treatment. These threats were withdrawn after considerable public outcry. Maynooth University’s initial decision to suspend their doctoral scholarships is arguably also a reactionary and punitive response to PhD researchers’ activism: after dismissing the concerns raised by PWO for the past year, university management cited “anecdotal evidence” of student hardship as the principal motive to cancel the scholarship and find alternatives. Presumably, those alternatives would rely heavily on private industry funding. 

What next?

As PWO looks towards the future, we need to consider how to avoid common pitfalls faced by other unions, as well as how to face down the tactics and strategies used by employers to undermine unions. Our ultimate goal is for postgraduate researchers to be recognised as workers and protected as such; we consciously model our identity and our action in the tradition of union organising and we reject any characterisation as a students’ organisation or an apolitical “interest group”. We want to be firmly embedded in the national and international class struggle for workers’ rights. The Irish tradition of social partnership and the tools employed by universities to silence and disempower unions such as PWO all aim at removing unions’ connections with its grassroots and its actual power to strike. The power to withdraw labour is the ultimate weapon of workers and any union that represents them. The willingness and ability to use this tool must be maintained.