After a long campaign there is a prospect of payment for more of the hours they work

Faculty management has varied local operating rules to give subject supervisors discretion on when casual staff can be directed to work. This can mean casuals can be directed, and paid, to attend lectures in courses they are teaching for the first time, where there is more than 50 per cent new course content. They can also receive 12 hours of paid-time for meetings per semester and for up to 24 hours for student-consultation.

This is a substantial win for casuals in arts and an achievement for the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, which has long campaigned against payment practise in other faculties, including in computing, maths and stats (CMM May 13 2020).

And in Arts, which last year invited sessional staff to request a review of what they had been paid for marking –the faculty had been paying people for marking 4000 words/20 papers an hour, rather than hours worked, (CMM June 29 2020).