Ei-iE

This testimony was collected as part of the research project entitled “In the eye of the storm: Higher education in an age of crises” conducted by Howard Stevenson, Maria Antonietta Vega Castillo, Melanie Bhend, and Vasiliki-Eleni Selechopoulou for Education International. The research report and executive summary are available here.

Worlds of Education: How did collegial governance come under attack at Maynooth University?

In 2023 staff at Maynooth University were informed that staff representation on the university’s governing authority would be based on selection, rather than election, thus removing any elected staff representatives from the university’s principal governance body.

There had already been concerns because the university had been involved in making a significant number of new management appointments at a senior level. These appointments had inserted a new managerial tier between the President and staff representative bodies such as Faculty and Academic Council. We already felt that staff representation was being diminished, but we were given no notice of any changes to governance arrangements prior to the announcement of the removal of elected representatives and their replacement by appointees.

Worlds of Education: What was the reaction of university staff?

Staff were initially surprised by the announcement, but this quickly turned to anger. On a point of principle, the removal of elected representatives was an attack on democracy in the university and on our right to elect our own representatives. On a practical level, the proposed changes undermined genuine transparency by ensuring that the key body responsible for ensuring the accountability of the university’s senior management was appointed by the same senior management. We viewed this as poor governance with insufficient scrutiny of senior management.

Worlds of Education: What was the role of the union branch in mobilising staff?

Staff opposition to the changes quickly began to form, and this coalesced around the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) branch. The union was the natural vehicle for staff to articulate their concerns. The union branch has an effective structure – an organising structure. The branch has the ability to organise across faculties and also to make connections with other unions who are representing different types of staff. We could present a unified response from the staff – but it wasn’t too difficult because there was strong unity from staff across the university.

As the obvious vehicle for articulating staff grievances, the union branch set about engaging with members and representing member views to the university’s management. Despite coinciding with a holiday period, we organised a branch meeting that was extremely well attended. It was very clear that union members were opposed to the changes. We sought meetings with the management, but we were also able to increase pressure by organising a petition and drawing interest from the media. As awareness of the issues spread, our union branch received messages of support and solidarity from around the world.

Worlds of Education: What were the results of the campaign?

As pressure grew, the management’s response was to offer a compromise involving a mix of elected and selected staff on the governing authority, but this was roundly rejected by staff. Staff maintained a united position, and the union was able to give expression to this unity. As a result, the university eventually announced that staff representatives would all be elected. This was a complete reversal of its original proposal.

Worlds of Education: What did this victory mean for your union branch and for democracy at Maynooth?

The experience at Maynooth University provides an important example of how a union can act as a pole for staff grievances, that otherwise may struggle to be articulated with such clarity. Staff anger was undoubtedly already there – and would have found expression in some form. However, it is not clear whether this would have been able to achieve the same decisive outcome without union organisation.

As a result, the union attracted increased member involvement, and more effective inputs into a collective agreement being negotiated at the time. The negotiations for the collective agreement were certainly helped by this struggle – because management could see what we could do. Involvement in the governing authority elections had much higher levels of participation and engagement, in part thanks to a union-organised husting of candidates. Candidates were clearly much more sensitised to the need to ensure institutional transparency and accountability and are now well placed to defend collegial governance from future threats. Ironically, institutional democracy appears to have been revitalised as a direct consequence of managerial efforts to suppress it.

Worlds of Education: How did your experience at Maynooth University influence the work of union branches in other universities?

Nationally, the Maynooth experience raised the profile of higher education governance issues among IFUT’s members and more widely. There is some evidence that other universities considering the same changes to governance structures decided not to proceed after our successful campaign at Maynooth.

As a national union, IFUT has organised a series of member seminars on collegial governance and academic freedom and is exploring providing training to IFUT members who may be members of governing authorities. Awareness of the issues has been raised considerably, as has awareness of the value of collective union action.

Image credit - William Murphy on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0