Yesterday's GTA & anti-casualisation meeting by @UCUGlasgow got me thinking about the weirdness of GTA pay which has raised my eyebrows a couple of times over the past 3 years I've been teaching here. #UCUStrikes #UCUStrikesBack So here's a thread 1/13

(Before I start - this is not meant as an indictment of the department, the HR team for the School, or anything like that - but rather a prod at the overarching structure for us GTAs that I've increasingly come to view as unhealthy. I love my teaching, and I do hate fights) 2/13

Let's start at the beginning - October 2016 I started as baby PhD student and GTA. Let's take a look at how the engagement letter said it would go: 'a rate of £25.15 per hour [gross]'. Great! Looks pretty simple - I'll earn that for every hour of my services for the course. 3/13

Oh you sweet summer child 2016 me. See, the thing is that you got paid different rates - one for teaching time, and one for preparation time. It wasn't £25.15 per hour. It's actually £25.15 for two hours (I can only assume that little 'gross' makes all the difference). 4/13

So, the teaching hour was paid at £15.14, the preparation time at £7.57, and the holiday pay allowance added it up to £25.15. Well, apparently £25.44 according to this timeslip. #quidsin So, to recap - what originally sounded like £25 per hour is actually £25 per two hours. 5/13

But fine, whatever. Next year, the same deal. They're a little more upfront about how the pay is actually broken down. Still calling the ~£25 a 'Total Hourly Rate' when they literally state it's actually two hours right above... However, for 2018-19 things changed. 6/13

BUT! Not right away. My original engagement letter from August 2018 gives the same old 'Basic Rate' and 'Preparation' plus 'Holiday Pay' = one hour work mental gymnastics. 7/13

A month later on though the new Handbook for the School's GTAs comes out - and they've cut the preparation hour down to a half hour for every hour of teaching you're doing. They do highlight this change, kindly, but no explanation why. 8/13

Now, the new handbook has a nice graphic showing the new rate for preparation time - £7.70 for a half hour. My most recent payslip shows this new rate in a different way, with Preparation time still being counted in hours - giving a rosy-looking £15.71 per hour of prep. 9/13

But we're no longer paid an hour of prep time per hour of teaching. Which, if you only had one hour of teaching a week, is frankly ridiculous - how can someone prepare an hour's worth of materials for a seminar/tutorial in half an hour's work? Simple answer - you can't. 10/13

So what brought this change last academic year in how the University is calculating our preparation time? The cynic in me suspects that its status as a 'Living Wage' employer has something to do with this, as 2 months after the pay rate change, they release this article. 11/13

Re-calculating the Preparation time's hourly rate to sit pretty above Living Wage, whilst cutting GTA prep time in half, is very cunning. But shows that there's a concern more about image, than about the quality of teaching actually provided. 12/13

So there we have it - GTA prep hours cut to make the pay numbers look good and 'Living Wage'. #WorldChangersWelcome but don't expect the 60% casualised staff from #TeamUofG you meet to be happily employed. No wonder so many GTAs & other casual staff are on #UCUStrikesBack 13/13

Just found your Twitter handle @Glasgowanticas - I know you were looking for GTA pay info, so this might interest you!