An employment tribunal has found that two creative writing professors who were employed as gig workers by Oxford University should have had employee status.
Alice Jolly and Rebecca Abrams worked at the university since 2008 and 2007 respectively, and both taught the Master of Studies degree in Creative Writing.
In 2022, they brought a claim against their employer for employing them as gig workers on fixed-term personal services contracts. They argued that their employment status had been misclassified since 2018 and that they have been denied their working rights.
Law firm Leigh Day, which represented Jolly and Abrams, argued that they should be offered employee status due to the nature of their work, and that their contracts stated that they would return each academic year and teach the course full-time for its entirety, as laid out by the tutor handbooks.
The firm explained in the tribunal that the university said it employed the professors on a casual basis to be flexible to demand due to the changing numbers of students on the course each year, and that it would offer more appropriate contracts in a letter to the Society of Authors in April 2022, but Jolly and Abrams’ contracts were not then renewed.
Employment Judge R Read said: “I find both claimants were engaged on a fixed-term contract of employment as detailed in paragraph 36-37 and are employees within the meaning of s.230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and s.295 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1996.”
Ryan Bradshaw, an employment solicitor at Leigh Day, added: “This is an important case that highlights the need for higher education providers to review and rethink their treatment of precariously employed staff. It is not acceptable for these institutions to continue to seek to avoid their legal obligations. The gig economy has no place in our universities.”
Oxford University has been contacted for comment prior to publication.