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Australian Catholic University is hiring–is it worth considering?

Brian Leiter

A young philosopher sent along this ad, writing, ” They’ve posted several jobs, but why should any candidate be rushing to apply? I wondered if you’d heard any scuttlebutt.” I have no special information, but I can report that the same vice-chancellor who destroyed the Dianoia Institute is still running the university. So caveat emptor! Comments are open for those who may have more information.

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2 responses to “Australian Catholic University is hiring–is it worth considering?”

  1. Matt Lister

    I am not an Australian lawyer, nor (for that reason) a practioner of Employment law in Australia. So, I don’t have the sort of day-to-day feel for the law that an experienced practioner would. But, I have taught labour and employment law for 7 years in Australia, and talked with some of my practitioner friends about the ACU situation last time. Here are my general thoughts on the legal issues, given that background. This isn’t, of course, offered as legal advice or a definitve statement of the law.

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    On the ACU jobs – assuming such jobs are normal “continuing” ones, they would have normal Australian job protection under the Fair Work Act, the large statute that is the basic law that governs most employment in Australia, and any contractual guarantees included in a contract, and/or an “Enterprise Agreement”, most likely – the local equivalent of a union contract, though the existence and content of these differs from employer to employer – but less protection than a tenured position in the US. In my experience (2 jobs, so not extensive, but I think this was pretty common) academic jobs often have a contractual “probationary” period that is longer than the statutory one (which is 6 months for a large employer.) The probationary process was, in my experience, not exactly pro-forma, but not very difficult, either. If you are doing satisfactory work, you’re kept. Then you are a “normal” employee. At least during the 6 months statutory period, and maybe longer contractually, you can be let go for any non-discriminatory reason. After that, it’s harder, but not impossible at all to simply let people go. The biggest requirement is to give them notice of termination – for an academic this would likely be set out in their contract. I think I’ve typically had 6 months set out. The statutory period grows with time, but is pretty short – one week for less than a year, two weeks for 1-3 years, etc. This notice can be given to the person, who works out the notice period, or you can be given “pay in lieu of notice”, where you’re given the pay for the notice period and told to go away. There is a statutory requirement in the Fair Work Act that the dismissal not be “harsh, unfair, or unjust”, where this looks at procedures and also somewhat on larger context, but, while the officiall preferred remedy for an “unfair dismissal” (the term here) is reinstatement, this is done only in about 1/3 of the cases. The most common remedy is compensation, but that’s statutorially capped at 6 months pay. If someone is let go for prohibited reasons (an “unlawful dismissal”) there can be more significant pay-outs, and there are tools to make this somewhat easier to prove, but you do need to show a prohibited reasons. (There is a long list of reasons.) It’s also worth noting that, in Australia, public criticsm of one’s employer is fairly well recognized as a for-cause ground for dismissal (where even the notice period may not need to be paid), and as far as I can tell this extends to academics, too, even in cases where it would be seen as covered by academic freedom in the US. So, that’s another thing to consider.

    The people who lost their jobs at the ACU before were “made redundant” (ie, layed off). This has its own rules, but if the employer can show that it no longer needs the “job” to be done (which is distinct from the “task”), they have a pretty easy time. (So, if administrators decided that 1 philosopher can teach 100 kids as well as they teach 50, and so they only need one person to teach 100, rather than 2 to teach 50 each, this would probably count as a genuine redundancy.) With redundancy there are statutorially set payments on termination, but they increase with lenth of employment, so new hires might not get much. These can be modified by contact or by an enterprise agreement, so may differ from the standard amount.

    All of this is indepdent of what the particular job or work environment would be like. About that, I have no idea, but the bosses can of course have a big impact on it.

    Again, this shouldn’t be taken as legal advice, or a comment on whether the job is worth applying for or not. Melbourne is a nice city and there is a good philosophical community there, so there are some pluses. But, this is my understanding of the employment law situation in general.

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  2. Justin Fisher

    Since the young philosopher’s question was “Why should anybody be rushing to apply?” I think the obvious answer is that, however insecure this job might be, a lot of young philosophers aren’t assured that they’ll end up having any better option, so applying to this will help to increase their expected utility from what it would be if their best other option turns out to be even worse. If you end up getting one of the more secure job-offers that there are out there, then first, congratulations!, and second, yeah, at that point I’d think it would be hard to justify taking this one, given their track record.

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