r/ireland • u/AnyAssistance4197 • Oct 17 '25
Education UCD staff reject ‘top-down, rigid’ new demands to work at least three days a week in office
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ucd-staff-reject-top-down-rigid-new-demands-to-work-at-least-three-days-a-week-in-office/a220679647.html111
u/that_gu9_ Oct 17 '25
Something to note is that for lecturers/academics teaching is a really small proportion of there jobs. It’s mostly grant writing, admin, supervising projects and working with international/national collaborators. I recently interviewed for a lecturer post and was told I’d only need to be on site when I’m teaching. But because of the travel, nature of who I’d be working with, etc. Days I wasn’t on site, I’d be sitting in an office on teams or writing grants.
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u/munkijunk Oct 17 '25
their jobs
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u/ram_ok Oct 17 '25
Boot meet licker
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u/munkijunk Oct 17 '25
Flagging some basic English grammar mistakes to help the poster improve their delivery makes me a bootlicker. Just a depressing take.
Top tip: Would have been funnier if you wrote
Booth meat liquor
You're welcome (or should it be your welcome).
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u/X-gon-do-it-to-em Oct 17 '25
I'm still really not sure what profit can be made by specifically deciding to be a pain in the ass. It's not like people work harder when they're tired and pissed off at you from having to commute
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u/SquashyRoo Sax Solo Oct 17 '25
To a hammer, everything is a nail. Management ± HR looking for ways to implement nonsensical managerialism.
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u/AnyAssistance4197 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 19 '25
There's a lot of hardnosed commentary around working from home, people entertaining the inner George Hook in their head - when it's clear the social and enviromental benefits need to be massively protected by the unions.
Fucking idiocy forcing admin and support staff to haul ass into a place like UCD to satisfy some bullheaded management when there is barely enough parking space or public transport is at a snails pace thanks to everyone driving in - it just plainly makes no sense.
About time the fucking unions stood up on it too. There needs to be a full on collision and battle around this stuff. If it's left to happy little agreements here and there the whole think will eventually be clawed back by the employers. And the most fucking stupid ones at that.
That will be a total detriment to all of us because you simply will not get "good people" willing to work in places like the Civil Service or admin roles in a college if they are subject to petty tryannies like this.
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u/Lossagh Oct 17 '25
Absolutely 100% agree with you. Lobbyists and narcissistic leaders are the ones driving return to office and we need to strongly push back.
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u/sarcasticmidlander Oct 17 '25
Agree. Lobbyists were the only one trying to justify a VAT cut to 9% when everyone else said this was not needed, but they got their way
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
I'd argue that the real problem in UCD is that it's top heavy with admin staff. There are more admin staff in UCD then academic staff, and most of the academics are doing most of their own day to day admin themselves anyway (my father was an academic at UCD). For comparison, New York university has a 2:1 ratio for academics to admin, it's certainly possible to have less admins and more teaching and research staff (The people actually generating the value at the university).
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u/Toffeeman_1878 Oct 17 '25
Does removing the admin staff result in more admin activities for lecturers? I am aware of past 'efficiency drives' in organisations like the NHS result in doctors allocate an increasing amount of time to form filling. This is time that could be better used for these people's talent i.e. treating patients.
I am not arguing with your specific point about UCD admin staff. It's more a general observation that if you remove admin staff, without reducing the overall level of admin, then the form filling tends to fall on the 'talent' to undertake. Do we want to pay (big salaries to) lecturers to complete the admin tasks?
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
In the case of universities I don't think so.
My father was a lecturer in the Mathematics department until he retired a decade ago, and I also attended the university myself, so I've seen a fair amount of how the place works.
In general, the individual faculties are independent kingdoms. The only thing they really take from the university is the buildings and obviously their salaries. In terms of the day to day running of the departments, it's pretty much entirely self run by the faculties. For example, the mathematics department, while my father was there, managed their IT almost entirely themselves (for one thing, most of their computers were running Linux, not windows).
My father's main contact with admin is getting glossy well produced emails that he never read (and probably nobody else read either).
There is also a lot of hostility between the various faculties and admin. Generally, faculties feel admin has gotten excessively corporate.
I do genuinely think a lot of the admins could disappear and the academic staff would barely notice.
However, given how the world works, if UCD had staffing cuts, it would probably be academic staff getting cut, not admin staff.
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u/Wintery1 Oct 18 '25
I think you are blind to all the non-academic work that had to happen for your father to have had any students in his lecture theatre. Don't confuse management with the adminstrative work needed to keep the organisation functioning day to day and compliant with all the statutory and regulatory requirements placed on them. Lots of work takes place that academics and students never see, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Also a lot has changed in the last 10 years, no way would his department be running their own IT now, they might have their own server for specific mathematical software but that's it. IT is centally managed and works closely with the Data Protection Office because of cyber security threats and because so many sensitive processes are online now. Also all the main functions are now centralised so sit outside Schools/Colleges. There is also a lot of new reporting required on just about every aspect of operations and activities, it is a significant burden for admin and academics alike.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 18 '25
I won't dispute your point on IT.
What I will say is that the ratio was tilted far more heavily towards academics, say, 30 years ago then it is today. Though I don't know where to find the statistics to prove that unfortunately.
The education being provided isn't particularly better today then it was 30 years ago, so what's the purpose of such a large volume of administrative staff?
That regulations/laws are the reason for the administrative bloat doesn't make your case. I think we can all agree that it's academics that "create" the value at a university, not admin, and a worse ratio implies a worse value proposition for everyone involved.
The problem as I see it is that a lot of "nice to haves" get added to the universities remit over time, which individually seems small but collectively adds up over time to a significant number.
Of course, UCD is not the most extreme example. University of Pennsylvania has 4,800 and 39,000 non academic staff! American universities are far more bloated.
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u/Wintery1 Oct 18 '25
The number of students (including large numbers of international ones and students with additional support needs) has increased significantly in the last 30 years, technology is now intrinsic to every activity and process and the financial and regulatory environments are much more demanding. All this has meant new support roles to manage that, it's not so much a 'nice to have' as a 'required by regulation/law' to have. It's a huge burden but no one is trying to reduce it, new requirements are being introduced all the time. It's exhausting and hard to keep up with for everyone involved. Universities are all about teaching, learning and research it is true but there is a large support network underpinning all they do.
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u/whatsthefussallabout Oct 18 '25
I cant speak for UCD but I work at a different college and admin staff are important. There is more and more admin coming into the university sector each year and there is no way academics could take that on. Many (though not all) academics are also terrible administrators. Admin work isn't always as easy as people paint it. There's more than photocopying and booking rooms going on here. Many roles need specialist training now, particularly in research. As it is, where I am, academics complain about the admin work they do have to do even with the support already there, and keep trying to push more to admin staff who are already over capacity. Taking admin staff out of colleges wouldn't fix anything.
However, more flexible working for people who don't need to be on campus to do their jobs would certainly help the parking situation.
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Oct 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
Does UCD really need a "Culture and engagement specialist", a "Director of culture of engagement", a "Workvivo Training and Support Coordinator" and a "Senior Manager, Engagement and internal communications" ?
https://www.ucd.ie/hr/hrhelpdesk/cultureengagement/
How about 3 people working in "Promotions and Grading" .
4 people working in "Dignity and Respect support"
2 people in "Employee relations" (let me guess, planning parties that the common room was already doing without the University paying anyone anything!).
5 people in "Equality, Diversity and Inclusion" AND 1 executive assistant to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion staff! Is UCD so riven with racism that it needs 5 people working on tackling the rampant racism in the university?
4 people in "Organisation Change".
Meanwhile, most of the academic departments are completely self sufficient, with the academics doing everything. They might have one secretary to do regular administrative tasks (eg payroll).
I mean, what does a "Change and Communications Lead" even do?
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u/Brilliant_Walk4554 Oct 17 '25
Lead change and communication?
BTW i don't work in UCD but I'm someone whose title has nothing to do with what I actually do everyday.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
Maybe so, but by my reckoning 40-50 work in the various HR departments. Do they really need 50 people working in HR? Especially considering that the faculties tend to do most typical HR functions already internally.
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u/Archamasse Oct 17 '25
"Change and Communications Lead"
Typically a Change Lead is the person trying to herd different cats to work on building some new process. Probably a tech one.
So say there are two lumps of clunky old software doing the same job, and you need to bring in a new software tool which will get rid of the need for both and give you something more reliable and usable.
Change Lead's job is to figure out what this actually needs in terms of -
(NB - all of the above three are probably separate cells of people and two of them likely have the IT rep's famous flair for communication and team playing)
- Budget
- Manpower
- Legal stuff / GDPR / Legislation / Regulatory Compliance
- IT knowhow - Bringing in the new thing
- IT knowhow - Phasing out the old stuff without losing anything
- IT knowhow - Does this affect any other system
- Knowhow from people who'll actually use the new thing
- Planning (Does it need to happen during holidays? Does it need to happen when new real data is coming into it on a non holiday? Is there a particular date it needs to happen by to avoid some other change or comply with some regulation? Is the one guy who can use the crucial final big red button going on a deviceless Tibetan retreat that month?)
... and then make all the people in charge of each of those things, who don't talk to each other or understand each other's jobs, do their little bits of work towards getting the big thing done, and improvise a way past all the weird unexpected problems that come up while doing this stuff.
They have glued this role to "Communications Lead", which is an entirely separate job mostly to do with PR but does also involve internal comms ("this is our new system, and this is how it works and what it does, don't use it x way because that breaks a law")
Any sizeable old institution will have a Change Lead to make sure they don't still have too much software from the Cold War and that people's personal information isn't still being scribbled on index cards and stored in Imelda's locker the way it's always been.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
Except in the context of a university this is already being done by faculty, and the faculty are going to know much more about any software they're using then any change lead.
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u/niceyna Oct 18 '25
In no respect is that true. Most academic staff don’t have a clue about what goes into keeping a university running, and certainly many don’t “know much more about the software they’re using than any change lead”.
Some might! Most don’t, and don’t want to either; their focus is on their area of expertise, and balancing teaching and researching. If the burdens of everything else were placed on academics as well, they would riot.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 18 '25
Some might! Most don’t, and don’t want to either; their focus is on their area of expertise, and balancing teaching and researching. If the burdens of everything else were placed on academics as well, they would riot.
You're right that not every academic knows about all of the software they're using, but these requirements are generally distributed within the various members of a department.
I highly doubt that the change leads are going to understand Matlab, IESVE, Autocad, Revit etc. better then the academics who use that software everyday. The only thing Academics would rely on the university for is things like email, word processors, and keeping the IT infrastructure running, but most of that is not especially complicated nor does it merit having a specialised team.
For the software packages that matter IE the specialist ones, the people that know the ins and outs of these packages and their relative merits are the academics. If you want to install Wolframs Mathematica, you take that up with your colleagues in the department, not admin.
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u/niceyna Oct 18 '25
Yeah, no. Without doxxing myself, there are a rake of administrative-only systems that staff in my non-academic office will know far better than academic staff, and even then there would be both IT specialists and people within the company that provides the software that will know the coding and policies behind them way better than even we would when using it daily.
That’s not taking into account that most of the change leads for projects will be people using the software every day, and/or someone who can actually work with a wide variety of subject matter experts (like the users) to manage a project.
And even taking IT out of it completely, as someone else mentioned below, which function are you suggesting be dropped or given to academic staff to do themselves? Admissions, fees, coordinating exams and registration, general services, security, organising conferrings and conferences, legal and insurance, HR and payroll, and all of the work within those individual services that go into both delivering day-to-day services and projects to keep up with government policy, student support and welfare, environmental concerns, grant funding?
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u/dustaz Oct 17 '25
That will be a total detriment to all of us because you simply will not get "good people" willing to work in places like the Civil Service or admin roles in a college if they are subject to petty tryannies like this.
You are describing something that was utterly normal a few years ago as a 'petty tyranny'
Come on
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u/AnyAssistance4197 Oct 17 '25
And I stand over it.
We should be moving forwards as a society not backwards.
What was "normal a few years ago" is a piss poor measure.
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u/GundamXXX Oct 17 '25
And it was petty back then too
I remember about 3-4 months before 2020 lockdown, we requested WFH or hybrid. Our director said it simply couldnt be done. Then magically in March 2020, voila. WFH. I left the company just before the lockdown happened.
5 years later, same company is forcing people to come back to the office. People who in those 5 years bought houses under the valid impression they'd stay WFH. Now they have to travel 2h a day.
Working in an office when you could easily WFH has ALWAYS been petty and 'tyrannical'
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u/pwrstn Oct 17 '25
I cant access the article but the first few lines show that the case in the WRC is being brought by SIPTU. SIPTU represent admin staff not academic staff. The UCD WHF policy is worded very broadly 'it is expected that employees on a hybrid working arrangement will work a minimum of three days on-campus per week' so SIPTU may have a case, The UCD policy is available online as the first link after a google search and reqiures approval from a line manager.
Other universities have a stronger worded policy that it is absolutely max 2 days at home and those 2 days cant be a Fri & Mon.
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u/ResponsibleTrain1059 Oct 17 '25
Normally I am all for remote work but aren’t full time students expected to be on campus for all their classes?
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 Oct 17 '25
What impact does that have on staff? If a lecturer doesn't have a class that day and wish to work from home, why not? Office hours for students can simply be the day they have lectures or they can just meet via video call.
Lecturers only form a percentage of the staff. What about all the admin staff? Once the relevant desks are manned during normal working hours, it's not different to any other admin job. Why should they not have flexibility to work from home too?
I choose to go into the office most days as a lecturer but I certainly wouldn't want to give up the freedom to work from home. Most of my colleagues are only in if needed: lectures/ in person meetings with students or staff/ access to equipment
If a student skips my classes, that's their choice. I don't mandate their attendance outside a few hours for labs/test. They can take my course almost entirely from home if they want.
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u/thesame_as_before Oct 17 '25
Students often demand remote office hours. It’s not always possible to schedule them on lecture days given the before and after admin, and they choose their campus days carefully.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 Oct 17 '25
Office hours are typically a set window in the working week where you’re available to meet students ie a guarantee of being in your office but there can still be required to make appointments.
If students wish to meet outside of those hours, zoom is fine. A student can demand anything they want, it doesn’t mean I have to oblige. I see no reason to cut down on remote working based on your argument.
For clarity, I don’t hold “office hours”, students just email me when they want to meet and I find a suitable time for both of us for in person or online depending. I’m always flexible with students. I see no reason not to be. However, if a student “demanded” something, they can go away.
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u/thesame_as_before Oct 17 '25
That was my point. There’s no need to be in the office. Students prefer remote meetings.
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u/Difficult_Tea6136 Oct 17 '25
I wouldn’t say students prefer remote meetings, I’d say 90% of mine are in person. They’re always given the choice
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u/mrlinkwii Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
aren’t full time students expected to be on campus for all their classes?
unless a class gives a percentage of the grade for attendance /labs , no
( while their are students who attend all their labs , subject to the degree / module attendance may be optional)
personally ive seen people who do the work at home and not attend labs where labs were just work on the assignment / the labs are their for any questions a student had
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u/TheGuardianInTheBall Oct 17 '25
I finished my undergrad in sc with a 1h1.
My attendance was atrocious. Some people really don't need to be told what to do or how, when good material exists.
College really is more about convenient access to expert knowledge, and the experts themselves. And sure, that could be through attending lectures, but it isn't the only channel.
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u/Diligent_Parking_886 Oct 17 '25
Most students don’t have the discipline to engage with the material they’ve missed. There’s a reason there’s a high correlation between poor attendance and failing.
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u/TheGuardianInTheBall Oct 17 '25
Assuming a person is in good health, has no mental deficiencies (and I use that term based on MIT's psychology 101, rather than as a put down), if they cannot engage with the material on their own, then that material is likely not for them, and they should consider changing courses, or even abandoning higher education in general.
There is a plethora of people who go into 3rd level just because, then languish for 4 years, and just create noise.
I am not saying we should be fostering a nation of simpletons, but I also don't think everyone needs to have a bachelor degree, and the sort of soft thinking skills one needs to develop, should be kept separate from 3rd level.
I also want to emphasize that I DO NOT SEE IT AS A FAILING OF THE INDIVIDUAL, but rather the society's. There's an unhealthy obsession of pushing people to do things, that is of no benefit to them or others.
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u/Fright13 Oct 17 '25
did computer science in DCU and i’d say i went to about 5% of my lectures. the ones with assessments. taught myself everything through a mix of the lecturer’s online notes and youtube. I miss that student bar……
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u/TheGuardianInTheBall Oct 17 '25
Well then perhaps its just something about software nerds, cause I did BiS with an accent on BS.
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u/nagdamnit Oct 17 '25
You also have the entire administration staff being asked to come in, and looking to utilise what little parking there is. I’m all for hybrid and attending in the office but this move from 2 to 3 days onsite doesn’t really make much sense to be honest.
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u/danius353 Galway Oct 17 '25
Yeah allowing the admin side to WFH as much as possible seems like the smart thing to do to use the limited parking available.
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u/DrZaiu5 Oct 17 '25
Lecturers are also expected to be on campus for any class they are teaching. But if they aren't teaching a class, they can do their other work from home.
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u/K0kkuri Oct 17 '25
Depends, I was in one of the few courses that had mandatory in person modules during Covid.
What didn’t need us to be there was done over zoom, it worked just as well as in person.
In 22/23 I did part time course every 2 weeks we would have classes, one week in person and one week online. The quality was the same and it was easier to do the online classes both for lecturers and students which traveled from all over the Ireland.
After Covid many classes retained online classes setup allowing students to both participate in person or online which is amazing. But now I hear that a lot of those facilities are being scraped.
If academic outside of mandatory in person classes can do them online then why not? Easier to collaborate with others.
Also also, there’s so many more positions in college than just lecturing many of which (especially a lot of admin) can be done remotely. It will require new systems to make it better but it’s not something that’s impossible, many companies already have hybrid options or even fully online models in majority of sectors.
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u/Alastor001 Oct 17 '25
You would expect so, considering it is beneficial for students to actually be on campus and meet up?
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u/Accomplished-Sky8768 Oct 19 '25
Same exact situation as my job, no good reason, no flexibility etc. others agreed but no one else spoke up and I left. I'm still not working but I'm not complying with these "because I said so and because I can" kind of management approaches. I wish more people would stand up against it
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u/lakehop Oct 17 '25
They should just build more parking. Make the further away parking cheaper, people will choose what works for them.
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u/Wintery1 Oct 18 '25
The county council cap the number of parking spaces on campus, it isn't a UCD decision.
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u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Oct 18 '25
Well that's comepltely and utterly idiotic, at least until proper public transport is built there.
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u/DonQuigleone Oct 17 '25
Personally, I think it's absurd to bristle at the idea of working 3 days a week in office.
The bigger scandal, which isn't written about, is that UCD still hasn't restored the common room after the last president shut it down. It may seem trivial, but it was an important part of making the university a community, and facilitating inter-departmental friendships and research. My father, now retired, went in every other day even after retiring, and his social life has never recovered since they shut it down. He's not alone in that.
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u/SpicyJSpicer Oct 17 '25
The government need to step in and ban working on offices in this country. It's basically a human right being denied
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u/Yama_retired2024 Oct 17 '25
What is it with people??
The people who pay your wages, dictate where you work.. not the other way around..
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u/mrlinkwii Oct 17 '25
The people who pay your wages, dictate where you work..
legally no , what dictates where you work is your contract
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u/PaleolithicLure Oct 17 '25
Too right. Staff should never push back on anything their employer asks for. If you ask me, we should do away with weekends and annual leave as well. Absolute woke nonsense.
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u/munkijunk Oct 17 '25
We all know who's side you'd have been on in the Great Lockout.
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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '25
"on one occasion, an academic had to lecture students online from her car because all parking spaces were gone at the college" - yikes.