The use of fixed-term contract researchers as factotums

Fixed-term contract researchers are often used as factotums in universities, but it’s an aspect of academic life that is rarely discussed. It entails researchers taking on a variety of tasks, frequently at the behest of tenured members of staff, without receiving adequate, or indeed any, recompense other than being of service to their institution.

While the intensity of factotum work varies, it can involve taking on major responsibilities, teaching and coordinating entire courses without formal recognition for doing so, as well as supervising postgraduate students and contributing to the research proposals of senior staff members, with one’s own work side-lined in favour of these other, presumed to be more important, activities.

Working but not working

In a recent article published in The British Journal of Sociology of Education titled “‘You’re working, but you’re not working’: Academic precarity, ambivalence and the use of researchers as factotums”, I looked at this phenomenon in Portugal.

This involved interviewing 100 researchers in 2022 and 2023, many on fixed-term contracts and funded by the Portuguese state, who related how their time was regularly consumed by factotum work from senior colleagues.

This has a negative impact, not least on researchers’ ability to focus on their own work, but it also affects how they perceive their position within a university, a feeling described by one interviewee as ‘working but not working’ – ultimately, doing part of someone else’s job at the expense of their own career development.

My study focused on qualitative evidence, meaning that I have no way of assessing the prevalence of the researcher-as-factotum phenomenon or the extent to which it affects different socio-economic groups.

However, since my fieldwork covered a broad spectrum of disciplines, not only the natural sciences and engineering but also social science and humanities, I can demonstrate that the practice is widespread, affecting not only junior researchers but also their more experienced colleagues.

The factotum’s dilemma

One group of researchers disproportionately affected are those approaching the end of their fixed-term contracts, many of whom in Portugal have been recruited via legislation designed to regularise the careers of postdoctoral fellows, and through an annual scientific employment programme that ran for six years, between 2017 and 2023.

These individuals are put in the unenviable position of having to decide whether to devote the remaining months of their contracts to their own work or take on factotum tasks in the hope that this will improve their chances of somehow extending their employment.

This might be termed the factotum’s dilemma: focus on your own career, perhaps with a view to moving elsewhere in the labour market, or sacrifice what time is left in the hope of being somehow retained.

I interviewed people in both positions. There were a small number of outstanding successes, such as people who had won major European funding awards as a result of their application to their own work, greatly enhancing their employability. Others justified taking on factotum tasks by seeing this as a means of becoming a member of the teaching staff, albeit resenting the imposition but remaining silent out of fear of being labelled a troublemaker.

Researchers as a precariat

In reading their accounts, it is hard not to conclude that many researchers are being exploited, their vulnerability related to precarious working conditions, especially non-renewable fixed-term contracts. While some sections of the academic workforce have been recognised as a precariat, the use of researchers as factotums lacks sufficient visibility, especially where this has become a systematic feature of higher education institutions.

There is also something disconcerting about the workloads of individuals in precarious positions being augmented by work being transferred from senior colleagues in what appear to be more secure institutional positions. They appear able to delegate the tasks they can’t or won’t do, foisting this work onto people who feel in no position to refuse, suggesting universities need to rethink their institutional ethics.

Of course, senior academics are not necessarily trying to inhibit the career development of researchers on purpose, and may face institutional pressures of their own, including budgetary restraints.

This does not, however, make the use of researchers as factotums a fair or equitable solution, not to mention the fact that a university’s research function risks being compromised should the arrangement affect these workers’ productivity.

Future developments

In considering how to respond at policy level, the government in Portugal in all likelihood knows about this situation, and the vulnerability of many researchers.

This would explain why attempts have been made to regularise some aspects of their contractual situations, including giving them better access to welfare, and a new statute relating to careers in scientific research is under consideration by a new government administration, after having been previously suspended in 2023.

More recently, a widely anticipated tenure programme for researchers has been launched, although at the time of writing, no one has as yet been recruited and the contractual terms are unknown.

Whether this addresses the factotum issue remains to be seen, but recognising the ambivalence arising from power imbalances within universities and the divide between tenured and non-tenured staff is an obvious place to start, alongside a need to consider the ethical dimension of research career governance.

David Cairns is a principal researcher, working at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon in Portugal. E-mail: david.cairns@iscte-iul.pt