How to survive being exploited at work.

As a result of recent events and what happened with Jorge's dismissal (https://jorgerodrigueznieto.com/2022/03/07/guess-who-is-leaving-elisava-and-why/) I have decided to tell my part of the story, which runs in parallel but is slightly different. Yes, there are still more bad things that have happened in the university that we have kept silent about for a long time.

I started collaborating with Jorge at the MiDI in 2013 when the amount of work was getting out of hand (since the program had gone from being a postgraduate to a master's degree and had also generated an English version for the international students), and since the school did not he put in resources to really offload the work of the director, who is expected to do practically everything, including marketing, which, in our case, the university never really dealt with. The vast majority of students we have had over the years came to the program either through a direct recommendation from another student or because they searched for specific keywords related to the program that appeared on Google.

I started small, in the organisational and content programming part that complements the academic part developed by Jorge and supporting him in classes and during the two annual trips, but I had a limit of hours set by the school (so as not to have to hire me, of course, always below the Minimum Interprofessional Wage) which was far below the work that was actually carried out throughout the year and, taking into account the large number of students that the school expects to be happy and satisfied through some higher power and the divine influence and, of course, at no cost.

Due to the limit of hours established by law for external collaborators and the fact that I was not legally hired, each year I worked more, having to stop charging the university for hours executed, getting paid through Jorge's payroll, for example. The university saved a lot of taxes and Social Security payments and shifted all their labor costs to us.

Finally in 2017 (four years later and after a labor inspection in 2016 in which they had to regularise the contracts of 40 workers none the less, as confirmed by the UGT Workers Union) the situation became unsustainable and they decided, because they could no longer stretch the situation, to hire me from October to July, as little time as possible in order not to have to pay for vacations and save three months of payroll and Social Security payments. The same happened the following year. At least, I was finally being paid, more or less fairly, taking into account the scale of the income generated by us for the university (and to give you a perspective, at that time we had about 50 students paying 11,000 euros per year, do the math...).

Of course, the third year came and when it was time to get hired permanently by law, the university came up with a plan in order not to hire me again and of course to avoid making my position a permanent one. With a lot of anger and resignation, I saw how they put someone else in my position (someone that I myself recommended to help us with the program) and seeing how they took away one of the programs that we created and developed together with Jorge (this guy, in his own words, said that “I will never do this program without you”) at the same time that the income in our family unit was once again reduced. I did not take any action, in order not to harm Jorge. At the same time I had to put up with comments from students on several occasions of the type "but that's what they pay you for" one of the many days I was there without getting paid because the boss told me "don't tell the students that you don't have a contract".

The next step was to reduce Jorge’s wages again, remove him from MaDE, a program that he and I had created and that the university did not stop boycotting during the entire time that we were managing it, since the school was already reorienting itself towards a business model based on recruiting students who want to?come to spend time in a foreign city and for whom the program mainly represents an extended tourist visa, but who are not really willing to work beyond class time (and in our opinion that is not the best way to effectively study anything).

In our opinion, a student is not a client in the sense that, in theory, they come to study, not to eat or buy clothes, but to take a more or less long course.

Education should not only be about having “satisfied customers” but fundamentally about providing useful quality training and preparing them for the future. Most of our students understood this or realised it after finishing the program, even some after quite some time. We have been able to verify this after the school kicked Jorge out during his first ever sick leave and, thus, de facto kicking me out at the same time.?

No one spoke to us, no one called us to ask anything. It took exactly one day for the university to replace Jorge, with the same individual that I had brought to MADE. We had created and directed MiDI during the previous 12 years and he who already had stolen the other program from us. His mediocre vision of education (restaurant style) is 100% aligned with that of the school, the student is a client who has to be massaged so that, heaven forbid, he will not complain about a teacher who spoke to him louder than usual or made him work too much during his sabbatical in Barcelona. Luckily, our students were never like this, with very few exceptions that fell by their own weight, and we are very proud to have been able to contribute positively to the development of so many brilliant people over the years (approximately 400 of them).

We advance to the Covid era… The university lowers the price of the hours of non-contracted professors by 25% (the work is the same, even more, because now all the responsibility is ours but we have to show “solidarity” with the school now who is supposedly earning less (Did we get paid more when they earned huge amounts of money in previous years? I don’t think so) while reducing, without informing anyone, the number of hours that can be charged per school year.

During Covid, the university left us literally stranded with the program. They did not make resources available beyond the strict minimum (Teams and Sigma only) to be able to continue with the program while confined to our respective homes. We had to pay for Wix, Miró and Zoom out of pocket to be able to work correctly on the master's projects since neither Teams nor Sigma are tools designed for the type of program we ran and, as everyone knows, Teams was continually collapsed during the pandemic. I kept invoicing until I reached the maximum allowed (without knowing it) and the last invoice was not paid, which I was told shamelessly, after having already worked the corresponding hours (remember at a 25% lower rate than normal). The solution: let Jorge get paid?for your hours through his payroll, thus raising effectively his (our) taxes. The same happened for the rest of the semester from January to July.

Fast forward to 2021, end of September. Barely half a week before the course begins, we are told that, despite the fact that there are enough students in both groups, the Master’s version?in Spanish is not opening, but the students will switch to the English version, still being able to effectively continue the program in Spanish, presenting in Spanish and submitting papers in Spanish. Same workload as before but half the pay… For us it meant, 200 hours less of class, and I am left not being able to charge for my hours and Jorge earns even less than before. Our room for manoeuvring is reduced to a minimum. There is a huge discontent among Spanish students (understandably) but, although the decision was not ours, we again have to assume all the economic and organisational consequences of having to change the entire program 3 days before the start and stop charging for our work. In spite of everything, I teach my scheduled classes without charging a single euro because it is impossible to find someone who would do my classes for free and once again I am not supposed to discuss it with the students (you work for free, we continue to charge the same…).

The time has come for the scheduled trip to Lisbon, that we have not been able to do for two years because of COVID 19, there is still uncertainty and many restrictions and companies do not receive visits, but despite that and with all the enthusiasm, we scheduled it, discussing that we are not going to to be able to make the usual visits and that it is going to be a lot of field work, which is very necessary if you are doing a postgraduate course in Trend Research, which they were. They are given all the necessary tools and the task to be developed during the trip. I take care of everything (for free).?

Once again, our admired colleague Professor Nelson Pinheiro Gomes from the Universidade Lisboa dedicates three of the five scheduled days to us without receiving any compensation and making room for us in his busy schedule and offering classrooms at the University despite how complicated it is, due to lack of real availability of classrooms (unlike our university, that blocked classrooms unnecessarily just in case). Jorge and I were available to the students throughout the trip, ready to help and receive questions, we even enabled a WhatsApp chat dedicated to it during the trip which the students did NOT use at any time except to ask us, in the middle of the trip on the 3rd day, that we change the whole rest of the schedule because it did not suit their needs and because they all had very important meetings with very important clients that it was impossible to change. Let's remember that it is a trip planned since the beginning of the postgraduate course in September and scheduled, and no one was charging for their work and that ,in the real world, meetings can be easily canceled and moved, that happens to us on a daily basis.?None of the students in the last edition of the master's degree held an essential position in their part-time job…?

But… the students like to complain because they feel that all this was not enough and they have to complain to the boss because they (secretly) expected to get refunded for the semester (we imagine that due to the discontent created by the university itself for canceling the version in the language that they had paid originally, unfortunately none of the students this semester tried to communicate and explain what was really going on).?

The university receives their complaints and of course, like with a dissatisfied customer in a restaurant, looks for a scapegoat and blames us for everything WITHOUT even verifying any of the accusations. The director of Masters and Postgraduate courses sends Jorge a very aggressive and unpleasant email that results in a very strong anxiety attack which makes me take the decision to take Jorge to the ER since he would not stop crying. I want to clarify that we have been suffering the same situation for about 4 years twice a year and I managed to handle the situation in a more or less adequate manner but this time it was way worse than the previous times, this time it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Of course, the doctor immediately prescribed a sick leave, I want to point out that it was ONE day before the Christmas holidays, meaning, the sick leave did not really affect the development of the program, at least at that point in time.

NOBODY from the university communicates with us. The most logical action, since Jorge was on sick leave and it is not legal to contact workers in that situation, would have been to contact me, who has effectively co-directed the program for the last?10 years. Instead, there is only silence and they tell Jorge that they are giving the program to someone else until he recovers, so that he can take “all the necessary time to recover”… The next thing happening is that, while he is still on sick leave, a letter arrives. A disciplinary dismissal full of false accusations and violations of rules that we did not know existed (conveniently made up for the occasion).

I stopped being silent, we hired a lawyer who has already filed a lawsuit for unfair dismissal and workplace harassment in Jorge's case and for me an acknowledgment of a work relationship.

I leave out many details, but I do not want to lengthen my testimony any more. In short, we have been used and thrown away mercilessly and with as much disrespect as possible.

We need all the help we can get, if you haven't already done so, in our claim process. Testimonials of how the University has handled things badly for them, for example, so that situations like this stop happening. There are too many teachers in this situation in the same house, being exploited for the benefit of the institution.

Of course the same thing happens in other places and it is no less serious.

I ask you to please share our stories and tell your colleagues, friends and relatives who do not go to this university since they will no longer receive a quality education.