Two University of Oxford tutors who have been kept on “personal services” contracts for 15 years should have been regarded as employees, a tribunal has ruled.
Authors Rebecca Abrams and Alice Jolly have taught on the university’s creative writing master’s since 2007 and argued that they were denied important workplace rights, comparing their conditions to those found in the “gig economy”.
At a preliminary hearing at the Reading Employment Tribunal last month they claimed that the terms of their contracts stipulated they had to provide work on particular days and to particular deadlines set by the university, as well as comply with procedures regarding conflicts of interest, confidentiality and copyright ownership.
Courses were marketed using the authors’ biographies and they were referred to as “members of staff” on an admissions website.
