Contract type, working hours, and tasks
The Academic Fixed-Term Contract Act and the way it has been applied in universities and research institutions to date creates great uncertainty and high levels of stress for those affected. The frequency of fixed-term contracts makes the difficult situation clear, particularly for mid-level faculty (see Figure 43). While 76.6% of all professors have permanent contracts, the figure is only 34.2% for postdocs and a mere 5.5% for predocs. These numbers must be evaluated completely differently in each status group. While most “non-tenured” professors today have a tenure track, this does not yet apply to postdocs. The situation is different for predocs, since the majority of them do not remain in the academic system after completing their doctorates.
However, for predocs, (involuntary) part-time work is possibly a bigger problem. 56% of predocs are employed part-time, as are 26% of postdocs (not shown). This is reflected in the lower average contractual working hours, which are 32 hours per week for predocs and 36.7 hours per week for postdocs (see Figure 44).
The actual average weekly working hours are much higher. To assess the actual weekly working hours adequately, they must be considered in relation to the contractual hours. The difference can be described as weekly overtime. Due to the lack of contractual working hours, a fictitious baseline of 40 hours was set for the group of professors. Figure 44 shows the weekly working hours, including the contractual working hours for postdocs and predocs, as well as the weekly overtime.
On average, postdocs work 42.9 hours per week and thus an average of 6 hours more than they are paid for. For predocs, there are 40 hours of actual working hours per week, which amounts to almost 8 hours of overtime per week (see Figure 44). But the professors exemplify a work culture with long weekly working hours. They work an average of 51.2 hours per week, exceeding the traditional 40-hour week by 11.2 hours (see Figure 44).
This situation can be considered problematic, especially since in academia, “overtime” is always unpaid overtime. Certainly, many will see the partially unbounded working hours as an expression of commitment, good motivation, and a strong work ethic, but such a way of working also poses risks to health and thus to the sustainability of research.
A comparison of the subjects at the level of the status groups shows that professors in the humanities and life sciences work particularly long hours per week (see Figure 45). They work 53.4 and 53.6 hours per week, respectively. They are followed by professors in the engineering sciences, who work an average of 51.7 hours.
Among predocs, engineers work the fewest overtime hours, which is due to the fact that they are already awarded contracts with higher hourly volumes, or much more frequently, full-time contracts (cf. Ambrasat 2021). Especially in the natural sciences, there is a great deal of overtime work, with an average of 12.9 hours (see Figure 45).
A look at the distribution of working hours across different tasks reveals different profiles for professors, postdocs, and predoc researchers (see Figure 46). Since professors have significantly more supervisory responsibilities, committee work, and reviews, their research time is the lowest at less than 25% (see Figure 46). Predocs in the natural sciences have the most research time, with an average of 62.2% of their working hours, followed by those in the life sciences with 51.7%. At the same time, postdocs and even predocs take on shares of all other tasks. It is striking that the workloads for teaching do not differ that much between the status groups, even though professors usually have significantly higher teaching loads than non-professorial academic staff. This can surely only be partially explained by the fact that efficiency increases with professional experience. At the same time, it is a clear indication of how the increasing teaching and supervisory tasks at universities are actually distributed. Management tasks, which take up between 11% and 20% of working hours depending on the subject and status group, are also incurred to a similar extent for all status groups (see Figure 46). An increase in research time, teaching and supervision time may well be desirable. In contrast, an increase in time for management tasks would be a dangerous sign, indicating excessive bureaucratisation (or “paperwork”, Graeber 2016) and thus inefficiency and barriers to innovation.
Figure 47 shows that permanent contracts for postdocs are often linked to specific teaching and administrative tasks. Consequently, there is far less time for research: while fixed-term postdocs can use 44.5% of their working hours for research, postdocs with permanent contracts can only use 27.3% of their working hours for research.