Claire Dickson

Q-work is a system through which people can work for Queen’s University Belfast. The Scoop recently spoke to a second year student who has been working for Queen’s in the new Student’s Union. She wished to remain anonymous.

She’d been working at the Student’s Union for around a month with no pay whatsoever but knew that she would be paid a month later than she actually worked, i.e. she would be paid at the end of November for September’s hours. However, when this time came round, she still received no pay and was forced to borrow money to pay bills such as rent and gas which she described as not being ideal.

When she contacted Q-work, they informed her that if employees hadn’t filled in their timesheets on the Q-work portal by a specific deadline, they wouldn’t be paid for that month. She told The Scoop that most people who had just begun working there had not been informed about this, only that they needed to make a Q-work account. This meant there were quite a few people in the same position as she was. Her pay ended up being a total of 11 days late.

Someone else in a similar position told me that he was unable to enter the accurate number of hours he had actually worked into the Q-work system. This was because as he’s not a student he is able to exceed the maximum 37 hours per week, which he did. In theory, he added, this shouldn’t have been a problem as the Q-work system can put the limit up to 48 hours per week if this is required. A typical week for this person involved 55-60 hours of work and despite opting out of the 48 hour limit, he was still unable to enter the amount of hours he worked without it being rejected. The issue remained unresolved until around 3 weeks later, at which point he had missed the cut-off point and couldn’t be paid fairly for the work he had completed the previous month.

Upon speaking to the President of QUB Student’s Union, Emma Murphy, about the issue, she said that she had heard the concerns of many students regarding Q-work and it is something she has specifically spoken to ‘Unite’ the Union about as they represent lots of the workers who use Q-work. Due to this issue she is planning to join Unite on their picket on November 30. She wants to gain as much feedback from students as possible regarding how they have been affected by the issue.

“The reality is that if students can’t work the amount they need to sustain their education, they’re going to be employed elsewhere in places that are probably going to have, in some cases, more exploitative conditions, and that is the reality we’re facing at the moment.”

This is why she argues that anything which can be done to solve the issue will be a major step forward.

Upon contacting Q-work to get their perspective, they responded stating that “If a worker contacts us at Q-work Admin to state that their monthly pay isn’t what they expected, in the majority of circumstances it is usually because they have missed the payroll deadline which means that the timesheet(s) will be paid the following month.”

As the first student had previously told me, many new starts weren’t aware of this, and Q-work’s response made no mention of those who couldn’t enter the correct number of hours they had worked. It remains to be seen what Q-work can do to better support employees.

Claire Dickson is Deputy Head of The Scoop and a Politics student at Queen’s University Belfast

Q-work at Queens: precarity in employment