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The German term Berufsverbot entered the lexicon of international political debates in the early 1970s. It referred to a law enacted in West Germany that banned people from working in the public sector because they were aligned with what were deemed anti-constitutional organisations, for example the pro-Soviet German Communist Party (DKP). The expression made a comeback in recent years in a completely different context: Mid-level faculty in academia use it to protest against the legal regulation of termed contracts. Notably, in 2015 academic labour activists included it in an open letter directed to the Minister of Education and all members of the Federal Parliament. The MPs had drawn the ire of the activists because they were in the process of amending a law regulating termed contracts in academia, and it had transpired that a majority of them were not prepared to repeal its most controversial provision. This provision limits the employment period of people in mid-level positions who are on termed contracts. Mid-level faculty can only work in state-funded positions for six years before the completion of their PhD, and for another six years after that point. The frustration of the activists results from the fact that permanent positions in the medium bracket of academia are incredibly rare, and that it is very difficult to attain full professorships, which is the standard way to obtain a secure job. Many academics have to leave their profession altogether once they have reached the end of the six-plus-six-year period – often after having spent roughly two decades of their lives studying and working in higher education institutions. In this article, I will examine how precarity is produced in German academia and explore how labour activists are trying to combat it. In so doing, I will focus on mid-level faculty. First of all, I will explain the mechanics of precarisation; second, I will identify the institutional supports of the status quo blocking change in favour of labour; and third, I will analyse the demands and strategies of two organisations that have made headlines in recent years by exposing the proliferation of precarity in German academia: the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW) and the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss).

Precarious Academic Labour in Germany: Termed Contracts and a New Berufsverbot