Academic workload models: a tool to exploit staff and cut costs?

So the 'academics' notional and nominal 35 hour week is, as we know only too well, a joke. But spare a thought for those who whilst not being regarded as 'academics', with all the associated benefits accorded to them, teach not only to cover absent academics but are tasked with key course delivery teaching over and above their job description described technician role that they also have to deliver. The really sneaky universities actually upgraded technicians from relatively low pay grades with compulsory overtime to the lowest accrel grade without overtime to save money whilst exploiting their staff and increasing the number of hours required, that 'notional and nominal' being qualified by the 'as required' sting in the tail.

"Some staff were so unhappy about their workload model... – that they had considered quitting over the unfairness" Gosh, they must have been seriously upset. I wonder how many actually did?

I am a full professor. I have been teaching for 18 years and get paid about twice what lecturers' are paid. But I have the same allowances on the workload model for course prep, student supervision, and research. My full professor colleagues use the workload model to load up the junior faculty to where they can barely breathe. And they are obsessed with keeping track of their every hour. Where are the citizenship behaviours counted? Workload models are not bad in theory but have been executed poorly, but still a bureaucrat's dream.

I have many years experience as an academic in universities and find the article and illustration captures the experience of academic life succinctly. Staff can work beyond the 50 hrs described and cliques can make life unbearable. The political aspects of academic life can drain the enjoyment out of work and certainly impact on health and well-being. Workloads are generally unmanageable with many unrelated activities to contend with. Personalities are often a key factor regarding organising workloads and generally without any objective reasoning underpinning the allocation of work.