CLASSROOMS WITHOUT SALARY AND OLD AGE WITHOUT RETIREMENT: THE SILENT "UBERIZATION" OF UNIVERSITY TEACHING

 

The world of work is undergoing one of its greatest historical metamorphoses. Under the banners of "modernization" and "technological adaptability," structural reforms are being promoted that aim to legalize and massify hourly contracts or work. However, behind the promise of flexible hours and economic dynamism lies a worrying erosion of fundamental worker guarantees. To understand the scope of this transformation, it is imperative to clearly differentiate between formal employment (based on subordination and shared responsibility for social security) and independent work (based on the contractor's autonomy). The blurring of these boundaries, coupled with the imposition of ultra-flexible dynamics, threatens to turn retirement—an enshrined social right—into an individual and unattainable utopia for new generations.

There is already a blurred line comparing employment vs. To understand independent work and uncover the trap of precarity, we must first understand what separates an employee from an independent worker in the traditional labor structure.

The proposal to generally institute hourly work is often presented as a bridge to formalizing independent workers or reducing unemployment. However, operational reality demonstrates the opposite: instead of elevating the independent worker to the security of employment, it degrades the formal employee to the instability of the independent worker.

By legalizing the fragmentation of working time, the employer is relieved of the obligation to maintain a legal minimum monthly wage and full benefits, paying only for fractions of actual time worked. The hourly worker is trapped in a kind of "legal limbo": they have the availability requirements of an employee, but They receive variable and insufficient income that barely covers their daily subsistence, making any savings or long-term planning impossible.

This labor transformation diminishes the possibility of a dignified old age, causing an even more serious collateral damage: the "uberization" of the workday occurs within the pension system. Modern retirement systems—whether public or individual savings—were designed under the premise of stability with continuous contributions calculated based on a full-time monthly salary for a specific number of weeks or years.

When hourly work becomes the norm, the pension structure crumbles due to three fundamental factors:

• Inability to contribute based on legal minimums. If a worker works only a few hours a week, their total monthly income is usually less than the minimum wage. Even if proportional contribution mechanisms exist based on weeks or days, the absolute value accumulated in their pension accounts is negligible.

• The barrier of contribution weeks, in systems that require a work history (weeks contributed), means that fragmented work exponentially extends the time required to retire. A young person starting their working life on an hourly basis might need to work twice as many calendar years to certify the equivalent of the contributions required for a minimum pension.

Total privatization of the risk of old age: as the formal employment relationship weakens, the State and businesses subtly transfer all responsibility for old age to the citizen. Workers, forced to choose between eating today or contributing to their retirement tomorrow, inevitably prioritize the present. This leads to an unprotected old age or one dependent on insufficient state welfare subsidies.

The distinction between formal employment and self-employment is not a mere bureaucratic whim; It is the line of defense that separates decent work from modern exploitation. Imposing hourly work under the pretext of labor flexibility is nothing more than a mechanism to dilute social security costs and transfer the economic burden of old age onto the shoulders of the most vulnerable sectors.

The true modernization of the labor market should not be measured by how easily a worker's time can be fragmented, but by the system's capacity to guarantee that, regardless of the service modality, every person who contributes their labor to society is guaranteed a dignified and secure retirement. Otherwise, the future of work will not be one of freedom, but of a precarious old age.

This transformation is already resonating in higher education. The concern and frustration are entirely understandable. What is described here touches on one of the most acute and painful problems in current higher education: the precarious employment of teachers and the hasty shift to online learning as a cost-cutting strategy.

This situation, far from being a simple "technological evolution," is having a profound impact on the quality of education and the lives of those who provide it.

Contractual insecurity, months without pay, and the phenomenon of "forced unpaid vacations" are often linked to the practice of hiring professors on a per-semester or service-based basis.

The gap between semesters is significant; many universities hire their professors only for the exact duration of the academic period, usually between 16 and 18 weeks per semester. This leaves professors vulnerable at the end of the semester, when contracts are suspended or terminated. This leaves professors without income, without social security contributions from the institution, and in complete job insecurity during the mid-year and end-of-year breaks (which can easily add up to 3 or 4 months). Although online education has enormous democratizing potential if well-designed, the problem arises when it's used as a mechanism to reduce operating costs. Because it seeks to expand classrooms, in the virtual environment, some institutions fall into the temptation of assigning an excessive number of students to a single tutor, making personalized attention impossible

Silent workload overload—designing online content, grading forums, answering emails, and recording classes—demands time that is rarely reflected or compensated in hourly contracts.

The loss of the pedagogical connection, spontaneous debate, and human interaction of the traditional classroom are difficult to replicate if "virtualization" is limited to uploading PDFs and pre-recorded videos to a platform.

Quality education cannot be sustained on the basis of teacher instability. When a teacher lives with the anxiety of not knowing if they will have income next month, their ability to research, prepare, and connect with students is inevitably affected.