The Institute for Critical Education Studies is pleased to announce the launch of Workplace Issue #19, “Belonging and Non-Belonging: Costs and Consequences in Academic Lives.” The new issue is accessible at Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.
This special issue represents powerful narrative analyses of academic lives– narratives that are sophisticated and sensitive, gut-wrenching and heart-rendering. “Belonging and Non-Belonging” was guest edited by Michelle McGinn and features a rich array of collaborative articles by Michelle, Nancy E. Fenton, Annabelle L. Grundy, Michael Manley-Casimira, and Carmen Shields.
Thank you for the continuing interest in Workplace
Proposals are now being accepted for a special issue about research assistantships for the international, transdisciplinary Journal of Research Practice (JRP).
Graduate students, academics, professionals, community members, and other research partners are invited to share their experiences, insights, and concerns around research assistantships. This special issue is intended to showcase the multilayered complexities of research assistantships from different perspectives and across different disciplines. We encourage themes related to research learning, mentoring, working dynamics, power issues, researcher identity, communication between research assistants and researchers (and other team members), as well as the varied legal, ethical, and moral issues associated with the employment and education of research assistants.
Proposals of about 500 words will be accepted until July 15, 2012. Authors of selected proposals will be requested to develop their proposals into manuscripts by February 1, 2013, to be considered for the special issue.
1. A good short discussion about strikes and general strikes, public and private. Appropriate for us and for Mayday. Go out and make some noise on May Day. See below.
3. A very good post on the issue of conflicts/commonalities of interest with FTTT faculty, joint unions, etc, by our wise friend in Vancouver, Frank Cosco. He posted this as after a notice of the new combined union forming at U of OR and subsequent disucssion on the ADJ list. See below
4. More report, on workshop on contingent faculty at Green River College, WA. http://youtu.be/JptEezAjvjQ.
and see below
15. The April 20 “The Solution to Faculty Apartheid” conference held at Green River Community College in Auburn, WA, which featured Keith Hoeller, Frank Cosco, Kathryn Re, and me, is described in a feature in that college’s student newspaper, The Current, at http://issuu.com/thecurrcentgrcc/docs/issue10volume46. Click on the issue and then advance to page 10. It has a nice picture of Frank and Keith.
To view the Youtube video of the conference, select http://youtu.be/JptEezAjvjQ.
Jack Longmate
“If you want a General Strike organize your co-workers”
An Interview with Joe Burns, author of Revivingthe Strike
at Lawrence, Mass.Bread and Roses Centennial April 28th, 2012
by Camilo Viveiros
Introduction: Many in the Occupy movement have called for a general strike on May 1stbut most Occupy activists aren’t involved in labor organizations or organizedin their workplaces. While General Assemblies may be somewhat effectiveinstitutions at reaching the agreement of assorted activists around future directactions, workplace stoppages require the large scale participation of workersin decision-making structures. The interview below gives some organizing advicefor those who have called the general strike. I hope that this interview willinspire Occupy activists to consider the difficult work ahead that is needed tobuild democracy in the workplace. We are the 99%!
Camilo: You’ve written this very important book Reviving the Strike that gives us a lot of insight about some ofthe challenges, but also the importance of strikes as a tactic. Thank youfor your work promotingthe increased use of the strike as a tool to use building working class power. In”Reviving the Strike” you argue that the labor movement must revive effectivestrikes based on the traditional tactics of labor– stopping production andworkplace-based solidarity. As someone who sees the strike as avital tactic to achieve economic justice I want to ask you a few questions.
Right now Occupyand other activists across the country have been agitating for a general strikeon May 1st. Resolutions have been passedat General Assemblies around the country.
There are alot of new activists that have joined the Occupy Movement, some never havinghad any organizing experience or labor organizing experience. Could you share some of the examples of creativeways that newer activists and established labor activists can think about thiscoming year, maybe toward next May 1st or toward the remote futureof how people can embrace new creative strategies to organize toward strikesinvolving larger numbers of folks.
Joe Burns: First of all, I think the fact that people are talking about this strikeand the general strike is a good thing because it starts raising people’sconsciousness about where our real source of power is in society, which isultimately working people have the power to stop production because workingpeople are the ones who produce things of value in society. On the other hand, if you look back throughhistory about how strikes happened, how in particular general strikes happened,what you’ll find is that they’re organized in the workplace by organizersorganizing their co-workers. And that’sreally the key aspect here. If you lookat how most general strikes in the United States have come about, it’s becausethere’s been strike activity in the local community, people have built bonds ofsolidarity. And then, let’s say oneLocal goes out on strike, they put out an appeal for other Locals to help them,and then eventually it breaks out beyond the bounds of the dispute between justthem and their employer and becomes a generalized dispute between all theworkers in the city and the employers in the city. So it really happens as part of a process ofsolidarity being built step by step.
“It hasn’treally happened where people have put out a general call saying let’s strike,let’s do a general strike on this day. “
It hasn’treally happened where people have put out a general call saying let’s strike,let’s do a general strike on this day.
One of thethings that I focus on in my book, is the need to refocus on the strike. And to do that, that really takes workplaceorganizing in both union and non-union shops, where people go in and do thehard work of talking to their co-workers, forming an organization, andultimately walking out together. I thinkit’s scary to do, to strike, to ask people in these isolated workplaces tostrike all by themselves makes it very difficult.
“…people goin and do the hard work of talking to their co-workers, forming anorganization, and ultimately walking out together”
Camilo: What do you think it would take to actually organize, to bring back thecapacity to have a general strike in the United States?
Joe Burns: In order to have a general strike I think we need to have a workers’movement that’s based in the workplace. If you look at, in the early 1970’s there’s a good book called Rebel Rank and File that a number of folks edited and it’s got articles. It’s really about how the generation of 60’s leftists,a lot of them went back into the workplaces and did organizing, and that in theearly 70’s there were tons of Wildcat strikes which aren’t authorized by theunion leadership. Some of them, like thePostal Strike of 1970 involved 200,000 postal workers striking against thefederal government, in an illegal strike. But that didn’t happen just by itself, it happened because people wentin to their workplaces and organized it. So, how are we going to get a general strike in this country? I think it’s going to be because we redevelopa labor movement or a broader workers’ movement that’s based on thestrike. I think the efforts of Occupyfor the class-based sort of thinking will help in that. Ultimately, though, I think we need at somepoint to devote our attention to the workplace, because the workplace is thesite of where the strike and struggle need to generate from.
Camilo: During the takeover of the capital building in Wisconsin somefolks speculated that what should have happened is that public sector workerswho were under attack should have gone on strike. But in some ways public sector workers areeven more restricted around strike guidelines than private sector workers andso they have less right to strike. Whatare your thoughts around public sector workers who are really bearing a largebrunt of the attack on labor over the last year, and what would the challengesbe to building the solidarity necessary to consider strikes of public sectorworkers?
Joe Burns: I think what you find studying labor history is that even though strikeswere illegal up until 1970, Hawaii became the first state to authorize a legalstrike, regardless of that workers struck by the hundreds of thousands, publicsector workers in the 1960’s. And infact the laws giving them the right to strike were done after the fact, andthey were only passed because workers were striking anyway and legislaturesdecided to set up an orderly procedure to govern strikes. So what you find is hundreds of thousands ofteachers striking throughout the 1960’s, and that’s really how public employeesbuilt their unions. And they did it inthe face of injunctions, so a judge may order them back to work and startjailing leaders, but like in Washington state in a rural community all theteachers showed up together, everyone who was on strike, and told the judge toarrest them all. And the judge backeddown because it didn’t look good.
So that’sreally how we won our unions to begin with in the public sector, in the 1960’s,so when you fast forward to today and look at strikes in the public sector, whenyou look at Wisconsin in particular, clearly the Wisconsin teachers is what reallykicked off the whole Wisconsin battle. They organized calling in sick, and two-thirds of Madison teachersdidn’t show up to work and that’s what really kind of fueled the beginning ofthe takeover of the capitol, along with the grad students and so forth. So it was based on a strike. Some people wanted that to expand into ageneral strike, but that really wasn’t going to happen unless the people mostinvolved which were the public employees, took the lead on that. And they chose, and made a strategic decisionafter four days to go back to work and fight by other means. I think that’s the strategy that they wantedto do and that made sense for them.
Camilo: With union density not at its peak what are the some of theopportunities for non-union organizations to use striking as a tactic? What aresome of the lessons we can learn from the Wildcat strikes of the 70’s, and howcan we have enough flexibility to try to go beyond the stranglehold that Laborlaw has on workers’ organizations right now?
Joe Burns: I think there’s been a lot of good movement in recent yearsto look at different forms of worker organization beyond the traditionalunions. So you’ve had workers’ centers,you’ve had various alternative unions, the IWW and so forth, all looking at howdo you organize particular groups of workers. The question that all of them eventually run into is, you can have youralternative form of organization but ultimately it’s a question of power, anddo you have the power to improve workers’ lives. And to do that traditionally, that’s been atthe workplace the ability to strike or otherwise financially harm anemployer. So I think part of what movingforward we’ll see with the revival of the workers’ movement in this country isa lot of coming together of these different forms of organizations, embracingtactics such as the strike. And reallysome of them are the best situated to do it, because they don’t have the hugetreasuries and buildings and conservative officials that you find in a lot ofunions.
“…ultimatelyit’s a question of power, and do you have the power to improve workers’ lives.”
Camilo: So, what would your advice be to a non-union Occupy activistwho maybe voted for a general strike during a general assembly, or who wants tosee a general strike come to fruition at some point, what would your suggestionsbe for those activists that are out there who are seeing the need for thistactic to be embraced.
Joe Burns: I think go into your workplace. The strike and strike activity needs to berooted in the workplaces, and if it’s based on people outside of the workplacecalling on people to engage in strike activity, that’s not going to work. Not saying you need to just bury your head insome local place, you need to have a broader perspective and broader activism,but if you really want to see a general strike, go out and organize workers,your co-workers or however you want to do it to build forms of organizationin the workplace.
Joe Burns is staff attorney and negotiator, withthe Association of Flight Attendants/ Communications Workers of America andauthor of Reviving the Strike.http://www.revivingthestrike.org
Camilo Viveiros has been a multi-racial economicjustice organizer for over 20 years. Hehas developed organizing trainings for the Occupy movementwww.popularassembly.org and does campaign and leadership development,popular education, strategy and direct action trainings for grassroots groups. 401-338-1665 camilo@activism2organizing.org
On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Michael wrote:
May Day has generated a lot of talk about “general strikes.” Here’s what the unions in Ontario said about what it took to organize a real general strike there years ago (attached).
General strikes are like heaven. Everyone who talks about it isn’t going there.
To be effective, movements need to be credible in the eyes of their constituents. When they start to speak in terms that are hyperbolic, bombastic, exaggerated, flatulent, or wishful thinking, they lose credibility.
The class struggle is not a ‘dream state’ in which one gets to conjure up fantastic plans and have them turned into reality. Unlike the little engine that could, repeating the words frequently does not make it possible to do what social reality says can’t be done(in that moment).
Magical thinking is not a good substitute for careful planning, painstaking organizing, and the demonstrated readiness of massive numbers of people to take responsibility for constructing a new social reality.
General strikes are always mass protests. All mass protests, however, are not general strikes. It pays to know the difference.
Michael
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3. Evening
It is good news when a new union gets going…it’s a really difficult process with lots of emotion, fears and doubts. Not nearly as tough as it was in the past but still tough.
In our post-sec world the fear of conflict of interest as this thread is called is real because single units composed of the “in” group and the “out” group too often haven’t measured up to the unity implicit in the word union. There are too many examples of the “out” group ending up even weaker. The result is that people sadly end up in the seemingly-bizarre but realistic position of arguing that two unions have to be better than one.
Any objective view cannot justify the inequities of privileging overtime for one group of members while denying pay equity for the other. The same goes for the privileging of one group with the right to continually evaluate the other (acting as the worst type of unprofessional manager) in ways that are hard to distinguish from bullying.
Doesn’t have to be that way. Hope the Oregon effort ends up on the better side of the history around these efforts. It won’t be at all easy for a single unit. They would have to tread new ground just to make life less contingent for their contingents. To create a really equitable situation will probably require new vision and concerted effort by the safer and more secure full-time leaders over a couple of decades.
The 20 or so federated post-sec unions in FPSE in BC, Canada, have worked hard at it for most of thirty years and still can’t point to wall to wall success although we have some significant examples of equitable situations. What started as a system of only community colleges has seen a half dozen of its institutions morphed into universities with mixed research, teaching and service workloads within “teaching” university contexts. Sad to report that the unions in a couple of the new universities have succumbed to the strange allure the privileged and stratified model but happily most of them have retained the equitable model that is in the genes of FPSE locals.
Last year, FPSE developed a set of bargaining policies and principles for universities. They can be viewed at the fpse.ca website (type university bargaining principles or something similar into the site’s search box). It is an attempt to provide useful guidelines for approaching the challenges of university bargaining. (Questions and comments welcome.)
In the Program for Change (check it out at the vccfa.ca website from May) Jack Longmate and I have set out a wide longterm agenda/menu for change that can really make life better for folks. There are successes in the States to point to. Many aspects of work life are under the control of faculty and can start to change in 2012 without any cost at all, with or without a union. We are not completely helpless.
In a unionist view, there’s nothing magical about the research or service part of one’s work. If it’s work that the boss paying for, it’s work. Those faculty leading unions need to think as unionists first and faculty second.
Frank Cosco
VCCFA & FPSE
Vancouver
Quoting Jack Longmate :
Hi Karen,
Pleased that we have concurrence about overloads. With course overloads, it
makes it very difficult for full-timers to argue that they are overworked
and underpaid, so the practice amounts to being self-inflicting wound apart
from contributing to the dysfunction of the system. To get those full-time
faculty invested in teaching course overloads to recognize that is easier
said than done. I don’t believe it’s ever happened voluntarily. (When the
limit on course overloads was imposed on my campus–no more than 167 percent
of full-time workload–one union officer complained about how this
restriction would cause an economic hardship for her family. That is, she
had customarily taught about 167 percent of a full-time load.)
In Washington community and technical colleges, part-time faculty are
restricted by a workload cap and cannot teach full-time at a given
institution period, so a simply status conversion, unfortunately, is a not a
realistic at present. In Vancouver, by contrast, conversion from
probationary “term” status to non-probationary “regular” status is a natural
progression. It’s helped by the fact that part-time and full-time faculty
are paid from the same salary scale and have the same set of expectations
(unlike here where part-timers are hired to “just teach”).
—–Original Message—–
From: adj-l-bounces@adj-l.org [mailto:adj-l-bounces@adj-l.org] On Behalf Of
Karen Thompson
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 5:40 PM
To: Contingent Academics Mailing List
Cc: Contingent Academics Mailing List
Subject: Re: [adj-l] Conflicts of Interest
Of course there should be no overloads for full-timers (except perhaps for
summer), but faculty need to negotiate a variety of ways to make sure their
salaries are deservingly high. Part-time faculty who teach a full-time load
must be converted to full-time. Limits on part-time teaching are necessary
to make sure those teaching s full-time load are considered full-time
faculty. These are simultaneous goals in negotiations. Again full-time and
part-time faculty can be on the se page here: limits AND conversion.
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 28, 2012, at 6:58 PM, “Jack Longmate”
wrote:
Hi Mayra,
Course overloads are certainly allowable through collective bargaining.
At
my college, Olympic, the current CBA imposes some limits on full-time
faculty overloads: no more than 167 percent of a full-time load. Since
its
ratification, at least one full-timer for one term taught at 297 percent,
that is, approximately three times a standard full-time workload. I wrote
about that in http://www.cpfa.org/journal/10fall/cpfa-fall10.pdf, pages 12
and 9. (Before that limitation was enacted, I had heard rumors of similar
percentages about some full-time faculty.) But while I’m pleased that my
college has imposed some limits, those limits only affect overloads in
excess of 167 percent–those between 100 and 166 percent, from the
standpoint of the CBA, are consider normal and routine and perfectly fine.
When full-time faculty are able to teach course overloads at will, there’s
very, very little chance for job security to be extended to part-time
faculty, because if part-time faculty jobs were actually protected, it
would
interfere with the ability to teach course overloads. This is sort of the
gist of the conflict of interests.
The other side of the coin are caps on the workload of part-time faculty.
You’re probably aware that in California, there’s been considerable debate
and legislative action regarding the cap on part-time workload–I believe
it’s no more than 67 percent that a part-time instructor can teach in a
given community college district. In Washington state, the cap is a bit
more liberal–I believe it’s 85 percent at my college–but I don’t think
our
pay is close to that of California’s.
In Washington, caps exist in order to avoid cases of backdoor tenure. In
Washington state, by teaching full-time for a period of time, one can
satisfy one of the statutory requirements of tenure. In order to ensure
that it never happens, colleges impose these caps.
In my forays into possible reform of the state tenure laws–to eliminate
the
caps in order to thereby enable those who want and need more work–one of
the obstacles offered by one union lobbyist has been an aversion to
opening
up the state’s tenure statutes for the fear being that tenure might run
the
risk of getting eliminated altogether, which closes the discussion.
The solution, which would avoid the in-fighting that Karen alludes to,
would
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————————-
4. The remarkable workshop entitled “Teach-in on Adjunct Faculty” that took
place at Green River Community College on April 20, 2012, moderated by Keith
Hoeller and Kathryn Re, is available for viewing at
One highlight is Keith’s reading of a statement of support from Cornel West.
It’s at about the 0:01:00 mark.
Frank Cosco, president of the Vancouver Community College Faculty
Association, speaks on “Abolishing the Two-track System”; his remarks begins
at about the 0:06:00 mark.
My portion, “The Overload Debate: Conflict of Interest between Full- and
Part-time Faculty” begins at 0:20:30 is synchronized with a set of
Powerpoint slides–should anyone wish a copy, please let me know.
The video was masterfully edited by Mr. Dave Prenovost.
Best wishes,
Jack Longmate
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———————
7.
A Poem for May Day
By “Mr. Toad” former Detroit autoworker, 1980
(with thanks to Shaping San Francisco)
The eight hour day is not enough;
We are thinking of more and better stuff.
So here is our prayer and here is our plan,
We want what we want and we’ll take what we can.
Down with wars both small and large,
Except for the ones where we’re in charge:
Those are the wars of class against class,
Where we get a chance to kick some ass..
For air to breathe and water to drink,
And no more poison from the kitchen sink.
For land that’s green and life that’s saved
And less and less of the earth that’s paved.
No more women who are less than free,
Or men who cannot learn to see
Their power steals their humanity
And makes us all less than we can be.
For teachers who learn and students who teach
And schools that are kept beyond the reach
Of provosts and deans and chancellors and such
And Xerox and Kodak and Shell, Royal Dutch.
An end to shops that are dark and dingy,
An end to bosses whether good or stingy,
An end to work that produces junk,
An end to junk that produces work,
And an end to all in charge – the jerks.
For all who dance and sing, loud cheers,
To the prophets of doom we send some jeers,
To our friends and lovers we give free beers,
And to all who are here, a day without fears.
So, on this first of May we all should say
That we will either make it or break it.
Or, to put this thought another way,
Let’s take it easy, but let’s take it.
Angry about tuition increases and cuts in courses and enrollment, a dozen students at California State University have taken their protest beyond marches — their usual tactic — and declared a hunger strike.
On Thursday, the second day of the fast, supporters were preparing a kale, apple and celery juice concoction for the protesters at the Northridge campus. The students have pledged to forgo solid food for at least a week, perhaps longer if the administration does not move to meet some of their demands, which include a five-year moratorium on student fee increases and a rollback of executive salaries to 1999 levels.
The union representing California State University faculty announced Wednesday that its members have voted to authorize a two-day strike should negotiations over salary, class sizes and other issues continue to stall.
The vote could result in two-day rolling strikes at the 23 campuses, most likely beginning in the fall, according to the California Faculty Assn.
University faculties have become more inclusive of women in recent decades, though their salaries still trail those of their male counterparts, new data shows.
Figures from Statistics Canada show the average salary of full-time faculty at Canadian universities was $115,513 in the 2010-11 school year. That was up 2.8 per cent from the previous year.
Among male teaching staff, the average pay was $120,378, and among females, $106,970 Ñ or 88.9 per cent of males’ pay.
5. Very interesting contrast in US press coverage between French and US elections. Are there lessons here for how the press frames our issues in higher ed? (such as making the extreme privatization and casualization trends of US seem normal here, but covering them differently, if at all, overseas.) The question, of course, is how to change or challenge this press frame. http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10095
9. Ten Ways for a non-tenure track faculty to get fired [some of these are good, some obvious and some just plain wrong IMHO, especially the one about not trusting (some) "help" (clerical staff). They can be our best allies, individually and collectively.] http://chronicle.com/article/10-Ways-to-Get-Yourself-Fired/131630/
After 11 weeks of the student movement in Quebec, marked by 185,000 in protests and strikes, momentum is increasing as the Charest government is nervously clamping down. With all of the ingredients of a revolution, police state tactics are marring what would otherwise be forceful, yet peaceful, dissent in a mass movement for political change. Joel Bergman reports that
The scope of the repression by the police is almost unheard of in Quebec — one would have to go back 40 years to see anything of this magnitude. Over the course of one week alone, we saw upwards of 600 arrests at various campuses and demonstrations. At the Université du Québec à Outaouais (UQO) on 19th April, the police broke the picket lines and locked the students out of the campus. A few hundred students soon arrived on buses to demonstrate in solidarity with their brothers and sisters. Teachers soon joined, as well. The police unleashed brutal repression on them with a few students and professors left bloody from baton hits to the head. The demonstration of around 800 students then held a mass assembly and decided to march on the police lines and reclaim the university. They marched on the police, beating them back and they managed to reclaim the university for a short period of time before more police forces were called in and mass arrests commenced. Approximately 300 ended up arrested at UQO.
Over the last 3 days, police have been especially brutal in clamping down on the protesters. Yet despite the pattern of intimidation and arrests, the movement is growing in momentum and will. High school students, looking at their future, are joining in with a presence in the movement that we’ve not seen in North America since the 1960s.
250,000 students pack the streets in largest demo in Quebec history
A guest post by Lilian Radovac. (BTW, SoCal readers may want to know that Marc is speaking at UC-Irvine a 4 p.m. 4/23 on New Media/New Protests.)
On an unseasonably warm day in late March, aquarter of a million postsecondary students and their supporters gathered in the streets of Montreal to protest against the Liberal government’s plan to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years. As the crowd marched in seemingly endless waves from Place du Canada, dotted with the carrés rouges, or red squares, that have become the symbol of the Quebec student movement, it was plainly obvious that this demonstration was the largest in Quebec’s, and perhaps Canadian, history.
The March 22nd Manifestation nationale was not the culmination but the midpoint of a 10-week-long student uprising that has seen, at its height, over 300,000 college and university students join an unlimited and superbly coordinated general strike. As of today, almost 180,000 students remain on picket lines in departments and faculties that have been shuttered since February, not only in university-dense Montreal but also insmaller communities throughout Quebec. Aerial news footage of the March 22nd Manifestation nationale
Publicly subsidized universities ought to fulfil three missions – teaching, research, and service to the community – as defined by their objectives and their mutual implication.
For signatories of the present manifesto these missions have the following objectives:
preserving knowledge as accumulated through history, producing new knowledge and passing on both old and new knowledge to as many students as possible along with the questions they have prompted;
training students in research methodologies, in critical analysis of the social consequences of scientific issues, practices and findings, in the development of free thinking, avoiding any form of dogma, with the common good as an objective as well as the acquisition of competence for a responsible professional activity;
contributing to the reflection of social systems on themselves, particularly on the kind of model they use for their own development.
Nowadays current modes of governance in universities run against the above definition of what a university ought to be. Their mantras are efficiency, profitability, competitiveness. Universities are invited to become the agents of maximum production in as little time as possible, to turn out scientists and professionals that are competitive, flexible and adapted to market demands – the improvement of humanity is then measured in terms of economic growth and technical breakthroughs, and the progress of universities in terms of ‘critical mass.’
Consequently, universities are subjected to more and more frequent international evaluations and audits that measure their respective productivity and contribute to their positions in various rankings.
Though they do not deny that university practices and their effects have to be assessed, the signatories note that current evaluations are based on narrow criteria, that are often formal and fashioned on standardized practices; that the competition they foster among universities leads to a race to publish, with the number of published papers sometimes prevailing on their interest; that procedures involve cumbersome red tape with recurrent reminders that the logic universities have to comply with is the logic of markets and globalization.
Beyond the minimum endowments granted to universities, the selection of research that can be financed is largely determined by calls for tenders and the size and reputation of the teams that apply. Such a situation distorts the purpose of university research, which ought to be open to projects carried by small, relatively unknown teams. Rather, it favours the submission of well presented projects rather than of projects that could further knowledge.
Subsidies granted to universities often depend on student populations. In the case of a closed envelope, this leads to ‘hunting for students,’ which in turn may entail a lesser quality teaching as well as the risk of doing away with important but small departments.
University teachers are expected to explain what profession-related forms of expertise they are to develop in students. While it is imperative to teach students the skills they will need in their professional activities, highlighting these skills might lead teachers to overly stress utilitarian and saleable knowledge at the expense of basic sciences and of reflexive and critical knowledge.
The involvement of university staff in domestic management and representation is more and more numerous and encroaches on services to society at large.
The above mentioned elements contribute to increase the strain to which university staff are subjected and may possibly destroy the ideals of once passionate teachers and researchers.
To support their vision of the university, the signatories of the present manifesto call for the following measures:
making sure that university research is allowed the kind of freedom that is necessary to any finding, the right to waver and the right to fail;
reaching a correct balance between critical and operational knowledge and between general and profession-related skills in the various study courses offered by the universities;
promoting services to society;
reining in the production of red-tape, the rat-race and other stress factors that prevent university staff from carrying out their duties properly;
assessing university practices and their consequences in view of the specific objectives of universities and not of market expectations.
To meet these requirements they consider that it is necessary:
to assert the objectives of the university as defined above;
to provide global subsidies for higher education;
to use criteria for awarding public money that promote diversity in research and that preserve the quality and plurality of study courses on offer.
They call upon:
Public authorities and academic bodies to recognize that universities ought to try and achieve objectives that are in tune with their identity and social function, and provide the means thereof;
University staff to oppose measures and practices that go against the positions defined in this manifesto; to promote an in-depth analysis of the growing unease among university staff, of its causes and of possible solutions; to participate in concrete actions – to be decided on depending on contexts – to put forward their positions and proposals wherever necessary; to support movements and actions outside the university that aim at the common good.
The University of California at San Diego has reached a settlement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education after an investigation of racial-harassment complaints on the campus.
The complaints stemmed from several incidents, including public displays of hanging nooses and a Ku Klux Klan-style hood, that began last year and seemed to take aim at African-American students. The incidents prompted student protests, and the president of the University of California system, Mark G. Yudof, responded to the apparent racism on his Facebook page. “It has no place in civilized society, and it will not be tolerated—not on this particular campus, not on any University of California campus,” he wrote.
LOS ANGELES—Some 24,000 California State University employees are beginning a two-weeklong vote on whether to authorize their union to declare a strike after 22 months of negotiations failed to yield a new contract.
Members of the California Faculty Association, which represents professors, librarians, coaches and counselors across the system’s 23 campuses, start voting Monday and have until April 27 to say whether they authorize the union’s board of directors to call a two-day strike at an unspecified date.
According to the BCHRT March 2012 schedule, hearing dates for Wang et al v. UBC are: August 13 to 17, 20 to 24, 27 to 31, September 10 to 14, 17 to 21, 24 to 28, 2012. Hearing dates often change at the last moment. Call the Tribunal at 604-775-2000 or toll free at 1-888-440-8844 to see if a hearing will proceed as scheduled.
Documents relevant to specific BCHRT cases (e.g., original complaints and responses) are available for public review 90 days prior to scheduled hearing date. To obtain documents call the BCHRT at 604 775-2000.
Documents related to the Wang, Tai, Wang complaint will be available May 13, 2012.
Documents related toChan v. UBCare available now. Call BCHRT at 604 775-2000.
Breaking rules and records two months into a strike and protest against rising tuition costs, students marched on Montreal for 12 hours on Wednesday 11 April. Smaller groups of students extended the march to 15 hours on the city streets and landmarks. Gridlock and blocked streets have become routine in downtown Montreal while strikes and protests have brought campuses to near standstill. Today at Concordia University police rolled in to break up a student blockade.
Photo by Jan Ravensbergen, The Gazette
“I was astonished by how quickly everything happened,” an eyewitness said Thursday morning after Montreal police broke up a brief student blockade downtown of the main Concordia University campus building. ”The students appeared from nowhere. Then these police just started flooding in. ”The whole thing happened in just a matter of minutes, the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.” About two dozen Montreal police officers equipped with helmets and shields had pushed a crowd of protesting students away from the front of the Henry F. Hall Building westward along de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. on Thursday at 8:55 a.m., after which the crowd dissolved.
The University of British Columbia’s application to the BC Labour Relations Board for a mediator in the stand-off with the graduate students’ union CUPE 2278 was granted. LRB Mediator Mark Atkinson will convene CUPE 2278 and the University to the bargaining table in early May. Atkinson was a staff representative with the Hospital Employees’ Union from 1981 to 1995, and has served as Mediator in the LRB from 1995-2004, and 2008-present. In the meantime, CUPE 2278′s strike position will remain but the union cannot strike during this interim period leading to mediation. And in the meantime, the University will fall back on an excuse that the graduate teaching assistants are net zero workers, underserving of an increase in their pay cheques. Again, here we are like the case of the BC Teachers’ Federation and the government’s sentiment: ‘Let them negotiate, let them bargain,’ as long as they remain net zero workers.
Quebec’s Liberal government is using repression—arrests, court injunctions and the threat of cancelling the winter semester—to force an end to a nearly two-month-long strike of university and CEGEP (pre-university and technical college) students. Nevertheless, almost 200,000 students are continuing to boycott classes to oppose the Charest Liberal government’s plan to raise university tuition fees by 75 percent over the next five years, beginning in September.
Early last Wednesday, riot police chased and arrested more than 60 students who continued to demonstrate in downtown Montreal after the police had declared their demonstration illegal. The reason given by the police for dispersing, and later arresting, the student protestors was that they had perpetrated acts of “vandalism”, such as toppling tables and displays while moving through the chic Queen Elizabeth Hotel and the Eaton Shopping Centre.
Despite police statements to the contrary, there is no evidence to prove that the students committed any criminal acts. The arrests were filmed by CUTV, the Concordia University students’ community television station. The video, broadcast on the Internet, shows police shoving students prior to their arrest and ignoring students who questioned why they were being manhandled and arrested.
Montreal’s riot police have repeatedly used batons, tear gas, pepper spray and sound grenades to attack protesting students.
CUTV cameraman, Laith Marouf, was arrested for filming Wednesday’s arrests. CUTV reporter Sabine Friesinger, who was with Marouf, recounted what happened later the same day: “We were broadcasting live. Students were surrounded and pushed by police. They were also hit. The cameraman said several times: ‘I am media, we are on live.’ They definitively did not want us filming that. I have finally been able to retrieve the camera, but he (the cameraman), is still under arrest.”
The Quebec student strike is now in its eighth week and has gathered nearly half the higher education population in the province. There are about 185,000 students on strike out of 400,000. “About 90,000 of them have agreed to an unlimited strike that won’t end until the government rescinds its plan for a $1,625 tuition increase over five years.” The students have sustained a series of demonstrations, protests, and strikes against the tuition hike. Monday April 9 saw mass demonstrations and “Wednesday will be another big day for protesting students as they launch a 12-hour-long demonstration that will begin at 7 a.m. at Victoria Square. The “unlimited protest” is supposed to show the students’ unlimited resolve in the face of tuition increases and the Quebec government’s unwavering stance on the issue. A continual loop of students will take turns marching for an hour at a time throughout the day.”
Today, the resolve of striking students at the Université de Montréal was tested, “as the university sent out an email last week saying if students aren’t back in class by then, they can’t guarantee that all courses can be completed by June 15, the end of the extended semester. That means some classes could simply be suspended, as the university asserts there will be “no compromise” on the quality of the education.”
CUPE 2278 President Geraldina Polanco appealed for solidarity and unity amidst recent ploys by a University of British Columbia faculty member and subsequently the University to splinter the graduate students union’s strike position. Polanco wrote to members: “Our employer reads our communications to you — for example, they have told us at the bargaining table that they regularly visit our Facebook page and read our newsletters. This makes engaging in transparent discussions with our members regarding bargaining a difficult task for the Union Executive. Our members are sprawled across workspaces on the UBC campus and beyond, which reduces most communication to electronic routes that, by their nature, are accessible to the employer…. we are limited in our ability to communicate information with you via virtual routes because we do not want to facilitate the transfer of information to our employer.”
Responding to attempts to splinter or divide the union, the CUPE 2278 President now has to remind members and supporters: “Going forward with bargaining it is useful to keep in mind that the employer benefits from a non-unified membership. Our mutual trust in each other is paramount, and we hope our minimal communication with you has not been misread. Our lack of formal correspondence is not because we do not seek to be transparent but rather because we are limited in what we can say.”
Last week, FT faculty member Dr. David Klonksy published “Dear CUPE 2278,” a diatribe to undermine confidence in the graduate students’ leadership. At these times a few anti-union or anti-labour activists are readily played by management. Good try, bad motive, Dr. Klonksy. The letter is seriously uninformed in stating that CUPE 2278 “Union leadership has made no effort to reach out to faculty.” Let’s be clear, CUPE 2278 has reached out– the communication from the union leadership has been outstanding– a model of leadership and transparency. If a strike materializes from the overwhelming support, faculty members will stand on the picket line in support of and sympathy with the students.
Nashville’s Vanderbilt University hosted a conference in late March of the National Association of College & University Food Services. The association promises “revolutionary thinking” for university dining departments.
But outside the confab, 50 Vanderbilt workers, students, faculty, alumni, and faith leaders hosted their own event. They showcased the poverty that persists among Vanderbilt dining hall workers, who make only $16,500 per year on average.
UBC has applied to the BC Supreme Court for a judicial review of a professor’s discrimination complaint.
A BC Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) decision called for a full judicial hearing of a complaint made in May 2010 by UBC Education professor Jennifer Chan. But the university is arguing that UBC’s internal review process has already put the case to rest.
Chan alleges that she was a victim of racial discrimination when considered for one of the university’s research chairs.
Chan, who is of Chinese descent, was a finalist for the Lam Chair in Multicultural Education but was not selected. She has argued that sloppy appointment procedures allowed racial bias to creep into the process. Chan filed a human rights complaint in May 2010. Earlier this year, the HRT declined UBC’s application to dismiss the complaint.
“The university believes the BC Human Rights Tribunal made some important errors in its preliminary rulings on the case of Associate Professor Chan,” said Lucie McNeill, Director of UBC Public Affairs.
McNeill said the university disagrees with the HRT’s decision because they believe Chan’s case was dealt with by UBC’s equity procedures.
“The HRT is essentially saying [that] irrespective of the internal process we have through our equity office, that somebody is entitled to that last final appeal at the human rights tribunal,” said McNeill. “But things should only go to appeal if they’re justified to go to an appeal.”
In writing the decision, Tribunal Member Norman Trerise argued that requiring an employee to go through an internal process and then denying them the right to an appeal with the HRT “essentially pulls the rug out from under that faculty member.”
“The university believes that this case is actually not correct and that interpretations at the HRT were not proper,” said McNeil. “[The university] has a responsibility to stand up and say ‘no, we cannot let this stand as precedent.’”
In an email statement to The Ubyssey, Chan said she has exhausted her pro-bono legal support and will have to self-represent.
“UBC is further delaying the complaint process, adding legal costs and stress,” she wrote. “UBC should play fair and let the HRT hearing go ahead as scheduled with full disclosure of evidence.”
McNeill denied that the university is trying to delay the case.
“The university doesn’t want to commit more time and resources to a lengthy hearing,” she said.
“This is not about avoiding or delaying tactics or anything like that. We take complaints of discrimination very seriously.”
E Wayne Ross
Stephen Petrina
Manifesto for universities that live up to their missions
by E Wayne Ross on April 22, 2012
Manifesto for universities that live up to their missions (to sign click here)
Publicly subsidized universities ought to fulfil three missions – teaching, research, and service to the community – as defined by their objectives and their mutual implication.
For signatories of the present manifesto these missions have the following objectives:
Nowadays current modes of governance in universities run against the above definition of what a university ought to be. Their mantras are efficiency, profitability, competitiveness. Universities are invited to become the agents of maximum production in as little time as possible, to turn out scientists and professionals that are competitive, flexible and adapted to market demands – the improvement of humanity is then measured in terms of economic growth and technical breakthroughs, and the progress of universities in terms of ‘critical mass.’
Consequently, universities are subjected to more and more frequent international evaluations and audits that measure their respective productivity and contribute to their positions in various rankings.
Though they do not deny that university practices and their effects have to be assessed, the signatories note that current evaluations are based on narrow criteria, that are often formal and fashioned on standardized practices; that the competition they foster among universities leads to a race to publish, with the number of published papers sometimes prevailing on their interest; that procedures involve cumbersome red tape with recurrent reminders that the logic universities have to comply with is the logic of markets and globalization.
Beyond the minimum endowments granted to universities, the selection of research that can be financed is largely determined by calls for tenders and the size and reputation of the teams that apply. Such a situation distorts the purpose of university research, which ought to be open to projects carried by small, relatively unknown teams. Rather, it favours the submission of well presented projects rather than of projects that could further knowledge.
Subsidies granted to universities often depend on student populations. In the case of a closed envelope, this leads to ‘hunting for students,’ which in turn may entail a lesser quality teaching as well as the risk of doing away with important but small departments.
University teachers are expected to explain what profession-related forms of expertise they are to develop in students. While it is imperative to teach students the skills they will need in their professional activities, highlighting these skills might lead teachers to overly stress utilitarian and saleable knowledge at the expense of basic sciences and of reflexive and critical knowledge.
The involvement of university staff in domestic management and representation is more and more numerous and encroaches on services to society at large.
The above mentioned elements contribute to increase the strain to which university staff are subjected and may possibly destroy the ideals of once passionate teachers and researchers.
To support their vision of the university, the signatories of the present manifesto call for the following measures:
To meet these requirements they consider that it is necessary:
They call upon:
Public authorities and academic bodies to recognize that universities ought to try and achieve objectives that are in tune with their identity and social function, and provide the means thereof;
University staff to oppose measures and practices that go against the positions defined in this manifesto; to promote an in-depth analysis of the growing unease among university staff, of its causes and of possible solutions; to participate in concrete actions – to be decided on depending on contexts – to put forward their positions and proposals wherever necessary; to support movements and actions outside the university that aim at the common good.
(to sign click here)
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