speaking of names and other changes

Yesterday I renamed both this blog and  its companion Facebook page Precarious life and times. Not to worry though -- visitor won't end up in strange places like some did with the domain shift. This change does not affect either url. The Facebook iteration has already been moving away from primarily adjunct issues toward a broader focus on the workplace, economic and social changes accompanying the spread of precarity. Until very recently, this one hasn't been moving at all.

Seiltänzer (Tightrope Walker) Paul Klee (cropped)

What will change? Content. Adjuncts, casuals and other insecure academic labor will still have a prominent place. There more widgets, posts and collections on related topics, and a "What we can do" category coping and resisting.

What is precarity and who's precarious? The category includes more than academic precariat. Is insecure employment the primary or even sole marker of precarious populations? Is it the only benchmark? The connection with the economy and economic inequality is obvious. Disposable and marginalized groups are particularly vulnerable. Their initial precariousness, whatever the cause -- disability, age, race, gender, social and legal status, etc., inevitably pushes them further down in the workforce and decreases mobility options, often drastically.

Could all precarious people together already be the majority? That would bring us full naming circle to the ❝new precarious majority❞...

#Adjunct Reading Room: The #Precariat by @GuyStanding

…at a price any adjunct can manage, in case I don't come up with a movie before midnight...lagniappe if I do.

The Precariat - The New Dangerous Class, a Bloomsbury Open Access book from Bloomsbury Collections, is available in HTML full text for online reading, with page image PDFs for printing or offline reading (licensed by Creative Commons)

Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls the Precariat - a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. They include migrants, but also locals.

Standing argues that this class of people could produce new instabilities in society. They are increasingly frustrated and dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties. He outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. He goes on to consider one way to a new better society -- an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes.

This is a topical, and a radical book, which will appeal to a broad market concerned by the increasing problems of labour insecurity and civic disengagement.

More information at Bloomsbury Collections - The Precariat - The New Dangerous Class

.@NewUnionism March Newsletter

…Democratising Economics from the Workplace

March 2014  Work in Progress This newsletter is produced by the New Unionism Network to promote workplace democracy, organizing, internationalism and creative thinking in the union movement. You are most welcome to pass it on. Better still, find out about joining us here. Putting OCCUPATION back into unionism Industrial unions replaced guilds and friendly societies during the first wave of new unionism - starting towards the end of the 19th century. Perhaps we lost something important along the way? Look at the way people talk about their work: we do jobs; but we are occupations. In our final paper on building global unionism, Guy Standing argues: "what we do and seek to do is more important than who we do it for." In fact, a revived focus on occupation within unionism might help us address some of our most difficult problems: How do we organize and bargain across borders in an age of globalization? How do we organize "the precariat", who come and go from workplaces before we can reach them? How do we rebuilt influence whilst struggling to survive? What's more, an occupational layer might not require any major change to the underlying structure of industrial unions. This is an idea you need to think about!  More

An #adjunct, @MMStrikesBack, writes @nytdavidbrooks

Shirley Temple, The Little Princess*

…about his op-ed,The American #Precariat, in Sunday's @NYTimes…

 Dear Mr. Brooks,

You may have noticed a new phrase emerging in academic circles sweeping higher education journals, newspapers, websites, twitter and blogs. Precarious, contingent, or adjunct faculty are living in poverty like low wage service employees. Adjuncts are forced into this new economic climate to accept jobs offering semester only contracts (if that) and low salaries as well as few opportunities for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Recently our classes have been cut even further by universities insisting they can’t afford the cost of insuring us with the new health care law. And now we have the cuts in food stamps which is eroding our ability to sustain our families that helped us survive our low wage higher education teaching jobs. We happen to be teaching all over the United States in every academic discipline you could imagine. As 79% of the professors employed, you can imagine this is causing some of us adjuncts to stand up and organize for better working conditions and a more viable future for our colleagues as well as a better learning environment for our students.

David Brooks Phones It In

 In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare, and also means a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and must sell their labor to live

All of us who work under these definitive conditions have one thing in common. We, like you so cleverly noted, are forced to “rely on friends and family” and “we lack faith in American possibilities.” Not now, we don’t.

in the air…#CEW2013, #NCC strike, other precariat actions

…are they precursors of change or another round of promises? Will momentum continue to build, moving toward a tipping point, a major swerve? I'm still working on another change post, building off the last. The concept no sooner gels than something pops up to change it. Change is like that. This is not about change but not quite not about change. Starting as a gap fill post, it has come to feel more like watching for the wave.

With a month and a half to go, a new Campus Equity Week page launched. What did Mission Control used to say? We have lift-off. Later than advised but well ahead of the 2009 and 2011 late starts.

From its inception, CEW was as a genuine grassroots effort. Yet without the focus of a dedicated home base and a point person designated to round up, report, announce and share resources, it was not thriving as it had earlier. Not that anyone wanted to see it go, but there was no concerted effort for a large scale push. Pockets of activities persisted on scattered campuses.

Support Walmart Workers on Black Friday

…#walmartstrikers share many issues w/ #adjuncts & the academic #precariat…plus setting an example of how to organize mass action…and the courage to do it. I was going to add updates this morning but there are so many ~ better to save them for a separate post or Storify and send you straight on to this basic primer from adjunct comadre Rowan's blog /online journal, which I've been following longer than I've been doing #newfac. It's on our blogroll too. 

by Dan Wasserman, from occasional links & commentary

Uncommon Thought Editor's Note: Walmart is a reflection of capitalistic abuse on every continent where its heel rests. To say that Walmart is a "bad neighbor" would be an understatement. It controls entire markets, including price setting and wages. It ruins small businesses and communities. It abuses its workers in a hundred different ways. Please go to Making Change at WalMart to find out how you can support WalMart workers.

The following is from the Making Change site:

October was a banner month for Walmart workers nationwide.  Each week saw more Walmart workers speaking up and going on strike, to protest Walmart's attempts to silence workers and retaliate against them. The strikes culminated in an announcement at Walmart's Arkansas headquarters that if the retaliation does not cease, workers will make Black Friday a "memorable" day for the company. 

To make Black Friday a success, Walmart workers need the support of community members like you. Our website now features a number of ways to get involved and support Walmart strikers on Black Friday.

Together at last!

Getting together. this?

#Adjuncts are steadily building networks, using technology to improve communications and share information. Is that enough? What are our options? Could Alternative (Academic) Worker Organizations, not unions as we know them, but something else ~ as yet undetermined, be a possible solution for adjuncts nationwide or regionally? Alternatives are especially important in regions where union organizing is, to repurpose a polite euphemism, problematic? "But what about us?" comments to a recent post on NFM's Facebook page about increased adjunct organizing activity reminded me of the too often overlooked plight of adjuncts. After sharing Bill Lipkin's good advice about focusing on local campus action, I recalled a few articles at New Unionism (also on Facebook here and @newunionism) and started looking for more.

Joe Berry's Sept6 COCAL Updates

… in brief & links. Edited for length (omitting extensive "see below" items), redundancy (previously appearing in another post), time and formatting considerations. To subscribe to complete list by email, see information at bottom of page. 

Adjuncts... dba "you're not essential"

Good local newspaper op-ed adjunct unemployment insurance rights, Kansas City MO

IHE blogger (a CC dean) asks for free work from adjuncts (Ed note: a questionable characterization I disagree with after reading the post)

Near Emmaus responds to anthropologist Sarah Kandizor's Al-Jazeera article on adjuncts, plus links to other ensuing online discussion among anthros and other posts referenced, commenting.

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, July28 & Aug3

...news & links about #ContingentFaculty, #academiclabor & #organizing in #highered. To subscribe to regular Updates, email joeberry@igc.org.  More about Joe Berry.  Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org. Follow COCAL International on Facebook.   

Chicago, Chicago...
Chicago teachers show mobilization and real strike threat can win, but fight and strike prep continues. 

Good story out of Chicago Reader on how Mayor Emanuel and Mitt Romney have the same education program and why (and Obama too). It also makes very clear why we need to support the Chicago Teachers Union as much as possible in their fight to preserve public education in Chicago and nationally. See Labor Notes article on the same issue  

Around the adjunctiverse

ramblings

Time to put this puppy to bed before too late to be interesting, let alone any longer. Recent topping off: yesterday mailbox and social media exchanges were about:

• the TAMU San Antonio adjunct getting booted for having the temerity to expect admin to do something about threatening emails: catch it links, discussion, comments and all on Josh Boldt's Adjunct Project and Con Job (Fb group that has become our electronic water cooler)
• messy mooc musings (+ comments) from Kate Bowles (Music for Deck Chairs, Australia), Jonathon Rees (More or Less Bunk, Colorado) and tidier,  less dramatic, iterations of the same from members of Change 11 cohort, retired physics prof Gordon Lockhart of mooc cow renown

Precariat? R'us? If not, then who?

We're who but not the only ones; now what about who else and 'what'? The University of Sydney, cited below, gives an overview in its news release introducing visiting speaker, UK economics professor Guy Standing (truly, a minimalist home page). 

The precariat consists of a growing number of people around the world who live in social and economic insecurity, without occupational identities, drifting in and out of jobs and constantly worried about their incomes, housing and much else. (sound familiar?)

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 10April12

Follow COCAL International on Facebook.  Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.   Updates are also archived at chicagococal.org

Updates in brief and links

Global Labor

Current issue of World Wide Work, Matt Witt's compilation of good labor related literature, music, film etc. Published by the American Labor Center, an independent nonprofit founded in 1979. Subscribe to receive copies by email.




For anyone who has ever taught a subcontracted class, see new global union principles on temp agencies: Global Union Principles on Temporary Work

Campaign for the Future of Higher Ed

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 31March12

COCAL Updates in brief & links 

 

Note: Call for Papers (also as attached pdf) for COCAL X, August 10-12, Mexico City. Follow COCAL International on Facebook.  Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry.   

Mundo Precario

• Adjunct faculty prop up Higher Ed, seek rights, Pittsburg Tribune  
• John Warner introduces Adjunct Heroes feature on The Education Oronte Churm blog, Inside HigherEd  
• Panel at Left Forum in NYC, sponsored by Dissent Magazine and Verso Books, on organizing the precarious workers. Also includes some info on Excluded Workers Congress, which contingent faculty movement should be relating to. [I was at the panel and it was hot. JB] 

On the precariat

Among candidates in the "Naming Games" (a periodic event among adjunct/ NTT/ contingent faculty), precariat and variants on it keep come up more as the tanks of globalization roll through our cavalry lines. Back in 2002 when I was doing the Valencia AAUP Chapter newsletter and webpage, I fancied "precarious faculty" for its "call a spade a spade" directness. At that time, Canadian NTT faculty were called that as often as sessional. Every one working without a safety net.

Since then, the global precariat has grown, extended increasingly to "knowledge workers" of all stripes, and become a more widely identifiable term. It's back in the running. In the UK and NL, the Precarious Workers Brigade brings together artists, designers, writers, teachers, "insecure" university lecturers, freelance web workers ~ knowledge workers in education and culture.

Whether or not a variant or some other terms catches on among us remains to be seen. Self naming of a large, diverse group is ultimate crowdsourcing. By definition, no individual, group, organization or even consortium of organizations controls the process. Making it stick later with the Department of Labor is yet another matter.

In the meantime, I'm exploring the precariat here and around the world, primarily but not exclusively, knowledge workers (go Gramsci!) to aggregate and curate sources. I added sites and alerts to the feed reader to bundle and widgetize, started a Storify series (first entry below) and am also developing a "Welcome to the Precariat" newspaper in Paper.li.

Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 27March12

 in brief, with links

A great quote  "Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets the most swill." - James Connolly 1910.

Mundo Precario

Another, this time international, conversation of what to call ourselves. [I personally have come to favor "precarious" even over "contingent"]. Hyperlink Academia blog

Yet another article about overpaid and underworked professors (WaPo) that ignores the contingent majority [written by a former college president who assuredly knows better, since his old institution, New School U, spent big bucks fighting an adjunct unionization campaign] and discussion of his article on IHE

• CHE on bad court decision regarding U of IL Chicago petition for joint (TT/NTT) bargaining unit and open letter from union to administration offering to accept two separate units in same local union.
• Accreditation as a means to aid adjuncts by considering staffing ratios and working conditions as factors in accreditation. CHE

NFM members on #LeftForum Panels

There may be other NFM members presenting in addition to Debra Leigh Scott and Joe Berry. If so, please let me know. Looking for panels to follow? A number of the Education track panels should be interest. The Left Forum page also has search for tracking down topics and speakers. For those not in attendance, I'll be following as best I can on twitter, hoping for both good turn out reporting back and presentations being available post-conference. 

 

Occupy Colleges: Rescuing Higher Education from the Corporatized University. Featuring: Debra Leigh Scott, Chris LaBree, Nathan Kleinman, Kyle McCarthy. Session 2, E323, Sat 12:00pm - 01:50pm

The panel will investigate some of the many ways we are pushing back against the corporate colonization of academic culture. Fighting to raise awareness of the issues through documentaries and art-making will be discussed by the writers and filmmakers on the panel. Working to return professional stature, governance and economic justice to the migrant adjunct faculty within traditional academic institutions will be discussed by members of NFM. Creating new models of higher education - like the free university movement, open sourceware opportunities and peer-to-peer educating - will be examined for its benefits and game-changing possibilities. 

About panelists: Debra Leigh Scott and Chris LaBree Co-Producer of 'Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America, will talk about the 'Junct project, our goals and intentions in the making of the film. Nathan Kleinman, The Free University of Philadelphia Working Group, and candidate for U.S. Congress, in Pennsylvania's 13th District. Kyle McCarthy, Producer of Default: The Student Loan Documentary.

For-Profit Universities: The Corporatization of Higher Ed. Featuring: Susan O'Malley, Joe Berry, Richard Ohmann. Session 4, E321, Sat 05:00pm - 06:40pm

For-profit universities have been in the news a lot recently, chiefly for sleazy and sometimes illegal practices. Since they now enroll more than 10% of college students in the U.S., since their rapid growth parallels the commercialization of traditional universities, and since their competition is hastening that process, they should be understood as one thread in the fabric of gonzo capitalism, not a marginal aberration. 

The Spring 2012 issue of Radical Teacher is about the commercializing of higher education. Susan O'Malley and Richard Ohmann edited the issue and Joe Berry, who has taught at a for-profit and is involved in organizing for-profit faculty, wrote for the issue. Confirmed speakers will be Joe Berry, Richard Ohmann with Susan O'Malley chairing the panel.

Peter Fettner recommends two panels hosted by Dissent Magazine on debt serfdom (Friday night, Schimmel, Opening Plenary) and organizing precarious labor (Session 2, E307, Sat 12:00pm - 01:50pm; co-hosted by Verso Books). 

  

Work in the 21st century has been described as unstable, decentralized, precarious. How can workers organize under conditions of "flexible" employment, or gain leverage against an ever-changing boss? What will organizing look like in the face of massive shifts in risk to the backs of workers? All kinds of workers face these conditions, from home care workers, whose recent victories in New York State have challenged the impossibility of rallying those particularly vulnerable to hidden exploitation, to the "knowledge workers" who make up the Freelancers Union. These panelists will discuss the changing face of organizing in the face of the changing nature of work.

Names 101: By Any Other Name

Guest post by New Faculty Majority's Anne Wiegard, previously published in Cortland Cause, SUNY Cortland's UUP chapter's April 2011 newsletter. Every year, Cause wins awards in a competition of all the SUNY chapter newsletters.



Students unhesitatingly call us “Professor,” for that is who we are to them. They do not know that almost everyone else we work with is either confused or in conflict about the proper designation for faculty teaching off the tenure track.

Sadly, though contingent academic employees are faculty, they know that communications addressed generally to “Faculty,” are often not actually intended for them, in the same way that women in the 1950s knew that memos addressed generally to employees were usually understood to pertain only to males.  Men were the norm, so a memo only applied to women if specifically qualified, as in “Female Employees” or perhaps given a separate category altogether, as in “The Secretarial Pool.”

Names 101: The Precarious Brigade

I'm not sure how or even whether the UK Precarious Workers Brigade fits into 'naming' series (or whatever I end up calling it and about which I have yet to post an already belated introduction). For now, I say yes. Consider the definition, precarious workers in culture & education, and decide for yourself. Including creative workers (how Gramsci) expands scope and should remind us that college instructors in creative disciplines are predominantly adjunct/contingent faculty. Further, the precariat identifies with other labor areas defined below

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class … "Unlike the proletariat – the industrial working class on which 20th century social democracy was built – the precariat's relations of production are defined by partial involvement in labour combined with extensive 'work-for-labour', a growing array of unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings." Guy Standing

I came across the page just today, serendipity via a link post at Defend Education Ohio, just one of many in the Defend Public Education network. All are now in my feed reader: expect to see more of them,

Selections from Related Clippings (note inclusion of How the University Works)