What is #precarity and who are the precarious?

Where to start? Inventorying and organizing existing resources. Defining, identifying and describing. I could use a few more hands.

This updated Durga represents the ultimate precarious worker. She is not just multitasking but doing it while riding a tiger and shooting arrows at a malevolent demon -- just another day at the Precarity Office.

Highlighting the challenges of contingent workers from nonfiction TV writers to housekeepers

… but apparently not those of the contingent faculty that the eponymous  ProfStaff  analyzed and wrote up. Dated June 30, 2012, this article predates the publication of ProfStaff's report but not the survey it was based on  Although not news to adjuncts, the article in the post title is still relevant, all the more so in the context of this and related discussions from "killing the American University in five easy steps" to the "new narrative" thread on the adj-l listserv. 

What is not news either but even more relevant in above contexts: the "other contingent workers" Sen. Franken refers to does not include adjuncts, contingent faculty, academic workers, tenuous labor, precarious academic labor or whatever the naming flavor of the week is. Perhaps just "other"?

Capitol Hill got a dose of reality today at a panel featuring entertainment insiders and lawmakers who discussed the perils of the freelance economy and revealed the behind-the-scenes challenges facing professional employees like writers in nonfiction television, as well as temps, subcontractors, and freelancers in nearly every industry, who lack the protections and structures of traditional employment. 

Sen. Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota and a member of three unions himself, opened the panel by noting the lack of employment protections he faced as a writer at the beginning of his career. He called attention to important provisions in the Rebuild America Act that would help protect writers and other contingent workers. [emphasis added]

Read the rest of "Highlighting the challenges of contingent workers from nonfiction TV writers to housekeepers." Then read more about the "Where is Professor Staff?"Report here (on this blog) or here at Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE). As for the "new narrative" discussion, you can follow it and participate by subscribing to the Contingent Academics Mailing List