I apologize for sounding flip in my commnets on teh Lingua Franca article (BTW, I would not comapre LF to People magazine; it is a lot better). But what I wondered was how stars in some Literature (it sounded like some of the stars at Duke were making a lot of dough) and Philosophy departments have come to make very large sums of money. Usually people in universities who make large salaries are serving other than the people's interests (BTW again, I am not in any way jealous of these salaries, but if I were ever offered one, I would wonder about my politics, i.e. in what ways had I sold out to get such an offer)
Since some comments were made concerning academic labors, in the context of whether it was really work, etc., I thoought that I woould append a section of a book I have written on the subject of work (to be published, hopefully, by Cornell Press next year). I'd like comments. Of course, the debasement of the labor of teachers occuring today is addressed in another part of the book.
michael yates II. Twelve Hours a Week
When my parents sent me off to college, they hoped that I would acquire the skills that would enable me to avoid a lifetime of factory labor. I do not think that they were ashamed of blue collar work, but they knew that it would be better for me and a sign of their good work as parents if I got a higher class of job. They did not understand the extent to which the school systems to which they had entrusted me would try to mold smart working class kids into people who would not be especially proud of their working class origins. My parents were always proud of me, but this did not mean that there were not tensions. Once my father told me that I read too much, meaning, I suppose that I should pay more attention to practical matters. Some 25 years after this, I rather meanly chastised him for never reading any books and believing what he watched on television. Similar arguments arose over my lack of patriotism. He had certainly not wanted me to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, but he also felt that I had not done my patriotic duty as he had. I think that he was proud when my youngest brother joined the Coast Guard. Perhaps he believed that people like me, by studying so much, became too critical of the things that average working men and women thought were important.
An underlying but never directly stated conflict between my father and me concerned the nature of our respective labors. He use to joke with his friends and say, "Mike only works 12 hours a week." I had told him that I had to meet my classes each week for 12 hours, and this number defined for him the amount of my labor. Of course, he was joking, but he was not being completely facetious. No doubt, he was pleased that his son had such an easy job, fulfilling the dream of every working stiff. He also knew that there was more to the job than meeting the classes, though he did not know exactly what this was. What he did know was that it was easier work than his. He worked 40 hours every week and a lot more when he got overtime. His labors made his body sore and gave him headaches. He did not get paid if he did not go to work, whereas I made a point of bragging that I got paid whether I went or not. However, I am sure that he gloated that he made more money than I did, at least for the first 15 years I taught.
The question was: how was I to feel about this? Believe me, I understood the difficulty of factory work, and I did not want to do it. But I did not feel ashamed of what I did or that it was not real work. As I came to see it, the problem was not that I was in a privileged position but that most other workers were in unprivileged ones. In order not to "sell out" my father and his workmates, however, I further saw that I have two obligations. First, I have to do what I can to protect the good qualities of my job, and second, I have to support the fight of other workers to make all jobs more like mine.
If I had control over my time, then so too should all workers. Persons outside the academy are shocked to learn the ins and outs of the college teacher's trade. I am obliged to spend those 12 hours in the classroom each semester and that is about all that I am obliged to do. And as I earned job security, I discovered that even these 12 hours are flexible. I am now free to cancel my classes for any plausible reason, to go to a conference or to recuperate from an illness. I can shorten classes at my discretion, and I can come late if I want. Of great importance, I can, within limits, schedule the hours for my classes at whatever time I find most convenient. Sometimes I want early morning classes and sometimes late afternoon. It would be a rare thing if anyone should step in and insist that I teach at times I did not desire. I can choose to teach every day, or I can load up my classes on certain days. For the past nine years I have been living about 70 miles from the campus. To avoid a tiring commute each day, I schedule my classes to meet only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Beyond the 12 hours, I have pretty much complete flexibility. We are expected to keep regular office hours, but no one checks to see if we have.
My total weekly hours vary, with an average of about 50. Yet no matter how many hours I work, the amount seldom seems excessive. This is because I have nearly complete control over when the work is done and what work I do. In my first few years, I spent a lot of time preparing classes. I used to go to my office seven days a week. I'd get there very early in the morning and start writing lectures. I took breaks when I wanted and for as long as I wanted. If I wanted to spend two hours in the faculty dining room shooting the breeze, then that is what I would do. If instead I wanted to play basketball, I'd play basketball. If I wanted to drive to a local bar and play the poker machines, I'd do that. The lectures would always get done, just as today, when I spend less time on lectures and more time writing, the writing always gets done.
Naturally I realize that there are many work processes that cannot wait; you cannot take a long break on an automobile assembly line. But I wonder if the lack of control that most workers have over their work time has more to do with the need in our economic system for the boss to control the workers than with any technological imperatives. After all, cars can be made efficiently without assembly lines. I do know that nothing is more onerous to me than having to work according to someone else's timetable. During a sabbatical leave (another excellent feature of my job that ought to be a feature of all jobs--an entire semester off with pay every seven years), I lived in California working for the United Farm Workers Union. As we shall see, this was a remarkable experience. However, I never got used to a regular workday with expected starting and quitting times, and I used to shout with joy when the union would send me away on a special assignment. Then my time was once again my own, and the work always got done.
If control over the pace and timing of work is a desirable characteristic of a job, the ability to determine the nature of the work is even better. Most people are unaware of the degree to which their work has been planned out in advance by their employers. Much is made of the new "team-oriented" workplace; in them, it is said, employees are given a real say about what they do. In nearly all cases, this is propaganda with no basis in reality. Let us make a comparison. In my job, I was hired to teach various economics courses. Over the years, I have decided to teach some and not others. In the courses which I do teach, it is up to me to construct the course. I can define the subject of the class however I want; if I want to give an idiosyncratic definition to the subject, I can. I choose the textbooks, and I can forego them altogether if I want. I have complete freedom to select the teaching method, using lectures, discussions, films, guest speakers, and independent student work as I desire.
Of greatest importance, I have the power to plan or conceptualize each class. I, and I alone, determine the content of each class, and I am free to ad lib and improvise as I see fit. After a class or after a term, I can evaluate what I have done and change it if I think that this is necessary. Over the years, each course becomes a creative work, the result of my conceptualizations and executions. Each course is mine in a way which is not true for any but a tiny minority of workers in our economy. By comparison, what can be said of the work of my father or nearly any other worker? Glass workers, auto workers, steel workers, farm workers, chicken processing plant workers, store clerks, cashiers, bank employees, secretaries, janitors, cooks, fast-food workers, construction laborers, miners, nurses, doctors, lawyers --take your pick. All of these workers labor at tasks in which the broad contours and often the smallest details are planned by others. Auto workers might work in teams and these teams might rotate the jobs among team members, but the specific tasks and how the tasks are to be performed have been pre-planned by industrial engineers. In fact, the cars themselves have been designed so as to exclude as much independent thought by the workers as possible. How many workers can say that the work they do is creative? Not many, and as I shall argue below, increasingly fewer.
College teachers are looked upon with envy by most workers, an envy which includes a lot of hostility. That my father could see my work as too easy or not really work at all is good evidence of three things. First, most people do work which is degraded by the fact that it is not under their control but is controlled by others. Second, this state of affairs appears so natural that exceptions to it, instead of being seen as models of what work should be, are seen as not quite legitimate. Third, those who have the privileged jobs think of themselves as innately superior and deserving compared to those who do not, and, rather than fighting for the right of all workers to do as they do, they guard their privileges against the ugly jealousy of the unworthy and unwashed masses.