While we are at this, it seems that universities increasingly turn into sweatshops in which academic entrepreneur characters attract paying clients and hire cognitariat i.e. workers (such as junior faculty or grad students) producing intellectual commodity for these clients. Such academic entrepreneur characters not only benefit financially from these arrangements, but also seem to become very influential within the university system, while the cognitariat works for very little if anything at all. It seems that both academic entrepreneurs and university administration is happy with this division of intellectual labor and does everything they can to keep the cognitariat in its place in that system.
I wonder how widely this academic entrepreneur/cognitariat model is spread - I see it taking over both private and public universities. Any comments?
Wojtek
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 7:45 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, inorder to get the injunction - which denies us the right of peaceable
> assembly and free speech at least until the court session Fri morn - the
> admin claimed that we were 1) breaking the law (job actions are legal when
> one party engages in unfair labor practices like refusing to negotiate or
> negotiating in public), 2) causing the whole university to shut down, all
> classes to be cancelled (at the same time they praise the contract-bound
> temps and grad students for teaching their classes) and 3) going to force
> tens of thousands of non-teaching employees to lose their jobs because of
> our potentially Katrina-like power/effects. They have also spread false
> rumors that our job action could jeopardize NCAA athletes because the NCAA
> could find that student-athletes not having/going to classes violates NCAA
> strictures…
>
> Additionally, they were sufficiently concerned (afraid?) that they contacted
> the Michigan Education Association lawyers over the weekend - as they
> refused the mediators request to negotiate on those days - to say that they
> were going to seek a court injunction if we went out… something MEA Legal
> has never seen before (perhaps the admin realized 97% approval of a motion
> to allow the FA leadership to call a job action if necessary was an
> indication that a job action would be robust).
>
> Not only have we had great support from local businesses, the students and
> other unions (the admin had to send a university truck to UPS to pick up
> packages drivers refused to deliver), but faculty union members from Ferris
> State and grad student union members from the University of Michigan have
> driven to Mount Pleasant to protest in from the Admin building for us.
>
> Of course, in all of these bad budget times, the new Pres and Provost are
> making a great deal more money than their predecessors and at no point has
> their shared sacrifice discourse indicated a willingness on their part to
> share - nor an indication that they'll be finding lawyers who work for less
> than $375/hour.
>
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 9:23 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> i know. been there. still. so little.
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 8:17 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> > It's the principle of the thing. The workers should get nothing and
>> should
>> > certainly not get a seat at the bargaining table.
>> >
>> > Joanna
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Jeffrey Fisher" <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>
>> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> > Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 6:12:54 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] seems 99% sure
>> >
>> > man, that is the same story, always, all the time. it never ceases to
>> amaze
>> > me.
>> >
>> > On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 7:49 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > The
>> > > whole package the union asked for comes to 1/2 of 1% of the total
>> > > university
>> > > budget.
>> > >
>> > ___________________________________
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>> > ___________________________________
>> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >
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