Boston Magazine has an in-depth look at the end of Larry Summers' presidency which refutes much of the idiotic reactionary explanations put forward by Dershowitz, Tierney, and others, and offers an anatomy of tyrannical leadership in the neoliberal university which is engrossing, to say the least. Summers lies to the faculty, openly tries to bribe professional school deans into buttressing his presidency in the face of what he incorrectly views as localized rebellion in the facutly of arts and sciences, and ignores women faculty. Yet for all its ugliness, this article, like the events it documents, lends hope for the proliferation of similar developments elsewhere.

Anya Kamenetz in today's Times

By the same token, internships promote overidentification with employers: I
make sacrifices to work free, therefore I must love my work. A sociologist at
the University of Washington, Gina Neff, who has studied the coping strategies
of interns in communications industries, calls the phenomenon "performative
passion." Perhaps this emotion helps explain why educated workers in this
country are less and less likely to organize, even as full-time jobs with
benefits go the way of the Pinto.

Although it's not being offered this year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Union Summer
internship program, which provides a small stipend, has shaped thousands of
college-educated career organizers. And yet interestingly, the percentage of
young workers who hold an actual union card is less than 5 percent, compared
with an overall national private-sector union rate of 12.5 percent. How are
twentysomethings ever going to win back health benefits and pension plans when
they learn to be grateful to work for nothing?

So an internship doesn't teach you everything you need to know about coping
in today's working world. What effect does it have on the economy as a whole?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not identify interns or track the
economic impact of unpaid internships. But we can do a quick-and-dirty
calculation: according to Princeton Review's "Internship Bible," there were
100,000 internship positions in 2005. Let's assume that out of those, 50,000
unpaid interns are employed full time for 12 weeks each summer at an average
minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. That's a nearly $124 million yearly contribution
to the welfare of corporate America.

In this way, unpaid interns are like illegal immigrants. They create an
oversupply of people willing to work for low wages, or in the case of interns,
literally nothing. Moreover, a recent survey by Britain's National Union of
Journalists found that an influx of unpaid graduates kept wages down and patched
up the gaps left by job cuts.

Kamenetz's points about the precarity and contigency of the internship economy are well taken and insightful, yet the unqualified statement that "unpaid interns are like illegal immigrants" leaves me uneasy. It ignores the racialized contruction of work and the very different class positioning of college graduates and undocumented, low wage service workers, even as she does note the ways in which unpaid internships require one to be "rich enough to work without pay to get your foot in the door." This is not, of course, to say that I disagree with much of Kamenetz's argument - I don't. Kamenetz does a fantastic job here of demystifying the pernicious and exploitative material conditions and ideological dimensions of unpaid work. But what this simile elides seems dangerous to pass over, something of a colonizing gesture which might yield greater value if unpacked and scrutinized further.

Shapiro and the Sidney Hillman Prize.

How Ian Shapiro's book, which I will admit to never having read, was ever nominated for the Sidney Hillman prize, I don't know. That Unite-HERE (Hillman was a leader of the the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union, which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union to form UNITE in 1995) would refuse to honor Shapiro, the superstar political science professor who has often used his prestige and power to aid Yale's anti-union campaign against 2500 Unite-HERE members, seems a foregone conclusion.

Yet what this episode, reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, might teach us is that the actions of union-busters resonate not only within the halls of the ivory tower (itself a construct whose time has long since passed,) that supposedly progressive academics will be "called to account," (to borrow a phrase from Catherine Stimpson, another union buster,) that those of us who have lost our jobs, have been intimidated by our faculty, have walked picket lines in the freezing cold, and/or have put ourselves on the line for a just workplace and a better university are not alone.

I'm not sure what else it's appropriate to write here, since I don't really see the point of not-anonymously slinging mud at a tenured professor who has done a fairly successful job of dumping mud on himself.



I'm linking Hugh Baran's blog Creative Trouble. Baran is a UOCista whom I have never met. I am linking him because a) his nascent blog is quite interesting and b) he linked me.

On GSOC's day in court, (those of us who pleaded not guilty will be back in August,) Cary Nelson and Jane Buck explain why they were with us last month and why our struggle is so important for the future of academic workers.

NYU quite possibly represents a turning point in the history of efforts to
improve working conditions in higher education. Especially after nearly 30 years
of a steadily growing national trend toward the increasing use of poorly paid
contingent labor to do most undergraduate teaching — a trendin which higher
education mirrors the now radical disparity between CEO salaries and the
salaries of those on the shop floor — NYU’s effort to decisively disempower its
more poorly paid teachers heralds a future of bitter labor conflict in the
industry. While it was inspiring to stand beside the courageous students at the
forefront of this struggle, it was sobering indeed to realize matters may now
get much worse on many other campuses.

Despite a few gaffes in chronology (Medical debt justice preceeded the bank campaign by a good six months,) this is by far the best article about CCNE and CORD which I've ever seen.

"We beat this statement to death with a stick," said Ted Gardner, a retired
firefighter recruited to the cause. "We've never denied or been against the
cancer center. Everyone gets cancer."The critical, behind-the-scenes role van
den Heever, Marks and their organization played in mobilizing people like
Gardner turns the accepted plot line of the cancer-center dispute inside out.
For more than a year, it was portrayed in the media and in dueling ad campaigns
as a contest between the hospital and a union seeking to enlist its blue-collar
workers, with Mayor John DeStefano, a leading candidate for the Democratic
gubernatorial nomination, caught in the middle.The union - New England Health Care Employees Union, District
1199, a part of the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union
- had indeed laid siege to the hospital for eight years, finally winning the
right to hold an election under favorable rules. And DeStefano got credit for
ending the impasse, as did Marna Borgstrom, a longtime Yale-New Haven executive
who in October was promoted to president.But a funny thing happened on the way
to the March 22 peace treaty that most everyone greeted with jubilation. In the
end, it suddenly seemed to have less to do with the union than it did with
residents of the city's Hill section, the poor neighbors of the giant hospital
complex. Late on March 21, the night before the deal was announced, DeStefano
took Borgstrom to a meeting he arranged at the Sacred Heart Church in the Hill,
where she listened to residents tell her what the hospital needed to do for the
neighborhood if she expected to get the cancer center built.

Also, congratulations to all you graduated folks.

Farallon Capital Management sells its holdings in CCA, the notorious private prison corporation. Geert Rouwenhorst oddly wistful.

As congress happily acquiesces to Bush's criminaliation of undocumented workers and gleefully agrees to add ever more fencing along the border and entertain discussion of a congressional amendment attacking same-sex marriage, the NLRB deals workers at tax exempt institutions another blow.

With a weak labor law system that allows for pervasive employer
intimidation and excessive delays in organizing and bargaining, workers and
their unions are turning to those in their community who can support them in
their efforts to fairly seek union recognition or negotiate a contract.
Employees should be able to contact third parties to stand in solidarity with
and actively voice support for their rights without fear of reprisal. By
allowing an employer to retaliate against its employees for seeking such
assistance, the Board has further narrowed options for those trying to improve
their working conditions.

Dear Senators Clinton and Schumer,

You know you look bad when Joe Leiberman votes more "progressive" than you do.