Saturday, July 11, 2009
What's the Most Just Choice?
I'm currently trying to decide how to vote next week. My faculty union is being asked to vote on whether or not we'll accept a furlough of 10%. I have no problem AT ALL accepting less pay for less work. BUT, the Chancellor's office has provided no information about what this furlough will look like (e.g. how do salaried folks take a day off?), no information about how many layoffs will be prevented with a furlough, no information about what kind of cuts they (admin.) plan to take in an effort to "share the pain." Agreeing to furloughs with no information and under these conditions is simply irresponsible and puts the union in a weaker and reactive position. Given all of the circumstances I don't have room to list here, I believe that a vote against furloughs is the principled, right way to vote. However, I will make this vote from a position of privilege. I am highly unlikely to lose my job. My vote against a furlough means more people with fewer rights (e.g. lecturers) will lose their jobs. It's possible that a number of people who may lose their jobs understand the situation and would vote no as well given that it protects the bargaining power of the union and helps our ability to bargain for everyone in the long run (or know that it's just a matter of time before they are laid off anyway). But ultimately, if faculty say no to furloughs, we will be decimated in the media for refusing to give our fair share in this budget crisis. There will be few people who understand all the details of the situation, even fewer willing to take up space to print the complexity of it all, and fewer still who will read a full description of the dilemma in which faculty have found themselves. In general, the press are not friendly to education. The simple perception will be that CSU faculty are greedy and unwilling to take a small cut to save the jobs of their colleagues. I'm not really sure what to do. What would you do?
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3 comments:
What is the most just choice? Neither choice is just because the choice is between two unjust outcomes. The most recent information from a spreadsheet I just examined reveals the following:From 2000 to 2007, the cost per student for CSU management increased by 14% while the cost per student for faculty declined by 2%. This was primarily due to a 10% increase in management positions which was accompanied by a 1% decrease in faculty positions and a 27% increase in students. (Management and faculty positions are in full-time equivalents.) This 27% increase in student load was on top of significant increase in faculty time required to design and implement assessment.
After breaking their contract with faculty by refusing to give the pay increases specified in the contract to begin on July 1, 2008, the Chancellor approved pay raises to some top administrators for a much as 19% in November 2008.
Unlike the President of Harvard who decided to cut all expenditures except faculty when faced with a 30% reduction in their endowment, the Chancellor of CSU proposed to cut faculty pay by 9.5% and lay off thousands of faculty while not mentioning any administration layoffs. Although the University of California is planning to cut faculty pay, administration took its lumps first with an 8% cut in pay last May.
While other state employees actually get days off with their cuts in pay, the CSU Chancellor expects his faculty to take their pay cuts with no compensating days off. In fact, the Chancellor even suggested that we take our furloughs on paid holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I will not be able to choose furloughs under these conditions. I want to protect and support my friends and co-workers from losing their jobs; However, I must make my vote a protest. Paula M. Selvester
I want to share these comments from a lecturer:
First, I believe it is the "no furlough" vote that is the "no-win" for part-timer lecturers. If the furlough is rejected, most (perhaps all) such lecturers will disappear, and the benefits of a "no" vote articulated by Frederica and others will not inure to these folks directly, because they will no longer faculty members. So that is not their "win." But what about the long-term benefits to the institution, our students, and T/TT faculty -- maintaining our current pay scale, possibly earning back our promised pay, a stronger negotiating position, etc.? Those benefits are simply irrelevant to the immediate self-interest of part-time lecturers, for whom the question is starker: job vs. no job. What's more, many of my lecturer colleagues cannot afford to put long-term benefits to others over their own immediate self-interest. One has a spouse who was recently laid off; another has a serious health complication for which any break in health coverage will have a drastically negative financial impact on the entire family. Asking lecturers to vote "no" is like asking them to "take one for the team" and, especially in light of last fall's range elevation strife, I detect very little "team spirit" among the lecturers I know on our campus. In case I am being too oblique here, advocating a "no" vote to lecturers is asking them to agree to lose their job and endanger their family's well-being. I cannot in good faith encourage my lecturer colleagues to vote "no", despite the fact that I agree with most of the negative implications of furlough outlined by Frederica and others.
Second, a "yes furlough" vote is at least potentially a win for part-time lecturers. The argument that agreeing to a furlough will NOT save lecturers' jobs is illogical to me. Instead, it seems more logical to conclude that, while non-hires (and possibly lay-offs) will still occur if we accept a furlough, they will be fewer than they would have been without it (despite not receiving a numerical guarantee from Ch. Reed). Even Ch. Reed (I think) will want to avoid the potential backlash from presenting the furlough as a way to save jobs and then enacting massive cuts anyway. It is arguable that some lecturers will probably manage to hold onto their jobs, and even if that situation is short-lived, it buys them some time to explore other possible employment scenarios. Of course, as with all of this, I could be wrong.
I am a grad student who benefits from excellent teachers in the Department of Ed. Should someone vote out of fear of what the press might do?
Vote what you know to be the best possible choice (in this case, since there is not a clearly just choice, vote for the better choice to yield an outcome closer to what is just and right). But please don't NOT VOTE.
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