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Joined: Mar 2001
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> If the janitors at Harvard are fairly paid, then Princeton will have a harder time saying they shouldn't have to pay theirs fairly, and if the janitors at all universities end up fairly paid, then other institutions, academic or commercial, will have a harder time saying theirs shouldn't be...

Who decides what is fair? I'm sure the union, the employer, and the customer all have different ideas of what a fair wage is.



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The fact is, I guess, that everyone says they value higher education, but most taxpayers are unwilling to fork out a higher percentage in taxes to support it. That's certainly the case here.

Rhub's comments on the British system are well-taken; British unions have always had more power than in other places.

However, academicians do not make good unionists; it's like trying to herd cats. I was the secretary of a branch of ASTE, the polytechnic lecturers' union, for a couple of years last century, and it was like trying to herd cats. I constantly found myself saying things like "Yes, I know the poly's state funding is reducing by 1% per year, but should you really let that influence YOUR standard of living?" or "Poly funding is one issue, income from other sources, including direct payments by students, are another. The poly's hurting, but not as much as us working for about 60% of what we could get in the commercial sector." or "So you have no problem about management steam-rollering us into accepting redundancies when we know perfectly well that the quality of the teaching will suffer?"

Yeah, it's a real bundle of laughs!



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#27754 05/03/01 01:01 AM
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"So you have no problem about management steam-rollering us into accepting redundancies when we know perfectly well that the quality of the teaching will suffer?"

Reminds me of that saying that I can only remember part of:
along the lines of 'Everybody thought Somebody would take care of it, so Nobody did it'.




#27755 05/03/01 02:17 PM
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Cross-forum note:

A discussion similar to this has resumed over yonder at AWAD in Schools.


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