Universities have been using graduate workers for this kind of labor for some time now, arguing when the grad workers have organized that the practically free teaching they provide is part of their education.
But now more and more universities have expanded this Walmart business model, practically eliminating tenured faculty with academic freedom, security, time for research and writing, and the charge to seek truth.
These universities have replaced professors with adjunct professors who are paid only by the class or classes they teach with no security from semester to semester, no benefits, no dignity, just other hands working on other types of plantations.
But there is a swelling of movement on these campuses as adjuncts and grad workers are organizing unions to change the conditions and wages of their labor. Several different national unions are working with the adjuncts and grad workers to form strong unions, and bargain for what was once taken for granted.
One of our national unions most committed to this work is the United Steelworkers of America.
They brought in one of our most famous intellectuals, Professor Noam Chomsky to speak to adjunct professors who are organizing, “That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call ‘associates’ at Walmart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility.”
And it is an active threat to a citizen run democracy, because less and less of our information and knowledge comes from academics in search of truth and knowledge, while more and more comes from marketeers only in search of larger and larger profits and higher and higher stock value.
Image source: @SEIU