Call for participation: Reflections on organizing adjunct and precarious
workers in the neoliberal university
An open discussion organised by Third Level Workplace Watch for the
Subconference of the AAG
Tuesday 21st April, 2:40–4:20pm, Regency C, Hyatt, West Tower, Gold Level
The ongoing neoliberalization of the university and other third-level
workplaces manifests in the de-valuing of academic labour and in a lack
of security for the future of academic workers. Existing political
organizations while sympathetic to this problem are often unable or
unwilling to engage with these changing labour practices and the forms
of exploitation they produce.
Third Level Workplace Watch is a collective of precarious teachers and
researchers working in the Irish third-level sector trying to organize
for better pay and working conditions. While many people have shared
their stories with us and support what we stand for, it has proven
difficult to move from identifying the key problems to challenging them
in a way that would actually improve people’s everyday pay and working
conditions; the fact that many of us work between different third-level
institutions or in a part-time capacity makes it difficult to build up
relationships or knowledge of particular departments.
The motivation for this session is to stimulate discussion around these
difficulties and to identify different tactics and strategies for
organising. With this in mind we will focus the discussion around the
following two questions:
* what makes organizing adjuncts/precarious academic workers different
to other forms of organizing?
* what have been some of the successful strategies for organizing
adjunct/precarious academic workers and what can we learn from them?
We welcome all temporary, occasional and adjunct lecturers, researchers
and tutors.
This discussion is hosted by the 2015 Subconference of the AAG and is
being organised alongside Thursday’s main conference panel discussion
Academic Worker Inquiry: Notes from the Field, which takes place
8:00–9:40am in Crystal B, Hyatt, West Tower, Green Level.
Enquiries can be directed to Paddy Bresnihan ([log in to unmask]) or
Jim White ([log in to unmask]).
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