Casualization is an Accountability Problem
Regarding the UCU’s Ongoing Industrial Action
The following is a lightly edited transcript of a speech I delivered last week at a rally during the University of Oxford UCU’s ongoing industrial action.
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29 Nov 2019
The strike going on today regards in some part the issue of casualized, or as Americans call it, precarious labor.
In my workplace, casualized labor means not just financial precarity, it also means social precarity.
It means people leave.
It means the university knows that grievances will be forgotten.
And so I will speak here about two grievances that I hope will not be forgotten, at least by those who stand here today.
First, and I am sorry to bring this topic here to those not expecting it, is incidents of harassment. There is not in my workplace a mechanism to officially report incidents of harassment in an anonymous way. As a victim, I must reveal myself in a way that exposes me to further and even different forms of harassment.
Several junior and senior colleagues in my department have proposed forms of anonymous semi-formal reporting mechanisms to my department. After participating in one such proposal myself, I was at first given encouraging words and then left to wait.
When I brought it up some weeks later, I was told it is not possible in my case.
The fact is, it seems to me, the university administration does not want effective harassment reporting procedures to exist. Why? Is it because of legal liability? What are these laws that are not protecting victims?
Waiting until those affected have left or become exhausted and resigned is not a mechanism of accountability. It is a mechanism of complicity. Instead of having a workplace of people who care for each other, we have a workplace where people leave, stories become rumors, and nothing happens.
As a second example of social precarity, let’s talk about Oxford’s new slated Humanities Centre. For those who haven’t heard, this building — that could have paid for how many living wages on this campus? — the university tells us is for you, for us, for the community.
This building is being funded in large part by the CEO and Chairman of the Blackstone Group, the largest private equity firm in the world, and — I should note on this day of climate strikes — a company credited with a significant role in the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest. A company that became the largest real estate owner in the world after buying houses that were repossessed from people who had defaulted on their mortgages during the 2008 housing crash.
This funder was approved and this building project announced to the press before any of it was announced to the university community. The negotiations leading up to the deal are protected by non-disclosure agreements. When I proposed in my workplace that lead management host an open forum about what this building and what this funder mean for our community, I was again told to wait, that further internal meetings must be held.
Will I be waiting until I am gone? I am fortunate to have a relatively long contract, although I speak to you here during my contract’s probationary period. Will I be waiting until all the students, researchers, and other precarious staff who have witnessed this happen are gone? Until Schwarzman, the Disaster Capitalist, becomes a name whispered after Blavatnik, the Oligarch, and Saïd, the Arms Dealer?
Casualized work is not just an economic problem, it is an accountability problem.
Casualized work impinges not only on our labor rights as workers but also on our social and political rights as members of this community.
