Sydney university: #WageTheft & #Casualization
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/10/revealed-university-of-sydney-spent-millions-more-on-consultants-than-repaying-wages-of-casual-staff
#educationworkers #organize #solidarity #unions #NTEU
#NewZealand transport: “Even employers now acknowledge the #LowWage #casualization model has been a failure and we have to provide #DecentWages and conditions for all workers.”
#capitalism #union #unions #UnionStrong #Labour #MaritimeUnion #FairPayAgreements #exploitation
Yesterday activists against climate change occupied #erasmusuniversiteit.
Erasmus University called the police in riot gears to deal with a PACIFIC sit-in.
Protesters asked:
- that Erasmus stop receiving money from #Shell
- erase #studentdebts
- better contracts for staff, against #casualization
- #accessibility on campus for disabled people
It is very concerning that a university refuses to listen to these claims
Kate Bowles gave a great Keynote at the Open Education Resources 2019 (OER19) conference in Galway last night. In it she indicates how politicians, economists and even universities themselves measure their growth at the level of imports/exports and even compare it with mining in a cynical way to describe the movement of their educational resources and students.
A slide from“What a chilling thing to say about young people crossing the world to learn.” –Kate Bowles (in response to the slide immediately above)
The fact that businesses, governments, and even universities themselves would take such an ugly standpoint on teaching and learning is painful. It reminds me that one of the things that I think the open IndieWeb movement gets right is that it is people-centric first and foremost. If you can take care of people at the most base level, then hopefully what gets built upon that base–while still watching it carefully–will be much more ethical.
The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.
As a result of this people-centric vision, I’m seeing a lot less of the sort of ills, unintended consequences, and poor emergent behaviors caused by the drive toward surveillance capitalism within the giant social media silos like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al.
I’m reminded of a part of the thesis that Cesar Hidalgo presents in Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order from Atoms to Economies of the idea of the personbyte and what that looks like at a group level, then a corporate level, and I wonder how it may grow to the next level above that. Without ultimately focusing on the person at the bottom of the pyramid however, we may be ethically losing sight of where we’re going and why. We may even be building an edifice that is far more likely to crumble with even worse unintended consequences.
Here’s her talk in full. I highly recommend it.
https://boffosocko.com/2019/04/10/a-brief-reflection-on-kate-bowles-keynote-at-oer-19/
Peter Riley
John
Dr. Giulia Evolvi
Chris Aldrich