#casualisation

[scavengedluxury]

Casual unravelling. Leicester, May 2017.

[urbanwronski]

The Precariat Grows: Labor’s Toothless Reforms Can’t Stop the Casualisation Juggernaut Despite world-leading reforms, half of Australian workers remain trapped in insecure employment while the young bear the brunt The numbers don’t lie, even when the politicians do. Australia’s precariat; that swelling army of the insecurely employed, the casually contracted, the perpetually anxious, continues…

[thehallusocracy]

Ken Hyland in his article 'Sympathy for the devil? A defence of EAP', Language teaching, 51: 383-99.

Worker solidarity is more important now than it has ever been.

[xonethousandcriesx]

This is one of the most important consequences of the restructuring of the labour process superintended by the logistics revolution: the casualisation and irregularisation of labour, the disaggregation of the work process into increasingly illegible and geographically separate component parts, as well as the incredible powers which capital now has to defeat any struggle for better conditions, mean that it is not only impossible for most proletarians to visualise their place within this complex system but it is also impossible for them to identify with that place as a source of dignity and satisfaction, since its ultimate meaning with regard to the total system remains elusive. Most workers today cannot say, as workers of old could (and often did): It is we who built this world! It is we to whom this world belongs! The restructuring of the mode of production and the subordination of production to the conditions of circulation therefore forecloses the classical horizon of proletarian antagonism: seizure of the means of production for the purposes of a worker-managed society. One cannot imagine seizing that which one cannot visualise, and inside of which one’s place remains uncertain.

Bernes, Jasper. 2013. “Logistics, Counterlogistics and the Communist Prospect.” Endnotes #3: 192.

[after-zeno]

In between the fishing crews’ naps early afternoon, it was common to see local ‘boys’ hovering dock-side looking for casual work on the trawlers overnight.

[foreverfreo]

Australian labour market

Inequality is at 70 year highs. Wages growth is at record lows. We have the highest level of temporary work in the OECD. 40% of workforce are in insecure work.

[spectacularjudgements-blog]

When I am feeling like I'm not enough, like today, I remember playing roller derby. I only competed for a year, but the whole two years of training, and then the following year of team coaching, really helped rebuild my confidence and sense of power. Roller derby made me strong inside and out. I take that with me everywhere now.

Being on the fringes of the academy is tough. I once had a permanent, well-paid position. Before being made redundant in a round of 200 job losses. Of course the jobs still exist. They're just casual and temporary now. And I have no doubt that one reason I was targeted - and I was - was because I unionised the learning technology services area and campaigned successfully to get 12 jobs converted from casual to permanent. I don't regret that even with losing my own job. One of the staff members cried because she could finally visit her family in India on paid holiday leave, after three years of working there. We turned things around, once, briefly.

Casualisation in the sector sucks. Our lives are worth so much more than the way we are treated.

Today wearing my old roller derby t-shirt, with my name proudly on my back, is helping me remember this.

Background: some of my favourite pictures, including one of my beautiful roller derby intake, the Battle on the Bent Track brochure, a picture of a tank-girl-like skater drawn by an ex, and paintings by a special child in my life. Polly Text,  Left, queer, academic on the fringes, partial to Marx, writing a PhD on women & sport & #rollerderby. Just want to leave this place a little better.

https://twitter.com/pollytext

[spectacularjudgements-blog]

Only realised that I had worn my tshirt inside out when I removed my hoodie in class. This is not how I feel towards the students, but how I feel about the expectations of self-surveillance and “professionalism” placed on the exploited bodies labouring under a system that is failing so spectacularly: IDGAF

– Anonymous

I’ve been casually employed in higher ed teaching for ten years. I teach at a university and a pathway college to the university. I am totally over this arrangement and am developing an exit strategy out of academia, or at least not be fully dependent on it. But I’ve surprisingly come to appreciate the gig at the pathway college, because I’m in new a situation where I deal with a majority of POC international students who are documented as second language speakers of English.

I am a migrant of ethnic minority status and a former international student in Australia. This gig gives me an opening to explore my ethical responsibility to this subset of students who are a major source of income for the corporate university, yet who are sometimes treated with casual racism, especially with regard to the matter of ghostwriting services/plagiarism. Domestic students who are so-called “native speakers” of English are just as liable to cheat.