Academics take on the $400,000 salary for Administrators in Universities and institutions?, will the Canadian's campaign stir the money Pot in USA too?

For decades or as long as the academic system established, there was no scrutiny or challenge to the amount of salary paid to the so called Administrators, Deans, Vice-Chancellors etc, for the first time, a Canada based Academics facebook joke took a turn into a Campaigning, the Edmonton based group of academics are asking why is that a $400,000 (almost half a million dollar salary is given to an administrator in the university but the academics get paid 5 to 10 times lower salary than an administrator, yikes, is this the next union busting activism to happen after PostDoc Union?....

Academics Protest High Salaries of University Administrators

Tongue-in-cheek campaign highlights income disparity, program cuts

EDMONTON—After the job of president at the University of Alberta was advertised with a starting salary of $400,000, Kathleen Cawsey joked on Facebook with a fellow academic that they should jointly apply for the position and split the pay, making the point that they would both be better paid than they are currently.
A few other academic friends joined the conversation, and Cawsey, an associate professor of English at Dalhousie University, decided to get serious with the idea.
The joke then became a tongue-in-cheek campaign to apply in groups of four for the well-paid position. U of A’s current president is stepping down at the end of the month.
“I think we got 56 people who sent in applications in groups of four,” says Cawsey.

Woman PostDocs- what is their plight in Academy and Research?.

Inside Higher Eds recent Piece on Woman PostDocs:

PostDocs in general are not well paid that is the universal truth
why "PostDoc" Unions are upraising but there are issues within
PostDoc issues, that is the "Woman in PostDoc" or woman doing
PostDocs, what is their plight?. Looks like the following
piece written by Graduate Student Jennifer Bussell from
Rockefeller University discusses about that critical issue.

Postdoc Pay: A Women's Issue

June 5, 2013

By

Jennifer Bussell

The message is loud, clear, and has reached cultural saturation: women are underrepresented at the top of highly competitive professions because they cannot reconcile the amount of time needed for such careers with the time they want to spend raising children. Just acknowledging this point has been a recent watershed moment for feminism, triggered by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s controversial Atlantic article and the release of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Slaughter and Sandberg offer different views on exactly what’s holding women back, but both agree that much of it has to do with raising children. And, of course, each woman and critic has proposed an array of internal and structural changes to help improve work-life balance for women in highly competitive fields.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/06/05/essay-link-between-postdoc-pay-and-pipeline-women-science#ixzz319RK3YzR
Inside Higher Ed 

Jakarta: Lack of Enough PhDs Among the Indonesians?

Concerned with the lack of enough PhDs in the country, the Education and Culture Ministry encourages the nations researchers and students to pursue more PhDs. What the Indonesian Education and Culture ministry must do is to bring foreign PhDs to train the youngsters and students to embrace higher education leading to PhDs. You need a culture a better academic culture, better infrastructure and promote interests.

University World News: 

INDONESIA

Ministry needs more researchers with PhDs

07 March 2014 Issue No:310

Original Full News:-

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Wed, March 05 2014, 5:15 AM

The Education and Culture Ministry has encouraged the country’s researchers to get doctoral degrees as part of its efforts to improve the quality of higher education.

“We need to increase research in all sectors so that we can improve our education system and the quality of our human resources. We are willing to work together with anyone to achieve this goal [...],” the Education and Culture Minister, Muhammad Nuh, said at a Global Education Dialogue conference in Central Jakarta, on Monday.

The conference, organized by the British Council, aimed to promote collaboration between universities and research institutions in the UK, Australia and Indonesia.

PostDoc Unions:- How do Science Magazine and Nature Publications Look at it?.

Nature Publications Group (NPG) headquartered in London and The Science Magazine (AAA) based in Washington DC are the two leading science publishing groups quite well read and world wide known for their reputation to be the number one science publishers. But, it is ironic to notice that they have been on the other side of the fence with respect to PostDoc issues, quite touchy and distanced themselves to support postdoc organizing themselves, rather they openly opposed any such organizations for postdocs except of their own vested interest NPA like organizations.  From the day one Uconn Health Center (UCHC) PostDocs began to fight for their own voice to be heard by the management and the policy makers, most scientific groups and institutions kept their distance with organizing postdocs...! Why?..

.................both these scientific magazines been utterly negative about Unionization of PostDocs. If any of the readers, visitors and advocates have any idea and thoughts on why, I invite you to share it, there are several obvious reasons one can come up with and share here.

They continued their anti-postdoc attitudes in a very subtle manner so that the innocent or naive postdocs and young scientists around the world would not notice their "anti" stand. So that they can keep the naive postdocs in their loop without loosing postdoc readership of these magazines. The subtlety lies in their method of writing about postdocs, what they did is to create two groups of journalists insider their writers roster, one group will write in a postdoc union positive tone, and the other journalists will bash it and try to put the Union effort into trash, eventually they gave up once Unionization's emerged at Uconn........ they found a new love for postdocs by allocating more space and time after the Uconn Health Center's PostDoc unionization, the success of postdocs organization perhaps taught them a lesson, because postdocs put together far more powerful effort than these magazines ever thought?, and thereby the spread of postdoc unions led to some changes in their attitude towards writing about postdocs plight?.

The very mechanisms and the way these two science publishers approached this postdoc issues are pretty perplexing to someone who knows how things work at Nature and Science Magazine. I will provide some instances later, but after bashing the postdoc union for a long time (number of years?), both Nature and Science magazines slowly waking up and are coming to a realization now that it is too late to keep chanting the anti postdoc union mantra but move on writing "As IT IS" about postdoc issues. The following nature article is simply the most obvious display of the change of mind of Natures writers and editors, but science has done it's own part by letting Beryl write freely on PostDocs union without any constrain......!?. Time does bring changes to even the most notorious mindsets!................as I wrote earlier, no one can stop the Postdoc unionization spreading all over the world let alone in US...Bravo Uconn Health Center PostDocs!.

The Spread of "PostDocs Unions"
..............this is the latest news about postdoc penned by Virginia Gewin, I never heard of this name associated with postdoc issues but it is interesting to note how a genuine story can be told to the world in their narrowed outlook at times with their own little interpretation of what is happening in the world of PostDocs. This is a news publication stemmed from one of the Nature publications, NatureJobs.com, a division of nature publishing group (NPG). Nature for some reason did not like PostDocs getting unionized,  oh well, why would they and most corporations squirm at the thought of unions?

If you thought that was interesting to know, it gets even more interesting if you know how Science magazine and Alfred P.Sloan Foundation (supposed to have GM connections, they claim in their "about us" page that it is independent and no formal relationship with the General Motors Corporation, well yea, we believe it!!?) together put their heavy hands to create and support to a looser organization known as "National Postdoctoral Association". Though, there might have been some genuine reasons to create a body for PostDocs that represent all the US PostDocs, NPA was one of the least influential of such organization I ever seen, it is like for the heck of it they made an org? that has no vision or any record of helping postdocs, because it was a failure from it's very inception!.

When I was attending their very first meetings during 2003 (infact, the NPA gave me a travel fund to attend and present my views as a member of the PostDoc Union organizers from Uconn Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut. I was not sure about what their stand, and thought that they might be genuine supporter of postdocs cause, thought they are open minded and will have the right perspective about PostDoc Unions. What I noticed during the conference that there was not much interests among organizers and sponsors of this conference about postdoc Unions.The NPA folks at that time (2003) about 90% of them opposed the idea of postdoc union, or the union approach to resolve postdoc issues?. Their argument was an association like NPA will spearhead and fix issues without conflicts with PIs or Universities, whereas unions cannot?. I had attended this conference against my own colleagues advice not to participate, I kept a open mind to explore what is that NPA and the backers upto?. My colleagues who are fighting with the university for salaries, benefits and betterment of postdocs at UCONN thought that I might be sucked into the anti union gang and taken over by the NPA that I might leave the postdoc unionization efforts, they did not realize that I can't be swayed away by these organizations and such people!!, I came out of NPA with clear and strong views that Unionization is the best option for Postdocs and NPA is anti union.

They created this organization to fight the postdoc unions and made their effort to somehow stunt the growth beginning by opposing the first Postdoc union (ours?) and in that process NPA miserably failed. big upset for them?.

To be cont'd,,,,,,,,,,,,,,More to come....!!!

University of Toronoto PostDocs win Unionization Drive- Canada PostDocs Unionize.

CAUT & ACPPU Bulletin: Canada

Interesting news from our neighbors, the Canadian Postdocs are fighting for unionization, UofT is probably one of the first to win labor board certification and forming union, (I might be posting it bit later than the news release, nevertheless it is a good news and to be shared). Postdocs at Toronto win unionization drive

Postdoctoral scholars at the University of Toronto have been certified as a trade union by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, after a four-year organizing campaign. In the representation vote held in April, 73 per cent of postdocs voted in favour of unionization.

Postdocs whose salaries are paid by the UofT will be represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3902, and will become members of CAUT through that affiliation. The new bargaining unit will comprise approximately 600 postdocs, and will be the largest unionized group of postdocs in Canada.

Organizing efforts started in February 2009, when CUPE 3902 launched a drive to certify all postdocs at the university. An application was submitted to the OLRB five months later but the university challenged the application, arguing that postdocs were not employees and consequently not eligible for union representation. Although a vote was held, ballots were segregated and sealed while the parties litigated the challenge.
Read the full Article at the above bulletin Link
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
University of Toronto News:Postdoctoral Fellows vote for trade union certification
June 4, 2013To:       PDAD&C; Professional & Managerial Staff From:   Angela Hildyard, Vice-President, Human Resources & Equity
Re:       Postdoctoral Fellows vote for trade union certification
On April 26, 2013, Postdoctoral Fellows voted on whether they wished to proceed with a CUPE application for trade union certification. Yesterday afternoon, the ballot boxes were opened and the votes tallied. The results were in favour of trade union certification.
CUPE will represent a set of the Postdoctoral Fellows, and we await documentation from the Labour Relations Board confirming the membership of this group.
Link: http://www.hrandequity.utoronto.ca/about-hr-equity/news/2013news/pfvftuc.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------
 

So what is going on with Adjunct Faculty, is the working Condition deteriorating?..

FACE Talk

Friday, 24 August 2012
Barbara McKenna
New report blasts working conditions of adjunct faculty
The working conditions of U.S. adjunct and contingent faculty—and, by association, the learning conditions of American college students—came under fire in a report issued Aug. 23 by the Center for the Future of Higher Education. The report, based on a 2011 survey of 500 adjunct faculty, finds two significant issues for those who make up the majority of the higher education workforce. Many are hired "just in time" to teach courses that are to begin three or fewer weeks after faculty are notified, and they have limited access to pedagogical resources.
For example, two-thirds of those responding to the survey reported receiving three weeks' notice or less to prepare for their classes. Almost all (94 percent) of survey respondents received no departmental or institutional campus orientation. In terms of sheer logistical support, respondents reported inadequate access to such basic materials as copying services, library privileges, office space, sample syllabuses and curriculum guidelines.
News Link: http://www.aftface.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=41
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 After the above blog post, some new articles appeared elsewhere:


Can Unions Save Adjuncts?
326 Jan 6, 2014 6:15 PM ET
By Megan McArdle
Last week, I wrote that collectively, faculty need to deal with the terrible market for professorships by producing fewer potential professors: admitting a lot fewer students to graduate school. Graduate school doesn’t exploit students the way that, say, a third-tier law school program does -- the students are paid, not paying vast sums for degrees they can’t use. But by wildly overproducing graduate students, academia is doing something just as bad, in a different way: encouraging overoptimistic (OK, maybe arrogant) kids to spend their formative years in the labor market pursuing jobs they aren’t so likely to get, then hiring the excess students as essentially casual labor at low wages.

January 07, 2013

Postdocs Cartoon by VADLO, Pretty hilarious but depicts real life complexities of postdocs

www.Vadlo.com
by Peter Ze Tang