Outrage for freedom of speech in Universities

by C. Sat May 19, 2007 16:34

The problem is more widespread than a lot would think and is closely allied
to the issue of business and of course ownership of intellectual property rights- wherein
business sponsored schools of thought own the rights of the student, whilst they are
attending at universities.

a brief overview of articles on indy.ie:

The reported problems at Galway University where the women's studies centre is under
threat.

Wyclef in Oxford , where the academic staff are complaining of the new regime bullying
and intimidating staff for 'open theological discourse' , a new regime has advanced which
is subject to an evangelical 'thrust'.

The problems in Cork University.

The woman at the centre of the row in Oxford is well known for her theological research
and writings.

There cannot be an alliance between vested interests and education.

One lecturer in Griffith college, and one only has informed their students
that their intellectual property rights are being used by the sponsors for their
own ends. This is basic slavery and profiteering through ownership.
The whole area requires investigation- be it from profit based direction of education
or an attempt by vested interests to stymie research in favour of directing academic
impetus.

Whatever the reason, education is becoming less about the love of knowledge and more
about business/costings/perameters and a desire for ownership of ideas which is put
in the hands of people who have nothing in their heads except a desire to dominate
and control.

Which may explain the inactivity of many student unions in the country at the moment.
They are living in a playland where the business speak that passes for education
is dominating their ability to actually direct their own facilities to use knowledge
and the resources available to them in the areas of independent research.

by Stuart Sat May 19, 2007 21:55

It is a sad fact that when a senior academic engages in offensive behaviour in the workplace, the university will deny the behaviour and victimise the complainant - "they would rather admit to rape", in the words of one barrister familiar with such cases. It is simple risk-management and cold logic that a legal case of bullying will take a long time going nowhere, to the emotional and financial cost of the complainant. Taking the complainant's side would also open up two sets of conflicting rights where there had been one. Disciplining a Statutory NUI professor is impossible, even if one spent a decade in the High Court. Some universities have become so entrenched in stupid protectionist disputes that "surprise resignation" (like various judges) is preferable to objective and accountable examination of academic bullying.

The individuals responsible for controversial actions are increasingly being publicly named and should be made to publicly account for their private, destructive actions.

The Irish universities should also be forced to publish the number of complaints of bullying and harassment, their outcomes, the number of staff on long-term sick leave, court actions and the cost of legal action and settlements. The Minister for Education said in 2004 "My Department does not collect information on the issues raised by the Deputy. I have no proposals to carry out a study on bullying in Irish universities." (http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0578/D.0578.200401270284.html)

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Sun May 20, 2007 23:49 bullied.academics at yahoo dot co dot uk

This case is a golden opportunity for all of us - targets of workplace bullying in higher education - to rally in support of Sal, and on the back of this story to highlight the general (and specific) issues that relate to workplace bullying in higher education.

It is great to see disemmination of the case. Show your outrage. Make noise. An injury to one is an injury to all.

by Stuart Tue May 22, 2007 11:42

At Dublin City University the President, Dr Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, has spent 800,000 euro defending his decision to sack Prof Paul Cahill for the offence of assessing other employment.
http://www.independent.ie/education/latest-news/academi....html

At Dublin Institute of Technology the Director of the Faculty of Business, Paul O'Sullivan, has cost in excess of 500,000 euro in a settlement where Dr Jim Urquhart withdraws allegations of bullying that have already been upheld by a Rights Commissioner and by DIT's investigation.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/college-bullyin....html

At UCC the President, Gerry Wrixon, spent a sum acknowledged to be at least 3,338,000 euro and possibly exceeding 10 million euro on bullying cases. The new president, Dr Murphy, has overseen the end of the student newspaper (the Express), erased tracts of the UCC Forum, failed to provide promised governing body minutes or standards of governance documents and consigned the (very tame) Malone investigation report to oblivion.
http://www.independent.ie/education/latest-news/ucc-to-....html

Trinity Provost, Dr John Hegarty, has spent at least 100,000 (and possibly over 500,000) trying to suspend Dr Gerald Morgan for sending an insulting email.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/trinity-don-fea....html

Are these random snippets evidence of something seriously wrong with the state of higher education?

by From the IT Sat May 26, 2007 19:56

The Irish Times, Saturday 26 May 2007
Afraid to speak out about universities
Culture-Shock: Fintan OToole
A letter from a senior academic, who cannot be named, reveals the extent to which our third-level institutions have ceased to be centres of free inquiry
Last month, after I wrote in this column about UCD's decision to end its degree in Old Irish and what it says about the narrowing of minds in our universities, I received a long letter from a very senior Irish academic. He is in many ways an exemplary figure: a hugely popular teacher but also a prodigious writer and researcher who regularly publishes work of the highest quality. But I can't tell you who he is. The saddest and most startling line in his letter is one in which he says that, although he would be quite happy to speak out for his own sake, he fears that doing so would have adverse consequences for his department.
It is possible, of course, that such fears are unfounded. But my correspondent is a calm, amiable man, not given to obvious paranoia. His anxieties are ones that I have heard expressed by a number of academics in a number of institutions. And the very fact that such fears exist within our universities is itself a cause for deep concern. Universities are supposed to be centres of free inquiry and of intellectual curiosity. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the radical restructuring that is currently affecting most of them, there is something utterly askew when even very senior academics feel that they cannot engage in an open and honest discussion of what is happening around them.
My correspondent's letter is about what he calls the "managerialist" culture, "which is running riot in our university system, particularly in the two largest universities, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin". His view of this process is worth detailing, especially since it involves subjects other than his own, and cannot therefore be dismissed as the mere product of academic amour propre.
"Classical languages," he writes, "once a distinguished tradition in UCD, scarcely are known any more. Ireland used to produce distinguished classicists; nowadays we import them from Britain and elsewhere. Medieval studies in UCD, once a jewel in the intellectual crown, is being let die; again, we used to produce medievalists of world stature, now we import them. Similar and equally scandalous assaults on the teaching of modern languages have gone unnoticed by Irish journalism. Again, the attempts to force shotgun marriages on subjects that are dissimilar have been ignored. History, sociology and political science have been forced together in Trinity in a way that threatens the identity of all three. At one stage UCD proposed a shotgun marriage between classics and philosophy, betraying a ludicrous ignorance of the nature and content of both intellectual areas."
His argument for the intellectual autonomy of different subjects is not, however, an argument against "intellectual synergy". On the contrary, he argues from his own experience the relevance of a broad, open-minded education, even to specialised areas of research such as his own: "The social sciences and the humanities depend on each other intellectually: you cannot become an adept in my subject without some background in philosophy and a reading knowledge of several languages other than English. My old-fashioned classical secondary education is a boon to my present-day teaching of the subject. In the United States, a PhD in the subject from a good university usually requires a testing in at least
two foreign languages."
The old Irish system of broadly-based undergraduate degrees in the humanities, he argues, "has offered historically an extraordinarily rich variety of subject combinations to generations of undergraduate students. It has produced a large share of our writers, academics, public servants and political leaders, and Ireland would be much poorer intellectually and culturally without it. That richness is under threat... ".
I was thinking of this letter earlier this month when I was fortunate enough to hear the UCC medieval historian Donnchadh O'Corrain at the Burren Law School. He was engaged in something that most sane people would assume to be profoundly pointless: the exegesis of a number of early Gaelic legal texts. He is probably one of a tiny number of people in the world who can not just read these texts, but place them precisely in the context of European intellectual history. In the new "managerialist" culture of our universities, there will be little place for people like him. Of what economic utility is a professor who specialises in Brehon law? Yet his talk was both riveting and utterly contemporary, effortlessly connecting the old words with present-day concerns about the Iraq war and political corruption. It was a reminder that people who really know one subject actually understand a lot about most things.
There are particular ironies in the current narrowing of minds in our universities. It is happening at a time when there is a burgeoning interest in Irish culture abroad, so that we may eventually end up importing scholars of Old Irish from English or American universities. It is also happening at a time when the institutes of technology, supposedly more narrowly career-focused, are widening their remits (the Institute of Technology Tallaght, for example, hosts the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies) because they recognise that critical thinking is increasingly important in the real world of jobs and business. And it is happening at a time when the arts, as the huge increase in State funding recognises, are becoming increasingly central to national identity. If our institutions of learning are narrow and fearful, how can we sustain a vibrant, innovative culture?

by Indo Sun May 27, 2007 23:58

Academics furious at plans by Trinity chief to increase his powers
DR JOHN HEGARTY: Trinity Provost facing a revolt
Sunday May 27 2007
DANIEL McCONNELL

THE Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Hegarty, is facing a revolt by the Fellows of his college over radical plans to expand his powers and alter his primary duties. An emergency meeting has now been called to discuss the unprecedented proposals.

It is believed that the reforms include delegating the current duties of the Provost to two senior vice-Provosts at salaries in excess of €100,000, which would allow Dr Hegarty to become an international head-hunter for the college.

Trinity College is Ireland's strongest performing university in international comparisons and is currently undergoing substantial reforms which has led to considerable unrest among many of its leading academics.

However, this latest proposal has greatly angered and dismayed a significant number of the college's leading Fellows, who have called an 'extraordinary' meeting for the earliest available time.

Fellows are high-ranking academic staff 'of distinction' who form the governing body of the college. All Fellows are entitled to certain privileges in the college which may include dining at High Table.

"It's unbelievable what is going on here," said one Fellow. "On one hand, academic positions are not being filled because of a lack of funds, yet on the other, we have increased management and bureaucracy and highly inflated wages. We will meet as soonas we can but this arrogant and incredible move by the Provost is for many a bridge too far."

Dr Hegarty is seen as being in the same school of aggressive reforms as his UCD counterpart, Dr Hugh Brady, and the former UCC president Dr Gerry Wrixon, who have courted considerable controversy during their reigns. Many of their critics have accused them of introducing reforms that are contrary to the true ethos of the college.

Yesterday, Trinity College Dublin released a statement to the Sunday Independent, saying: "Trinity College Dublin is engaged in an extensive restructuring programme which includes academic, administrative and support services reorganisation, and the role and responsibility of existing annual academic officers. The purpose of this review is to strengthen the Office of the Provost and the overall management of the college.

"Draft proposals are currently being discussed as part of a college-wide consultation process and final decisions have not yet been taken. The statutory role of the Provost will not change as a result of the proposed restructuring. There is no proposal to award a salary of €250,000 to any officer under the proposed new arrangements."

Under the reforms, many small humanities' departments and schools have been targeted for closure or downgrading because they are not "great money-makers".

Greater importance and emphasis has been put on science, engineering and business schools which are more likely to attract higher research funds.

One vocal critic of Dr Hegarty and his peers is Economics professor Dr Sean Barrett. In previous comments to the Sunday Independent, Dr Sean Barrett said: "The heads contribute nothing to the academic success of Irish universities and their students. It is an appalling period in Irish universities. Those responsible are the heads.

"We have seen under the restructuring plans carried out in places like UCC, UCD and Trinity the emergence of a new managerial class. In all the colleges there has been a significant increase of 'managerialism' which is coming at a cost of collegiality."

by Melody Boyce - Bullied Academics Wed May 30, 2007 20:41

An extract from the Times Higher in regard to the dismissal of Sal Fiore

---------------------------------------------

Gillian Evans, a Cambridge University history professor who helps run a dispute resolution service for academics, said there was a conflict between an academic's right to academic freedom and contracts of employment that prevent staff bringing their university into disrepute. While academic freedom is usually considered to apply only to an academic's narrow area of expertise, Professor Evans said that it should be extended to question what university managers are doing.

"If one of the things academics are for is to speak out for the truth against powerful influences you cannot divide yourself into someone who is a totally honest scientist full of integrity on the one hand and a craven coward who will not stand up against mismanagement on the other hand. There is a duty to speak the truth."

----------------------------------------------

RESISTANCE, RESISTANCE!!

DON'T TRUST YOUR UNION,

WE CAN UNITE!!

GET - UP - STAND - UP

KEEP UP THE FIGHT!

MJB

by Get up, stand up Wed May 30, 2007 21:48

Kurt Naujoks (plaintiff) -and- National Iinstitution of Bioprocessing, Research and Training Limited http://www.nibrt.ie/ (defendant)

"In September of this year certain issues arose between the plaintiff, as CEO of the defendant, and the head of a research team employed by the defendant. It is the plaintiff’s case that these issues arose out of his commitment to ensure compliance with the best standards of corporate governance. The defendant attributes these issues to the plaintiff’s management style, which, it has been asserted, created difficulties in the workplace to the extent that the plaintiff ultimately lost the confidence of the Board of the defendant. It is not necessary, for the purposes of determining this application, to make any determination as to what has given rise to those issues, but they are the context for what happened on 12th October, 2006 and subsequently."

by Melody Boyce Thu May 31, 2007 09:18

Thanks, get up stand up. We didn't notice it before your post.

by Stuart Sat Jun 02, 2007 19:20

In recompense for Fintan O'Toole's appalling slur on Trinity College Dublin ("Afraid to speak out about universities") the Irish Times printed an outraged letter from Professor Jane Ohlmeyer yesterday - "unlike many universities in the UK, [Trinity] welcomes full and frank debate and consults its acadmic staff regularly" (aside from the possibly half a million spent on combating Dr Gerald Morgan's "insulting email") - and today it has a thoroughly balanced spread of Dr Hegarty's own wisely chosen words of defence.

You can see where TCD sits in the Irish university League of Litigation at http://www.iol.ie/~stuartneilson/bullying/bullying_iesc...c.htm along with all the Irish universities' litigation and Labour Court cases.

by Sal Fiore - salvatorefiore.com Sun Jun 03, 2007 15:58

I am not the first academic to be ostracised and censored by the university management. Indeed, now more than ever, this is felt in academia in general. It may be the case that, by coincidence, the protests for the protection of academic freedom against the managerial and imperialist culture within universities, have already echoed overseas and are taking the form as a real and proper global inflamed protest.

The current edition of the Times Higher Education Supplement devotes front and other pages to this debate.

Sal Fiore

Hasta la victoria siempre

http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com

by Liberty Hall Langer Tue Jun 05, 2007 17:42

The commercialisation of universities can only be tackled through effective workplace action.
That means reinvigorating campus unions, not abandoning them, and that means non-members joining and members pushing their committees to become real campaigning and organising bodies, not merely receptacles for the processing of individual grievances.

by Sal Tue Jun 05, 2007 19:06

Managerialism in universities
Students full of debts
Lecturers full of antidepressant
www.ucu.org.uk

www.cobas it

Let us accept the differences from time to time. No need to be so big to be so good.

Sal.

by Sal Tue Jun 05, 2007 20:46

www.cobas.it

by NB Tue Jun 05, 2007 22:39

Liberty Hall Langer - "That means reinvigorating campus unions, not abandoning them"

Which campus unions would those be? None of the Irish campus unions have any interest in academic or student bullying, they have no policies, no procedures and no practical supports. The USI is a litigant against its own employees. It is hardly worth asking the aggrieved, the bullied, the suicidally depressed and the sacked to "reinvigorate" the organisations that have abandoned them.

(Sal's representative body, the UCU, refuses to acknowledge campus bullying)

by Sal Fiore - www.salvatorefiore.com Tue Jun 05, 2007 23:11

>>(Sal's representative body, the UCU, refuses to acknowledge campus bullying)

What a blasphemy!!!! ;-)

I stopped paying fees to the ludicrous union for lecturers UCU several months ago. I do not intend to go back in that mickey mouse club. I will only pay fees and give my support to independent rank-and-file committees if any would be formed in the UK whilst working here.

I am close to the idea of unions as reported at

www.cobas.it/Sito/Commissione%20Internazionale/Presentazione/Cobas%20in%20inglese%20(corretto).doc

although I am not a cobas member.

Sal.

I think that the name UCU stinks on Indymedia. It's a sort of ludicrously out of place thing... you know.

by Cobas Text - Cobas Wed Jun 06, 2007 09:43

CONFEDERAZIONE COBAS, Viale Manzoni 55 – 00185 ROMA tel. 0677591926 fax 0677206060 cobas@cobas.it - http://www.cobas.it

A NEW MODEL OF SOCIAL SELF-ORGANISATION: From a refusal of passivity to the building of a movement against capitalist globalisation

Edited by the International Commission of the Cobas Confederation, Milan, August 2002

Introduction

In recent years a new offensive of capitalist forces has been under way on a world scale, aimed at a re-definition of capitalist control over both peoples and territories in a rapidly changing world. In the rich Western countries, such an offensive takes the shape above all of capitalist dominion over production (wage reductions, job casualisation, mass unemployment) and a new push towards the commodification of every sphere of social life (elimination of the welfare state, privatisation, commodification of everything - including our free time). In the developing countries such processes are visible through the greedy exploitation of oil and gas reserves, raw materials, cheap and non-unionised labour - who are robbed of their most elementary rights. Here capital shows its most barbaric face of violent imposition, dictatorship and war. A new movement has arisen against this state of affairs, and has spread all over the world. Rich, diversified, extremely lively, over the last few years it has become the vehicle of expression for many different demands. The ‘Confederazione Cobas’ (henceforth Cobas Confederation) has been fully part of this movement since its birth. The aim of these notes is to introduce the views and activities of the Cobas Confederation to the rest of the movement.

The new world order and capitalist globalisation

The end of a world which had been dominated by two superpowers opened the road to the creation of a new world order, based on the USA’s monopoly of military power, and on rigid neo-liberalist policies pursued by the governments of the most powerful capitalist nations, at the service of big multinational corporations. Through trans-national bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, G8 and NATO, the governments of the most powerful nations, under American hegemony, impose their diktats on the workers and peoples of the Earth in the shape of privatisation, sackings, the restructuring of production, which produce poverty for entire populations and increase the level of inequality between rich and poor countries. We call this process - which is only partly controlled by trans-national bodies - capitalist globalisation, through which the commodification of every aspect of peoples’ lives are imposed over the planet’s entire surface, subsuming not only human labour but every aspect of social life: from food to free time, from the water we drink to the air we breathe.

War has become central to such a scenario, whether it be caused by control over strategic resources (energy sources and water reserves), or areas which are geopolitically fundamental to the USA’s strategy of imperialist domination. Furthermore, war is also used as an extreme attempt to fight back against the ghost of recession, through a sharp rise in military expenditure.

The European context

Things are no better in Europe. After the introduction of the Euro, paid for by the blood, sweat and tears of workers, the growth forecast for 2002 is negative, while the stability pact is jeopardised by the need to deal with the catastrophic floods which occurred in August. The same mechanism which creates pollution and climate change is itself creating the conditions for its own unsustainability. In the meantime unemployment keeps rising, public expenditure continues to be cut, the welfare state is slashed to pieces and privatisation is pushed to the limit so as to open up new opportunities for profit. In the last few European summits neo-liberist policies were imposed with even more emphasis, and were unanimously agreed on by all European governments. This is also the end of every illusion of a possible ‘third way’, sponsored by the ‘neo-liberal’ left of Jospin, Schroeder, Prodi, D’Alema and Tony Blair, whose governments all supported and enthusiastically fought in the 1999 NATO war in Kosovo. While European trade unions, deadened by bureaucracies who have transmitted to workers the need for sacrifices to meet the Maastricht treaty condtions, are only be able to negotiate over the residual effects which emerge from a centralised restructuring of the labour market - and consequently have virtually no room for manoeuvre.

The Berlusconi government in Italy

The Italian government is now in the hands of a centre-right coalition made up of the neo-fascists of National Alliance, the xenophobic and racist Northern League and Forza Italia, the ‘business/party’ owned by Silvio Berlusconi, who also owns one of the biggest economic empires in Italy. This government is accelerating productive restructuring, capital ‘financialization’ and labour market deregulation. On the latter front, in particular, the Berlusconi government has unleashed an unprecedented attack on the very heart of one of the working class’s most important victories of the last 40 years. The battle being fought is over the employers’ right to sack workers without even a ‘just cause’ (by abolishing article 18 of the ‘Workers’ Statute’ law), the introduction of new forms of flexibility into the labour market, the reduction of the state pension scheme together with its creeping privatisation, the elimination of public education and health and the reform of the tax system which will rob the poor to pay the rich.

The attacks by centre-left governments

In a way, Berlusconi is simply continuing the job his centre-left predecessors had already started: policies aimed at reducing real wages; reform of the state pension system that extended the retirement age and which reduced the value of pensions by 30-40% in only ten years; introduction of new forms of flexibility and casualisation at work; equality of status between state and private schools causing the move of precious resources from state schools to private ones; the transformation of the national health service into a business-oriented system; policies of outsourcing of every profitable public service; the implementation of one of the biggest plans of privatisation in Europe (energy, railways, telecommunications and the post office). This picture is completed by the worsening of the already restrictive law governing the right to strike, together with the new law on immigration which created those hypocritically named ‘temporary residence centres’ as well as a system of entry quotas.

How Berlusconi is worse

The Berlusconi government is characterised by its attempts to rehabilitate the fascist regime and a ‘revisionist’ approach to the 1943-45 Resistance movement; by its revoltingly racist attitude towards immigration (the new immigration law allows warships to intercept migrants’ boats as they approach national boundaries); by its furthers attack on the National Health System; by its unprecedented clash with the judiciary and the passing of new laws tailor-made to extricate Berlusconi and his entourage from the numerous trials they are facing; and its almost total control over television.

As regards trade unions, Berlusconi is leading a full-frontal assault against them, and especially against the CGIL, the biggest official trade union confederation. In July 2002 we even reacahed the point in several workplaces of the police asking for lists of union members, an unacceptable and illegal act of intimidation. At the same time the government has managed to reach a separate agreement with the other two big official union confederations, CISL and UIL (both members of CES). In spite of the united strikes of the last few months, CISL and UIL are responsible for breaking trade union unity and dividing the working class through the acceptance of some of the government’s worst demands, including abolition of article 18.

In Berlusconi’s political project the trade unions of the future should be limited to a partial and marginal role in local and regional bargaining on conditions of work (due to the elimination of national contracts); participating in the management of employment-related social security benefits, pension funds and training schemes. Trade unions’ sole function would therefore be as a provider of services for a fragmented working class, deprived of its rights.

The big official unions: CGIL, CISL and UIL

However we shouldn’t view Berlusconi as ‘the big bad wolf’ of fairy tales, who wants to eat nice innocent trade unionists. Most of the political and institutional conditions which have opened the road for Berlusconi’s attacks are the result of CGIL, CISL and UIL’s strategy over the last few years, such as: the signing of national agreements which encourage flexibility and productivity increases, while penalising wages; the acceptance of a reduction in the role of the state pensions system in favour of pension funds, (which they are particularly interested in as potential future managers, together with the employers, of private sector funds - but also public ones in the future); their favourable attitude towards the introduction of new forms of labour market flexibility; their agreement with the transformation of education, health and public administration into profit-making organisations.

The role of Cobas

What is going on in Italy has already happened, or is about to happen, elsewhere in Europe. Given such a scenario, workers cannot limit themselves to a defensive battle inside their workplaces, whether they have permanent or temporary jobs, or whether their own industry or sector appears to be ‘safe’. Any battle, under these new conditions, would be lost from the start. Capital’s offensive can only be resisted effectively by a struggle involving the entire world of labour, in all its ramifications. Its construction must start from basic union activism, which must then broaden out to a wider political level in order to fight back against the aggressiveness of capital, which is attacking all spheres of human activity. However a coherent anti-capitalist attitude by the working class cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, we believe in the need for a process of workers’ self-organisation from below, which grows and spreads to a mass level in all sectors of employment: public and private, permanent and temporary, manual and white collar - which in any event is under the control of capital: this is the goal of the Cobas Confederation.

Who are Cobas?

‘Cobas’ is the abbreviation of ‘comitati di base’- rank-and-file committees. Part of the Cobas DNA includes the spontaneous uprising of factory workers in the 1960s, those of service sector workers, temporary workers and the unemployed during the 1970s and 1980s - and the mass rank-and-file protest against the neo-corporative official unions in the early 1990s, when the first Cobas were founded. The Cobas Confederation was created in March 1999 with the unification of ‘School Cobas’ and the ‘National Cobas Co-ordination’, which already brought together workers from the health service, the civil service, telecommunications and energy utilities.

The decision to create a self-organised independent union - in sharp opposition to the big official unions - originated in a refusal of their policies of collaboration with neo-liberalism, which reached a peak under the centre-left governments. As a matter of fact, the role of these ‘state unions’ in co-determining policies of job flexibility and wages moderation were absolutely decisive during that period.
Abroad, our model is often considered as an Italian anomaly, although perhaps it finds some echoes in France. The decision to create an alternative organisation - by definition separate to traditional unions - is related to the incompatibility of our conception of trade union and political struggle with that of the official unions. The latter have substituted social conflict with social partnership, being repaid by the state with economic resources for various purposes (services for workers such as help with tax returns; pension funds; professional training), which are vital in sustaining an ever-growing army of officials and bureaucrats. No wonder, therefore, that these organisations base their strategy on closed and watertight majorities which make all the important decisions, heavily penalising any form of internal dissent or organised minority. Hence the unavoidable necessity to organise outside of such bureaucracies, starting from the clear refusal on principle of trade union activism as a full-time paid job.

The Cobas Confederation is a political, trade-unionist and cultural force. The recomposition of political and trade-union struggle is one of our basic principles, based on the awareness that social subjects can never reach class consciousness unless they develop - starting from material contradictions - an understanding of how they are connected to society in general. Separating trade union conflicts from political struggles means subsuming the conflict between capital and labour to specific political projects or acceptance of the current state of affairs. This is the real meaning of us wanting to be both a political and a trade-union organisation, i.e. a social force, which acts in a generalised fashion, trying to bring economic and political struggles together. This explains our emphasis on workplaces, the area where we are the most active, which is constantly aimed at exposing the nature of class conflict inherent in trade union demands.

The Cobas Confederation is based on both the principle of workers’ self-organisation and on the struggle to overcome a culture of ‘passivity’ (delega). This has characterised trade union culture over a long period, as well as the mentality and behaviour of workers themselves in Fordist societies. It consists in fully delegating the defence of one’s own rights to professional trade unionists, forcing workers to become passive and ignorant of their own condition and how they can change it. Such an attitude is still deeply rooted among workers. This is why, once again, we refuse activism as a career, together with facility time paid by the employers which create permanent ‘professionals’. On the contrary, we are in favour of the rotation of responsibilities.

The Cobas Confederation is made up of a grouping of industrial or employment categories, each with its own statute and with financial and operational autonomy. The vertical nature of this system is counterbalanced by the rank and file element, represented by workplace Cobas, the local industrial grouping and the Confederation itself. Such a system protects us from the risks of traditional trade unionism on the one hand, while on the other strengthening the possibility of a real growth on the ground through typical trade union economic intervention. The Confederation level, with its strong political connotation, puts forward a more complex vision of social reality, overcoming the (potentially) narrow focus of single industrial categories, thus achieving an autonomous analysis of society independent of other political groupings or parties.

The most recent struggles

In the last three years the activity of the Cobas Confederation has been frenetic because of both the intensification of the capitalist offensive and, after Seattle, the opening up of new opportunities thanks to the new international movement. In such a promising phase we (and other rank-and-file Italian organisations) have been able to organise many mobilisations, and orientate significant segments of social and political life - above all those without property or power - as well as opening up broad union struggles of quite a generalised character, and overall contributing in a significant fashion to the resumption of social conflict in Italy.

Some important moments in this period were the protests against the OECD forum in Naples in March 2001, our involvement in the July demonstrations in Genoa, the 150,000 strong demonstration against the war on 10th November in Rome, the mobilisation of immigrants between October and December against the revolting new bill of the Berlusconi government, culminating in the huge demonstration of immigrants in Rome on 19th January 2002 with 150,000 participants, and the 70,000 strong national demonstration for Palestine in Rome on 9 March.

The Cobas Confederation has been active in workplace disputes, creating a campaign against various government proposals concerning the renewal of national work agreements. The main area though has been state schools, where traditionally we are strong, and where through our slogans we became a reference point for many workers, to the extent of forcing the official unions to rediscover ‘conflictuality’ under pressure from their rank-and-file. The school strike and national demonstration in Rome on 31 October 2001 opened the way for the conflict which engulfed most Italian schools in the following months.

We have also worked together with other rank-and-file organisations in the building of a general strike in response to the plans of both the government and the bosses. On 14 December 2001 we declared a general strike with demonstrations in all main cities; followed, by a bigger general strike of all rank-and-file unions on 15 February 2002, with a 150,000 strong demonstration in Rome. In April we called a general stike on the same day as the CGIL, CISL and UIL in order to avoid counter-productive divisions among workers, but separate demonstrations and rallies were organised in eight Italian cities, in which over 300,000 workers took part.

Finally, we have been active in the referendum campaigns which are aimed at extending workers rights, abolishing the law which equalised state and private schools, as well cutting down on electro-magnetic smog, the use of pesticides and incinerators.

To contact the International Commission: internazionale@cobas.it http://www.cobas.it/

by From IT Wed Jun 06, 2007 19:57

From the Irish Times today in reply to Prof Ohlmeyer / Fintan O'Toole:

Madam, - I am very happy for Trinity College Dublin, which in Jane Ohlmeyer's estimation (Letters, June 1st) is a managerialism-free zone.I write, alas, from a very different experience in UCD, and in full support of the points made in Fintan O'Toole's article "Afraid to speak out about universities" (May 26th). Unlike Fintan O'Toole's informant, who was afraid that identifying himself would have "adverse consequences for his department", I have less to fear in that respect. For my home department (French) no longer exists as such, having been forced into one of the shotgun unions deplored by that informant. Within this new structure, my subject is being "downsized" and has seen its academic integrity and its morale deeply compromised.
Against this background, why would I be afraid to state that academic freedom and collegiality - the two sine qua non conditions for the input of critical and reflective thinking into the university's decision-making, and thus for its ethos and civic stature - are being squashed by my own university's enthusiastic adoption of the globally fashionable, thoroughly malignant managerialist stranglehold described in Fintan O'Toole's article?
How could I deny that the university's programme of change based on supposedly new structures, which have now become ends in themselves (but what's new about bureaucracy?), has proved to be - often disastrously - subject like all such programmes to the "law of unintended consequences", runaway consequences that generate in turn an intensification of micromanagement and crisis management responses?
Cui malo? Your readers will answer that question for themselves, for I most certainly would be afraid to spell out in public the full extent of the intellectually neutering effects of an entirely inappropriate managerialist administration on the institutional health of a university where I still love to work and to which I wish to remain, however quixotically, loyal.
I would be afraid, not of being contradicted, nor - as happened in the early days of protest against the bureaucratic takeover - of being ridiculed as speaking for a self-serving minority of academics bleating for vested interests.
Au contraire, I would be afraid of the charge of selling out, the charge of betraying - quisling-like - my role as an academic, committed to serving human society (not an apparat and not an economy, not even a "knowledge economy") through my passion for my subject and for the value of critical freedom. - Yours etc,

Prof Mary Gallagher, School of Languages, Literatures and Film, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 6

by NB Wed Jun 06, 2007 22:55

One of our own universities, University College Cork, is a proud winner of the inaugural "Divestors in People Award" for managerialism, see http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/

(Lack of strategy, poor staff development, cronyism, incompetence, favoritism, inequality, management failure, poor management capabilities, ineffective leadership, no accountability and transparency, Staff are demorilised, Lack of improvements in managing people, work-related stress, Internal grievance procedures used selectively, bullying and harassment, Fear prevails, detached governing body - http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com/2007/06/divestors-....html)

by Melody Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:03

Visit
http://www.austen-v-universityofwolverhampton.com/forum...=9099
http://www.austen-v-universityofwolverhampton.com/forum...=9543

for an insight in the ludicrous dismissal of my partner. You can see with your own eyes documents of the hearing and evidence where breaches of academic freedom for the rights against the capitalistics and imperialistic marketing strategy of the university of wolverhampton are being exposed.

AGAINST GLOBAL EDUCATION!
AGAINST IMPERIALISTIC EDUCATION!
AGAINST THE CAPITALISTIC EXPLOITATION OF STUDENT, LECTURERS AND RESEARCHERS!

Melody