November 24, 2010
Source: The Australian
SERIAL moaner Woody Allen once remarked of a New York restaurant that the food was terrible, and the portions too small.
This is more or less how I feel about ethics. As an area of academic study it's rather like a journey through the Amazon rainforest: you come across some interesting sights and sounds but the experience can kill you.
Yet because of the omnipresence of self-interest, indifference, cruelty and injustice we need to scrutinise our ethical frameworks, if only to explain why our friends and partners have abandoned us.
A scholarly foray into the world of ethics can throw up all manner of interesting debating points around honesty, probity and deceit; life, death and the hereafter, and my personal favourite, sex and love. Such morsels lead to tricky ethical dilemmas (that is, moral conundrums that can stop you doing the very things you want to do).
But, theoretically speaking, dilemmas can be fun. Consider the following questions: is having sex with a robot cheating? Do you tell your best friend that his partner was seen pole dancing on YouTube?
Although most people manage not to kill, maim, deliberately harm or impinge greatly on others, we all have behaved unethically at times, but still consider ourselves good, decent, law-abiding folk.
But there are limits, of course.
One of the most interesting observations about today's universities is the huge chasm that exists between claims of ethical propriety and routine practice. To be sure, every university boasts an enormous ethics committee, biblical policy manuals, lengthy codes of conduct and various other measures to ensure due process, transparency and accountability.
But do such measures work? I asked an academic at the University of Fogston (a dismal outpost in regional Victoria) what he thought of how he had been treated.
"There are statements, regulations and quality controls (that is, codes of conduct) left, right and centre, but when do they intersect with actual practices? The practices are disguised by, rather than described by, a set of myths," he replied.
My learned friend was alluding to the self-serving assertion that universities are paragons of ethical virtue rather than institutions that frequently exercise dastardly and cruel deeds.
Let me draw your attention to the ethical challenges that attend those poor, unfortunate souls on casual and short-term contracts. If ever there was a mob of disaffected employees, then here they are. More than half of all academic teaching positions in Australia are occupied by casual employees. A recent article in the online journal, World University News noted: "Growth in casual staff numbers is a factor that has simultaneously created a precariously employed but cheaper and more flexible workforce, along with higher levels of stress among the full-time teachers responsible for managing and supervising casual teachers."
The same article noted that between 1989 and 1999 casual staff numbers increased by a staggering 135 per cent.
At the same time, the proportion of continuing staff decreased by about 4 per cent, while student numbers more than doubled. (And the vast new cadre of overpaid grey suits and administrators haven't even been factored in).
It is clear as dog's testicles that the lot of casuals is not a happy one: they are, in effect, underemployed or in precarious employment. Casualisation brings additional pressures on full-time academics who, along with various other insane workload demands, have to undertake supervision duties.
It's not surprising therefore to learn that, according to a 2007 Changing Academic Profession survey, Australian academics are among the most miserable on the planet, even outstripping academics in drug-ravaged Mexico.
Discontent is written all over the faces of these indentured labourers who lack any meaningful sense of job security or career pathways, and are often at the mercy of stressed-out and unscrupulous full-timers. They have few if any rights, get no sick or holiday pay and little if any research time. Because they either need the work or seek a career in the factory, such labourers tend to take what is doled out to them.
I have seen and heard many casuals humiliated in public. I have heard casuals threatened if they rock the boat their contracts will be terminated.
I have witnessed casuals ordered to clear their rooms immediately following the end of their contracts, with no right of access to university facilities even if there is outstanding work to be completed. I've seen contract staff in tears over the way they have been treated by an academic or manager, with few realistic avenues for complaint or redress.
But there's hope. I know of several cases where long-serving contract staff are taking action to gain continuing employment even though the folk in human resources do everything in their power to prevent such an outcome.
So let's talk about ethics - university ethics - and how we (senior managers, heads of school, academics) have enabled the gross exploitation and humiliation of contract staff to continue for years.
Why haven't academics all walked out in protest? How can we square all that rhetoric about social justice and human rights with the presence of an utterly downtrodden workforce?