Department of Economics, Part II: Organize, Goddammit!

Illustration credit.

This is a follow up to Monday's post, "Department of Economics," which  Historiann commented on today with a brilliant post of her own.

There is an outstanding comment thread to follow at both Tenured Radical and Historiann, much of which reveals that vast numbers of our colleagues in public education and small colleges have salaries frozen below, or well below, 70K.  For those of you who say we need a union -- I am on record as saying "union, yes" as well: I would *happily* trade tenure for a union, any day, any time. But you know why we have no unions? Faculty do not believe in the collective, and they are so easily divided by self-interest, envy and shame.  Our individualism, and our fear that if we organize we will lose the social respect that came with that PH.D., bites us in the ass every time.  Hence, those of us who can cut our private little deals and leave most of our colleagues in the dust.  

We are also a little starry-eyed about employers, and a profession, that doesn't treat us very well especially when we sacrifice for them and for students.  Note the vast number of people in both comment threads who think I should be "happy" about an escalating work load and a shrinking salary, and their only reason is -- I currently make more $$ and have a lighter teaching load than they do.  Listen carefully, for this I believe:  if privileged people like me are starting to notice a shift in the compensation atmosphere, if relatively wealthy schools that have a lot invested in the "prestige" of a traditionally tenured faculty, a 2-2 load, and a bank-busting annual fee for students think they donlt have to pay us any more -- well, many of you who are at the mercy of state legislatures ain't seen nuthin' yet.

I also think this question of salary rips off the cover off the fairy tale what we are sold in graduate school (particularly by Ivy League and Big Public Uni mentors who, my friends, make 2-4x as much as I do, at an earlier stage in their career, and have annual tax-free accounts worth upwards of 6K for research and travel to conferences) that all of us, when we leave graduate school, are really playing on the same level field. We are not the same, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the folks at the top do not think any of us are the same as they are. We get sorted into the masses and the classes in the job market, we more or less stay where we are sorted, and it isn't because some people are deserving and some people are not.  It's because of how we are paid and how hard we are forced to work for it. Have you noticed that we haven't heard a peep from any big-time RI people coming clean on what *they* make to lecture twice a week, manage a stable of TA's and teach a graduate class of 10?  No, you have not.  Now that doesn't mean they don't work hard:  it just means that if you are looking for Nicholas Romanov, he doesn't live at Tenured Radical.

But let's get back to the nitty and the gritty.  In what world is it too much to expect that a professional salary for someone in her fifties, who trained for eight years in graduate school and who has put in almost twenty years at her job, should exceed 107K? Take a look at the AAUP Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession: for my category of school, I am very underpaid. That said, I think many of you are *vastly* underpaid, and I am truly shocked -- by that fact, and by the resignation to being underpaid that makes itself evident in the view that shrinking faculty salaries are an inevitable outcome of -- what?  History? Shrinking education budgets because we divert so much money to fight wars and politicians do not have the stones to tax corporations?

The neoliberal economic policies that are killing education are a cynical political choice, not a natural and inevitable force.  I find it staggering, for example, that we clearly have a generation of scholars (many of you) who may not be able to send their own children to college without taking out loans because tuition, even at public schools, keep rising exponentially but their own salaries don't even keep up with the cost of living over the long term.  I find it staggering that college teaching may soon, except for a sliver of the population, be something that a person can only afford to do if s/he has inherited wealth or a spouse with a good income.  I find it staggering that many of you who have worked so hard to get where you are could easily be bankrupted by a serious illness, because your benefits are probably as $hitty as your salaries.  For this you went to school for 10-15 years?  For this you took out loans?  Aren't you angry at someone other than me?

I think the other organizing problem is this: because I am better off than many of you, your attitude is that I *should* be happy and I must be whinging because all my upper-class friends from college are coining it. We aren't going to get a thing done about any of this until some of you stand up and say, "I'm getting screwed! Royally screwed!" Don't buy the "I'm so lucky to be teaching," or "I'm from a working class background and I could be homeless or working in a factory for minimum wage, but by some miracle I don't understand I get to teach." You earned the right to teach; and with that, you earned the right to respect from your employers.  Since when did teaching college become a lifetime job at a starter salary?  And since when did the "privilege" of shaping young minds (gag) pay the mortgage?

Have I changed my tune on this, as Historiann points out?  Two years after the initial economic crisis, as shrinking faculty salary pools, cutting back benefits and eliminating tenure-track lines has revealed itself as the long-term plan for education, you bet I have.