Society

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The sad case of Margaret Mary, professor of the working poor

gownWho are the “working poor”? They’re not who you might think.  Well, they are, but in addition to the stereotypical image—a person working in drudgery at a lowly paid and insecure non-skilled job with no hope of dragging themselves out of it—is another, largely forgotten by governments and media alike.

The hidden working poor in western countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the US, include some of our most highly skilled, highly educated professionals. One of those professions is tertiary education. You probably don’t realise that more than 50%—and in some cases up to 75%—of the academic staff at the uni you or your children study at are paid on hourly rates for what is clearly not a casual job, and for little more than half the year.

On paper, the hourly rates look quite good. But not if you factor in actual hours worked, the high amount of extra unpaid work required, the fact that you don’t get paid if you are sick or have to take any other leave, or if your rostered hours fall on a public holiday, that you receive no holiday pay, no security, and that employment is available for only 30 weeks or less a year. I know all about this, because I’m one of them; for six years, my primary employment has been as an academic on sessional or short-term contracts.

This post was inspired by a very sad story this week, posted by my friend Jane on Facebook. “Death of an adjunct”, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on September 18, told of Margaret Mary Vojtko, who worked as an “adjunct professor” (a “sessional academic” in Australia) of French at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania for 25 years.

She was being treated for cancer and had huge medical bills. She was penniless and mortified about being in such reduced circumstances that protective services authorities had threatened to take her into care. She died on September 1 at the age of 83, after a heart attack.

She had recently been fired from her job, and when she was contacted by Adult Protective Services demanding she meet them to discuss her dire situation, she called Daniel Kovalik to intervene. He is the senior associate general counsel for the United Steelworkers union (more about that below).  Kovalik wrote her story for the Post Gazette, and I’ll let him continue here:

“I called Adult Protective Services right after talking to Margaret Mary, and I explained the situation. I said that she had just been let go from her job as a professor at Duquesne, that she was given no severance or retirement benefits, and that the reason she was having trouble taking care of herself was because she was living in extreme poverty. The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, ‘She was a professor?’ I said yes. The caseworker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help.

“Of course, what the caseworker didn’t understand was that Margaret Mary was an adjunct professor, meaning that, unlike a well-paid tenured professor, Margaret Mary worked on a contract basis from semester to semester, with no job security, no benefits and with a salary of between $3,000 and just over $3,500 per three-credit course. Adjuncts now make up well over 50 per cent of the faculty at colleges and universities…”

Kovalik says the most she could earn, when teaching three classes a semester and two over summer, earned her less than $25,000 a year net, with no health care benefits. Then she became ill and had to cut back on classes, earning less than $10,000 a year. She could no longer afford electricity. Kovalik continues:

“She therefore took to working at an Eat’n Park at night and then trying to catch some sleep during the day at her office at Duquesne. When this was discovered by the university, the police were called in to eject her from her office. Still, despite her cancer and her poverty, she never missed a day of class.

“Finally, in the spring, she was let go by the university, which told her she was no longer effective as an instructor — despite many glowing evaluations from students.”

If you want to read more about Margaret Mary, there’s a link to Kovalik’s story here.

Now, Duquesne University is the largest Catholic University in Pennsylvania and has 10,000 students. On its website, Duquesne says its staff “are the catalyst behind the University’s growth and prosperity. The University’s remarkable advances in higher education, technology and research are a testament to their hard work and drive.”

I think of Margaret Mary and know there is something wrong with those website claims. A line from Orwell’s Animal Farm comes to mind: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Her story went viral this week, and a follow-up on Inside Higher Ed explains that when Duquesne adjuncts voted to join the United Steelworkers Union last year, they were blocked by legal action taken by the university on the grounds it should be exempt from labour laws because it was a religious organisation.

In Australia, there are many people in the same situation as Margaret Mary. Every year in November, tens of thousands of academics across Australia brace themselves for the long, lean times ahead with no pay at all until the semester starts again at the end of February or beginning of March—and that’s if they get a job at all. They often don’t know until a couple of weeks or even days before the semester starts. Mid-year, it’s the same, though not as long a break.

Some find casual jobs working at supermarkets or homeware superstores, waiting tables, or perhaps the very lucky ones might get some shifts at a book shop. Many just hunker down for the lean summer months—at least they won’t have to pay for heating—and wish away their well-deserved break.

Of course, academia is not the only area of mass casualisation. I use it as a case study to point out this growing problem of “working poor”. It is short sighted in the extreme: it means so many more people in the future will be reliant on welfare to survive. Or, they will just work until they die.

This is particularly so of single people who don’t have any other person’s income to help with expenses or to cover the lean times. Over the last few weeks, I have been talking to several of my friends, women in their 40s and 50s, who are terrified of what their financial future holds because they can’t find a permanent job.

The New Zealand Listener magazine this year focused on this mass casualisation in a story about “the rise of the precariat class and the end of the golden era of work” (by Karl du Fresne, May 18-24, 2013). The term “precariat”, a portmanteau of “precarious proletariat”, was coined by the British economist Guy Standing in his book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011). Initially, it referred to people in unskilled casual jobs, with little education and no prospects. The article, which you can read here, said that in New Zealand—and I’m widening that to Australia as well—the term had morphed to include many well educated people in skilled jobs and professions.

Those in the precariat, according to the article, include accountants, air crew, government employees, and educators at all levels from pre-school teachers to university lecturers.

We will probably never go back to the era when a job meant full-time employment and entitlements. But as a society, we need to think more deeply about sustainable patterns of work and employment.  What we have at the moment is just not good enough.

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Taboo? The topic young men won’t talk about

ImageIn one of the university tutorial classes I teach, we had the best discussion this week of the unit so far: the students were engaged, presented different viewpoints, and listened to what others had to say.
Yet, it was, in some ways, the most disappointing tutorial I have ever taught.
Why? Well, of the five men in the class, only one attended. Yet, 9 out of 10 of the women attended.

The topic was gender in the media. It was a look at both historical progression and current challenges.

It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the men in the class were absent: they have had excellent attendance rates every week until now.

Students must attend 75% of tutorials, thus some choose which ones they will miss. Eighty per cent of the  young men in the class chose this one.

I don’t know for sure if they were absent because of the topic, but if that is the case, I suspect it could be for one or a combination of these reasons:
a) They think gender equality is women’s business;
b) The topic bores them;
c) They believe the media is already equal, or that, in fact, women have it better;
d) They don’t care;
e) They find talk about feminism intimidating.
I don’t blame them: at the beginning of adulthood, young people are largely a product of what they have observed and learned through childhood.

This made me think about the reason we have so far to go in the media to give men and women an equal voice, to give female journalists the same opportunities to take leading roles as male journalists, and to achieve equal pay across the genders.

It will take both sexes to achieve gender equality, and we desperately need to engage young men in conversations about it, particularly in learning environments such as at university . But how can  we do that? How can we encourage young men to take an interest and to become advocates of equality instead of the status quo?

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Amazing Stories of Trust #1: the airline and the lost baggage

Image courtesy Mark J P on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/pyth0ns/5812681105/

Image courtesy Mark J P on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/pyth0ns/5812681105/

I don’t like to look at the past with rose-coloured glasses too much. However, one of the things I think has suffered in the last 30 years is the element of trust in one’s fellow person: the concept that most people will do the right thing most of the time.

I’m reminded of something that happened to me in 1980 in my homeland of New Zealand, when I took a flight from Auckland to Hawke’s Bay. It was only a one-hour flight, and while I arrived at Napier-Hastings airport safely, my bag was nowhere to be seen. The Air NZ staff were apologetic, and said my bag had been put on the wrong trolley and would be forwarded the next day.

In the meantime, they said they would pay for some toiletries for me to make do with. They gave me an Air NZ cash cheque and told me to go to a chemist (known as a drug store in the US) and get whatever I needed.

This was not just any cheque. Well, it was, actually. It was what was known as an “open cheque”, which was signed, leaving the amount blank for me to fill in, depending on how much it was. I could do that at the point of purchase, they said.

“How much should I spend?” I asked.

“Just whatever you need, within reason,” they said.

Even back then, this amazed me. Such trust!

I didn’t buy much: a toothbrush, deodorant, a few other minor items. The bill came to less than $10.

The next day, the airline arranged for my bag to be couriered to my house in the small town of Waipukurau, about 45 minutes’ drive from the airport.

That’s customer service, trust and great company PR all in one.

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Angry Mr Smith: A Parable

'Venice Beach, sunset', pastel painting © Caron Eastgate Dann, 2012

Mr Smith was an angry man. There didn’t seem to be any good reason for his anger: it just was.

He felt angry when his neighbour got a bigger, newer SUV than him; he felt angry when his brother got the latest smart phone and boasted about all its apps; he felt angry when the woman over the road bought a cinema-sized TV screen; he didn’t feel happy for colleagues who got promotions—he felt only anger that HE hadn’t got that promotion; he felt angriest of all when the neighbour with the big TV sold her house and moved to a much bigger one in a better suburb closer to the city.

Mr Smith took his anger out on random people he didn’t know. One day, as he was driving his big vehicle with its bull bars on the front, a woman in a small car cut across in front of him, and he had to brake suddenly. He made a point of driving up beside her at the next intersection.

“Where did you get your licence, lady—out of a cereal packet?” he shouted, shaking his fist.”

“Sorry,” she said, genuinely.

“Aw, get stuffed,” he said, and roared off.

The woman, Ms Jones, knew she had made a mistake, and she really was sorry. She was not herself today because her faithful dog had died that morning unexpectedly, and she was driving home from the vet’s surgery. Of course, Mr Smith couldn’t have known that, but Ms Jones cried all the way home, and felt very alone—more so since she had made a mistake while driving and had been shouted at. All she wanted today was someone to be kind to her.

Eventually, Mr Smith became a manager at his work, and was in charge of 20 people. He was always finding fault with them—most of them were so useless, he thought.

When the sales figures came in for his first year, they were well below what they had been the year before, under kind Mr Tickle. Mr Smith was furious, and he made a plan to get back at the staff. “This will teach them,” he said, fuming. Then he called his staff together and told them their work was not good enough and that they would have to work harder, and take a pay cut, if they wanted to stay. And three of them would have to go anyway: Mr White, Ms Green and Mr Brown. These three had always been very hard workers and had been with the company for many years.

Mr White had had some bad luck: he had a chronic illness for which he needed expensive medication. Even though he had sold his car and his house, when he lost his job he knew he would no longer be able to afford this medication. A year later, he died. Mr Smith said they couldn’t send a card or flowers to his family, because everything the company did had to be cost-effective. And anyway, Mr White no longer worked at the company, so it was not like he was an employee.

One day, Mr Smith had a heart attack, a big one. The doctors told his lovely wife and their three adorable children that he might not pull through and that the next 24 hours would be crucial.

They kept a bedside vigil: although they knew their husband and father was an angry man, they loved him all the same and wanted him to live. The children, Sam, Eliza and John, stood on the left side of the bed, holding his hand. His wife, Jane, sat on the right side, holding his other hand. As Mr Smith stared up at the loving faces, they all started to glow like moonlight; but they were gradually going out of focus, and he knew he was dying.

Without warning, he saw in front of him a burst of forked lightning, and, like a huge wall of TV screens, videos from all his angry outbursts appeared before him, all running together. Beside each screen of him being angry was a video of his victim. There he was, shaking his fist at the errant driver, Ms Jones, and there she was, sobbing as her faithful dog died in her arms. There was Mr White, being told by Mr Smith to pack his things and leave the building immediately; and there was Mr White, dying in pain because he couldn’t afford the medical attention he needed. On and on it went.

All the screens disappeared again, and Mr Smith could just faintly see through the white mist the faces of his wife and children.

Suddenly, he got it—the point of life, and he knew he had failed miserably. He had brought children into the world, but he hadn’t done anything to make the world a better place for them, and for their children and their children, and so on. In fact, he had made the world a worse place for them.

Sorrowfully, he admitted to himself that he had done nothing but take from the world and had let his anger be directed at innocent people who did not deserve it. He had made lots of people miserable. He had been greedy, arrogant and mean.
And now, tragically, just as he saw the error of his ways, it was too late to do anything. If only he could have a second chance to mend his ways. If only he hadn’t left it this late.

Slowly, the faces of his wife and children were coming back into focus. He could not speak to them, but he could squeeze their hands just slightly.

The doctor said he would live for now, but he must change his ways and give up work, and even then, he might not have a long life. Luckily, Mrs Smith had a job, and they decided that if they sold their house and bought a cheaper one, they would be all right.

When he returned home, Mr Smith thought about how he could best use his remaining time. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything big, or world-changing. But something was better than nothing.

He had been advised by his doctors to exercise every day, so each afternoon, he set off on an hour-long walk, to the end of his street , where there was a park beside the beautiful beach. Along the way, he smiled at every person he saw and wished them good health. Sometimes, he could see the sorrow and lack of hope in their eyes. But actually, there was barely a person who didn’t smile back just a little.

Before too long, Mr Smith found himself whistling a tune as he walked along. This brought smiles to the faces of passers-by, too. Often, he would see the same people in the same places, and they would exchange a few words. After a while, Mr Smith’s walks turned into two- and even three-hour outings, he had so many friends along the way that he talked to.  They would often tell him their troubles, and he would listen to them. Often, it was dusk by the time he walked home again, and he grew to love this peaceful time of the day, the sinking sun sparkling across the water.

Five years passed, and Mr Smith’s doctor said he was a walking miracle.

 Mr Smith was happy with his life, but he wanted to do something more. So he wrote a book about what he had learned, and how he had once been an angry man, but that nearly dying had helped him to change. He called his book A Walk in the Park.

The book was a runaway success, and it sold a million copies. Mr Smith decided to give most of the money to the park, for all his friends to share. As a result, they set up outdoor chess tables, a speaker’s corner, children’s swings and slides, and a cafe where anyone could have lunch for free.

Soon, other people in various suburbs started to follow the idea in their own neighbourhoods. Then other cities and other states caught on. Mrs Smith and the now almost-grown children were very proud of him, but, mostly, they were so pleased that he was such a happy person to be around. They hardly remembered the angry Mr Smith from years ago. And still, Mr Smith went on his daily walk to the park, smiling at every one he met.

Against all the medical predictions, Mr Smith lived to 95, eventually dying peacefully in his sleep. His local park was renamed Smith Park, and a statue put up in his honour—a man walking along, whistling a tune; a happy man who had made a difference.

Painting: ‘Venice Beach at Sunset’, pastels on board, © Caron Eastgate Dann, 2012.

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New Zealand paints a rainbow

Maraetai Beach, NZ, courtesy Tomwsulcer & Haley Sulcer

Maraetai Beach, Auckland, NZ. From  Tomwsulcer & Haley Sulcer

I was thrilled to hear yesterday that my country of birth, New Zealand, agreed in Parliament to legalise same-sex marriage. This makes it the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to do so.

Although I left NZ in the late 1980s, I have never changed my nationality, I visit often and I still feel very much a New Zealander. So I am proud when I hear that NZ has taken such a big step toward equality of all its people.

NZ has many problems, like any other country, such as a growing economic division between rich and poor,  outrageous real estate prices in major cities, an over-emphasis on commercialism, corporate greed and materialism in some quarters.

But it also has, at heart, a people with a generous spirit, people who believe in equality, be it in regard to gender, race or sexual orientation.

Like Flick, the “little engine that could” in the children’s story, NZ to me is the “little country that could”. This group of dots in the Pacific Ocean has certainly made its mark on the world, and I wanted to celebrate some of those firsts in my blog today. There are, of course, many more, but these are a few that I know of:

  • 1893: First country to achieve universal suffrage when it gave women the vote.
  • 1894: First county to enact a national minimum wage—Australia did not do this until 1907, and the US until 1938.
  • 2001: First country in which women simultaneously held its three top positions of power—they were, then, the Prime Minister, Helen Clark; the Governor-General, Dame Silvia Cartwright; and the Chief Justice, Sian Elias.  In fact, the top five positions were held by women if you add the attorney general Margaret Wilson and the leader of the opposition, Jenny Shipley.
  • 2013: First country in the Asia-Pacific region to legalise same-sex marriage (and 13th in the world).

There are lost of firsts in terms of inventions, technology and scientific advances, too:

  • 1882: First country to ship refrigerated meat (to England).
  • 1884: William Atack was the first sports referee to use a whistle to control a game.
  • 1919: Ernest Rutherford split the atom.
  • 1954: William Hamilton invented the jet boat.
  • 1961: Arthur Lydiard invented and popularised the method of fitness training known as “jogging”.
  • 1987: A. J. Hackett invented bungy jumping.

NZers also invented the spring-free trampoline, the Zorb, the blokart, the circular hairpin, the cycling monorail. More: NZ innovations

But going back to yesterday’s step forward regarding human rights, I believe that in order to achieve a peaceful world, we must treat people equally. All people must have the same opportunities to live in safety and comfort, to pursue happiness, to be educated, to earn a living, and to marry the person they love. Parliament broke into song yesterday (Pokarekare Ana, a traditional love song) when the results of the vote were announced. If you missed this very moving moment, catch it here: NZ legalises same-sex marriage

I hope, too, that this step forward will prompt politicians in Australia to do the same. So far, both the federal government and the opposition are saying they will not. But it’s only a matter of time, surely.