<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi Danny,<div><br></div><div>I mentioned no names, and was referring not to individuals posting to IDC (about University resistance) but was referring to several staff at the University of Auckland, many <b>permanent</b> staff members who did accept a 4% pay rise (and refuse to join the union, which would mean no pay rise), but also write pseudo-leftist articles in which they attempt to portray themselves as participants in resistance to the University's neoliberal agenda. You may well know some of them. </div><div><br></div><div>It is conditions of employment such as your own that the union are battling, the introduction of the 'PTF' professional teaching fellow positions for example. Yet many even in employment conditions such as yours nevertheless choose not to join the union or support the main organized effort to resist the management agenda. </div><div><br></div><div>My sources are the TEU as well as union members whom I have a long standing relationship with. When I worked at universities in Auckland, I was a TEU member, and have maintained links despite being based elsewhere now. </div><div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><div><br></div><div>Leon</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div>On 10 Oct 2011, at 08:35, Danny Butt wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Hi Leon<br><br>As I am without doubt the 'opportunistic' staff member you're talking about - seeing as you are repeating these "unnamed" assertions you posted on my partner's wall on Facebook, and I am (AFAIK) the only Uni of Auckland staff member to recently post on iDC - perhaps it would be a good idea if you got your facts straight. <br><br>Far from being offered a pay rise by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, my short-term .2 FTE contract running from July to November this semester finishes in a few weeks, at which time I return to unemployment for two months, before I have agreed to another "lucrative" six weeks of .3 FTE employment in summer school that will pay me a little more than the rent on my house. At which time I will then return to helping my brother's business and hope that I receive a call in March if there's some work going. On a part-time teaching contract that no longer allows me to do research. This is why I have supported the occupation movements at UoA, and other forms of collective organisation within the university.<br><br>So, the information you have on my employment conditions is incorrect (perhaps unsurprising given your sources), and frankly, I think your attempt to paint me as some kind of hypocrite in this forum is pretty tacky and a waste of people's time. <br><br>I look forward though to any actual contribution you have to make to this list, which I usually count as one of the most intellectually stimulating forums of the last decade. As your first "action", this post has indeed spoken loudly.<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>Danny<br><br><br>On 10/10/2011, at 5:30 AM, Leon Tan wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Thank you Brian for the interesting discussion! It provides an occasion to reflect on a current situation at the University of Auckland, in which opportunist staff (I shall not name names) blithely write public articles to support 'resistance' (I suppose what you call purported leftists) when in private they have chosen to accept the Vice Chancellor's offer of a pay rise on condition of not joining the Union and the resistance it poses to blatantly neoliberal and predatory management strategies. These get worse and worse by the day, and ultimately I think in a sense (however cliché), actions - e.g. refusing the pay rise to preserve minimal conditions of dignity at the university - speak much louder than words.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Leon<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">On 2 Oct 2011, at 22:54, Brian Holmes wrote:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Here's what I think. Academics who have no intellectual capital had <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">better build it right now through ethical-political struggles within <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">their own hypercompetitive, corrupt, and radically inegalitarian fields. <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Which means changing the ways they work so that the products are not <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">self-referential, self-interested and therefore aligned with predatory <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">neoliberal management strategies. Those who have built it up already <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">through such struggles had better spend it right now, critiquing and <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">opposing the sudden and violent power grab that money capital has been <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">carrying out since 2008 on the entire public sphere and on the majority <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">of humanity, or "bare life" as Agamben says. I have been told that <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Cornell West is camping out in Zuccotti Park in New York City. Until I <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">see great numbers of purportedly leftist academics following suit, <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">either in that movement or in other, better, more potent ones, I shall <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">go on trying to help you by producing concepts and agitational forms, <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">and (in all friendliness) by goading you from those extradisciplinary <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">and extra-institutional positions that I occupy and which are <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">dialectically related to the public institutions, as civil society is <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">dialectically related to the state. One of the concepts I'll continue to <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">use is that of the "total corruption" which in my considered analysis is <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">threatening the public university and all public institutions.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">_______________________________________________<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a href="http://distributedcreativity.org">distributedcreativity.org</a>)<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">List Archive:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC Photo Stream:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">RSS feed:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC Chat on Facebook:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Share relevant URLs on <a href="http://Del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a> by adding the tag iDCref<br></blockquote><br><br><br>--<br><a href="http://www.dannybutt.net">http://www.dannybutt.net</a><br>+64 21 456 379<br><br><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>