Workplace violence: Boston bus driver attacked by teens

It’s well known among people who deal with risks of workplace violence that driving a taxi cab is one of the most dangerous jobs around. Unfortunately, a disturbing story out of Boston reminds us that driving a public bus also carries genuine risks.

Earlier this week, the driver of a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency passenger bus was attacked by a group of teenagers, purportedly after he told one of them to put out a cigarette while on the bus. John Ellement, writing for the Boston Globe (link here), reports on the bus driver’s initial call for police help:

The … dispatcher asked for details and [the bus driver] provided them. “I have unruly passengers, a couple of kids smoking. I’m at Dudley [Street] and Hampden [Street.] Please get them here right away.”

However, the situation quickly escalated. A few minutes later the driver called back:

“Attention. This is 2157,” he says. “I was just assaulted. Got knocked out. Got my head smashed into the window. I’m still at the same location. There is a kid with his foot underneath the bus. About 10 of these kids jumped me.”

While the driver thought his bus was still on the street, the bus had, in fact, slammed into a building on Dudley Street.

The full article contains audio links to the bus driver’s call to the dispatcher and to a 911 call placed by one of the passengers.

Workplace safety and health law

The criminal justice system is getting involved with this situation, and rightly so. Travis Andersen, also for the Globe (link here), reports that two young men, ages 18 and 19, have been arrested in connection with the attack.

However, the driver may have little recourse under workplace safety laws, which haven’t quite caught up with the risks of violence on the job.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency charged with enforcing workplace safety laws and promulgating rules and regulations, has developed a number of guidelines, recommendations, and information resources concerning workplace violence for employers and workers, available here.  However, as OSHA concedes, there are “no specific standards for workplace violence” under federal law.

Erase and forget: “Unpersons” and institutional memory

(image copyright Aaron Maeda)

Last week I referenced the Orwellian concept of unpersons, those (in the words of Wikipedia) “whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments.” Though Orwell saw the making of unpersons through the lens of totalitarian governments, many of us can comprehend how the practice applies equally to private and non-profit organizations.

In fact, it was an online exchange with a friend regarding the creation of unpersons in the non-profit sector that led us to consider the role of institutional memory, defined as (and thanks again to Wikipedia for this):

a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people. As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group. Elements of institutional memory may be found in corporations, professional groups, government bodies, religious groups, academic collaborations and by extension in entire cultures.

The two ideas are closely related. Bad organizations choose to “forget” less flattering events of their institutional history, especially those that conflict with their self-generated mythologies. Sometimes that process requires them to create new unpersons out of individuals associated with those events.

Those who try to remind organizations of these transgressions are criticized for talking about “the past,” even if the events in question occurred very recently. If they bring up that past too frequently, they risk being turned out and rendered unpersons themselves.

Rinse and repeat

Of course, any discussion of institutional memory should recall the Santayana chestnut that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Bad organizations often fail to heed that advice. In fact, when less-than-wonderful events do repeat, the purging of institutional memory often guarantees that no one will remember the original disaster.

Easy as 1-2-3

Today, with websites often serving as the public face of an organization, the creation of unpersons and the emptying of institutional memory is as easy as editing a web page. Entire biographies and histories can be deleted in a few keystrokes. One day, all links lead to your page; the next, you don’t even exist (at least virtually)!

From abstract to concrete

Okay, this discussion has been rather abstract. But I’m guessing that many readers familiar with workplace bullying, sexual harassment, whistleblowing retaliation, and other forms of mistreatment can identify readily with the ideas here. Hopefully I’ve provided a modest backdrop for understanding the accompanying institutional responses.

Student loan debt is piling higher and deeper

The student loan debt crisis keeps getting worse. Tamar Lewin reports for the New York Times (link here) that “(s)tudent loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time last year and is likely to top a trillion dollars this year as more students go to college and a growing share borrow money to do so.”

Unfortunately, the trend is set to continue:

The mountain of debt is likely to grow more quickly with the coming round of budget-slashing. Pell grants for low-income students are expected to be cut and tuition at public universities will probably increase as states with pinched budgets cut back on the money they give to colleges.

So what’s new?

I realize this isn’t earth-shattering news to today’s young people or their parents. But it’s important to keep the issue alive. We’re talking about a generation that is being asked to shoulder an enormous share of financial burdens as the price for getting a start in life.

The policy and practice of supplanting scholarship monies with student loans as the primary sources of financial aid emerged in the early 1980s (not coincidentally, right after the election of Ronald Reagan as President) and remains the norm, even as college tuition continues to increase.

Lifelong “gift”

In the mid-1970s, 10 years was the standard repayment period for student loans. Now, repayment periods often stretch out over 30 years. A college graduate in her 20s can anticipate making student loan payments into her 50s. Lewin quotes Lauren Asher of the Institute for Student Access and Success:

“Things like buying a home, starting a family, starting a business, saving for their own kids’ education may not be options for people who are paying off a lot of student debt.”

‘Nuff said.

Recycling: Beware of concentrated power, economic sociopaths, and shattered assumptions

From the archives of this blog, here are three posts of possible interest:

1. Why concentrated power at work is bad (Nov. 2009) — Power does indeed corrupt, and the workplace is no exception. A brief look at what power does to our heads, literally.

2. Defining the Economic Sociopath (Nov. 2009) — Just who are these people plotting schemes to fatten their wallets and leave everyone else struggling? Some 18 months after I wrote this post, not all that much has changed.

3. Why severe workplace bullying can be so traumatic (July 2009) — Bullying at work shatters our assumptions about a just and decent world. Applying insights from a book by psychology professor Ronnie Janoff-Bulman.

[Editor’s Note: In addition to maintaining a list of articles that have remained very popular on this blog — see the Popular and Notable Posts page — every month or so I’m recycling relevant posts from more than a year ago. Hopefully they will be of interest to newer readers.]

Professors support public employee collective bargaining rights

Kudos to American Rights at Work, a policy and advocacy organization supporting workers’ rights, for soliciting endorsements from 850 college and university professors for a statement supporting the right of public employees to engage in collecting bargaining (link here to pdf). Particularly in view of the broadside I issued against standard-brand academic culture earlier this week, I’d like to share this with you.

Here is the lead point of the statement:

Federal and state elected officials are using fiscal crises as an opportunity to dismantle collective bargaining rights for public employees. As faculty and research staff from colleges and universities in the U.S. and around the world, we are opposed to any efforts to revoke collective bargaining rights for public employees, including home care and child care providers.

Every once in a while…

I’m among the signatories to this letter. In recent years, I’ve avoided signing most such statements, as frequently they do little more than fuel professorial egos. After all, it’s not as if the rest of the world is hanging on our every word.

But this statement and similar ones are saying something important, and even if their impact is measured, I’m glad to see academicians standing up to be counted. This is especially true now that fellow professors are being harassed by those who oppose the fundamental human right to engage in collective bargaining, as I wrote earlier this week.

Harass and eliminate: Anti-labor forces go after professors and art

We’re in the midst of a severe assault on rank-and-file workers, led by anti-labor political and business leaders, and it has entered the realm of attempts to chill speech and artistic expression.

Harass and eliminate

Securing e-mails of “suspect” professors

Public university professors who are sympathetic to labor protesters may find their e-mails being searched by anti-labor entities who want to discredit, embarrass, or harass them, using public records laws to access their communications.

The first salvo came from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which filed a records request to search the e-mails of a University of Wisconsin professor who had criticized GOP governor Scott Walker. In a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education (link here), Peter Schmidt reports:

The Republican Party of Wisconsin is seeking, under the state’s open-records law, to obtain e-mail sent by a Madison professor who has publicly criticized that state’s Republican governor, a move the professor is denouncing as an assault on his academic freedom.

Officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison received the records request on March 17, two days after the professor,William Cronon, published a blog post examining the role conservative advocacy groups have played in formulating legislation recently proposed by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican lawmakers.

Next came a records request from a conservative think tank that wants to inspect the e-mails of labor studies professors at state universities in Michigan. Again for the Chronicle (link here), Peter Schmidt reports:

A free market-oriented think tank in Michigan has sent the state’s three largest public universities open-records requests for any e-mails from their labor-studies faculty members dealing with the debate over collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy . . . sent the requests . . . to labor-studies centers at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Wayne State University. The boilerplate wording . . . asks the universities to provide all e-mails from the employees and contractors of their labor-studies centers containing the words “Scott Walker,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” and “Maddow,” in reference to Rachel Maddow, the liberal commentator on MSNBC.

Removing art depicting rank-and-file workers

Maine Governor Paul LePage, a Republican, recently ordered the removal of an 11-panel mural depicting various chapters in the history of the state’s workers from the offices of the Department of Labor. As reported by Ros Krasny for Reuters (link here, including sample panels from the mural):

Waves of criticism have followed the removal of a mural depicting workers’ history in Maine, including the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” from government offices in the state capital Augusta.

***

The deed was done, in secrecy, over the weekend.

The 36-foot-long (11-meter-long) work contains 11 panels with images including shoemakers, child labor, textile workers and strikers, as well as Frances Perkins, U.S. Labor Secretary and the first U.S. woman cabinet member.

LePage cited complaints from some business leaders as the reason for ordering the removal.

There is an Orwellian quality to this action, a desire to create a category of unpersons, those “whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments,” as Wikipedia puts it.

More signs of the American plutocracy

Recently I suggested that America has become a plutocracy, a society where power and influence are controlled and exercised thuggishly by the most wealthy. American plutocrats seek to deny the widely-held belief (outside the U.S., at least) that labor rights and collective bargaining are fundamental human rights, not a branch of some obscure special interest.

These developments are all part of that effort. The dots keep connecting…

Let’s give a damn about our coal miners

This marks the one-year anniversary of the Upper Big Branch mining disaster in West Virginia that led to the deaths of 29 miners. This mine, operated by a subsidiary of Massey Energy, had been cited for repeated safety violations prior to the tragedy.

As reported by Erica Peterson for West Virginia Public Broadcasting (link here):

When the Upper Big Branch Mine exploded last April 5, the deaths of 29 men who were in that underground mine unleashed a flurry of mine safety reporting.

It turned out the mine, which is operated by a Massey Energy subsidiary, had been cited for numerous violations. In fact, the Mine Safety and Health Administration had issued more citations for the most serious violations at the Upper Big Branch Mine than any other mine in the country during the previous year. Despite all this, the mine was still operational.

Watch the video

I recently had the privilege of listening to a keynote speech by United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts, delivered to attendees of the New York Public Employees Federation (PEF) health and safety conference. PEF has posted the full speech to YouTube, and I’ve pasted the video of Roberts’s closing above.

Especially if, like me, your work environment is relatively comfortable and safe from deadly risks, please spend the 8+ minutes to witness the passion and intellect of one of America’s great labor leaders. Yup, some of it is in-your-face stuff, but it comes from the heart of someone who knows what it’s like to lose family members and friends to mining tragedies that might’ve been averted by more caring management.

During his speech, Roberts recounted the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was asked by the press how we can protect coal miners from harm. She replied there are only two ways to protect coal miners and all workers: legislation and unionization.

Prof. Lofaso on mine safety

Professor Anne Marie Lofaso of the West Virginia University College of Law is writing about just that. In her law review essay, “What We Owe Our Coal Miners” (abstract and article link here), she asks: What do citizens of a “just” society owe workers, such as coal miners, who daily risk their lives for our collective comfort?

Her words channel those of Eleanor Roosevelt, albeit in somewhat more academic prose: The law should set a minimum floor for miners’ safety and health, and union advocacy should empower workers to raise that floor.

Sounds pretty good to me.

The culture of academic work: On conformity, bullying, and disappearing jobs

A career as a professor provides opportunities to teach, engage in scholarly research, and serve the public. It can be a great gig, providing a good income and a chance to help others. I count myself among the fortunate who get to do this work.

However, I also find myself increasingly troubled by the culture of this vocation.

Put simply, professional success in academe places heavy premiums on jumping through career hoops, conforming to external expectations, and pleasing others in order to get ahead.

Of course, higher education is hardly the only vocation to play this game. However, it is sadly ironic that an endeavor that should celebrate creativity, original thinking, and public education all too often discourages these qualities.

Thinking big thoughts? Sometimes, but not too often

OK, so higher education is all about academic freedom, thinking about and expressing significant ideas, and challenging students to think outside the box, right?

Well, not nearly as often as you might think. Aspiring professors would do well not to be seen as being daring or bold. Those seeking academic appointments are counseled to stay on the good sides of their advisors, even if it means tempering their own views.

Tenure-track faculty are advised to play the same cautious game when it comes to courting those who will be voting on their tenure applications and reviewing their work. Engaging in some vigorous bootlicking doesn’t hurt, either.

The end result can be a disappointing one: Once junior faculty have jumped through the tenure hoops successfully, all too many of them have been conditioned not to test the academic freedom protected by their tenured status.

A diminishing public role

Furthermore, too many professors are bludgeoned or fall naturally into the trap of limiting their scholarly role to writing jargon-laden work on narrow topics, followed by exchanges of those writings with small coffee klatches of academic colleagues.

In The Last Intellectuals (1987), sociologist Russell Jacoby lamented the passing of the independent, bohemian public intellectual, opining that this role has been usurped by highly specialized and heavily credentialed academicians who write for a very narrow audience. English professor Regina Barreca, in a 2009 essay in The Common Review, wrote that the “wolves” of modern-day higher education have filled academic prose and dialogue with so much pretense and jargon that they have caused people to “hate theory.”

Today, massive energies are devoted to facilitating cozy conversations among academicians, at the expense of thoughtful interaction with those outside academe. Too many professors are passing up marvelous opportunities to educate and learn from the broader public.

Plenty of bullying, too

Not surprisingly, higher education can be a petri dish for bullying behaviors. As I wrote in this blog’s most popular post:

(T)he culture of academe can be petty, mean, exclusionary, competitive, and hierarchical.  Bullying and mobbing behaviors occur with surprising frequency, and sometimes with stunning brutality.  They can transcend the type of institution, academic disciplines, and political beliefs.

University of Waterloo sociologist Kenneth Westhues has done pioneering work on the topic of mobbing and bullying in academe.  His thorough case studies of professors who have been mobbed out of their jobs document the very worst aspects of academic culture.

The disappearing professor

Academe is not always decoupled from real life. In fact, colleges and universities increasingly are mimicking the employment practices of their private sector counterparts, cutting full-time teaching jobs with good pay and benefits and replacing them with low-paid part-time positions. As historian Ellen Schrecker wrote in a 2010 op-ed piece for Forbes magazine (link here):

(R)oughly 70% of the people currently teaching at American institutions of higher learning have contingent appointments. They are part-time adjuncts and temporary instructors who have no job security and can be dismissed at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. Tenured and tenure-track academics, the professors many Americans may assume are educating the nation’s undergraduates, are on the verge of extinction.

Sound familiar?

So here’s a (concededly cynical) view of the academic labor market, 2011: Many of the lucky full-timers are playing a game of hoop jumping, conformity, and career advancement, while growing cohorts of exploited part-timers are simply trying to make ends meet.

In short, for those who believe that academe is not sufficiently “businesslike” or “real world,” it appears that we are catching up in the most unfortunate ways.

***

Some of these ideas percolated in David C. Yamada, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Practice of Legal Scholarship,” 41 University of Memphis Law Review 121 (2010), which can be downloaded here.

More from Wisconsin: Battling (and perhaps bullying?) Supreme Court Justices

The labor issues concerning Wisconsin’s public employees have been attracting national attention, but within the Badger State a notable battle also has been brewing between two of its Supreme Court justices.

The justices have been engaging in an ugly and now public feud, with one member of the court — Justice David Prosser — calling  “Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a ‘bitch’ behind closed doors and threaten[ing] to ‘destroy her’ more than a year ago when the court split over removing fellow Justice Michael Gableman from a criminal case as he faced an ethics allegation,” as reported here by Meg Jones of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Certainly incivility, and maybe bullying?

Jack Zemlicka of the Wisconsin Law Journal, a legal newspaper, examined the situation from a dispute resolution angle (link here). Here’s an observation that I contributed to the piece:

A bickering court’s final decision in a case should be a concern, given the stakes involved for the public in Supreme Court decisions, said David Yamada, a law professor at Suffolk University in Massachusetts who has written extensively on conflict and incivility in the workplace.

“The implications are significant,” he said. “To a degree, personal conflict could enter into writing of majority, concurring or dissenting opinions.”

What didn’t make it into the article were my remarks on the differences between incivility and bullying. This clearly involves workplace incivility. However, while the thuggish and sexist nature of Prosser’s remarks toward Abrahamson is very disturbing, it’s not clear that the overall situation crosses the line into bullying (by either party), which typically involves abusive exploitation of power imbalances. (Abrahamson is the Chief Justice on the court, while Prosser is an Associate Justice.)

My sense is that this situation could’ve been eased by effective mediation, which would’ve allowed the parties to put their grievances on the table and hopefully work them out.

Labor implications

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Justices are elected, not appointed. Prosser, a conservative, is up for reelection this year, and the results very well could have consequences for any Supreme Court decisions concerning the status of the controversial legislation that strips most state employees of their collective bargaining rights.

Of course, if Prosser loses his seat, then presumably he will be able to hurl threats and epithets at Abrahamson only from afar.

The judicial election is on April 5. Once again, the eyes of the nation (at least those of legal eagles) are on Wisconsin. Stay tuned.