Daniel Hatfield
I support the union because people everywhere should have a say in the forces that shape and impact their lives. Contemporary systems of power abstract decision-making from the people they impact the most. They diffuse culpability and responsibility. They reduce grievance procedures to legalistic mechanisms that are rarely responsive to those they are intended to serve.
Within the university, these opaque, bureaucratic systems exact a human cost and inject an unacceptable level of uncertainty and instability into our lives. I know people who began a term with only the promise of a formal contract and others who went unpaid long into the semester because of ill-defined hold-ups with payroll.
A union would provide us with a means to push back. It would create disincentives for bureaucratic sloth and discourage policies that are convenient for administration but actively harmful to workers. A union would act as a force multiplier for our grievances so that they become impossible to brush aside.
If our stated goal as educators at Pitt is to provide students with the skills to "contribute to social, intellectual, and economic development in the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world," then our institution ought to embody the values that best foster such capabilities. It should be an institution built upon a foundation of democratic, participatory engagement with our disciplines and with our workplace. It needs to start with us.
- Daniel Hatfield, Department of Linguistics - English Language Institute
Within the university, these opaque, bureaucratic systems exact a human cost and inject an unacceptable level of uncertainty and instability into our lives. I know people who began a term with only the promise of a formal contract and others who went unpaid long into the semester because of ill-defined hold-ups with payroll.
A union would provide us with a means to push back. It would create disincentives for bureaucratic sloth and discourage policies that are convenient for administration but actively harmful to workers. A union would act as a force multiplier for our grievances so that they become impossible to brush aside.
If our stated goal as educators at Pitt is to provide students with the skills to "contribute to social, intellectual, and economic development in the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world," then our institution ought to embody the values that best foster such capabilities. It should be an institution built upon a foundation of democratic, participatory engagement with our disciplines and with our workplace. It needs to start with us.
- Daniel Hatfield, Department of Linguistics - English Language Institute
