The banality of engagement and the neoliberal union: Workplace engagement series Part Two

The language of engagement in the workplace treats engagement as the basis for justifying and propping up neoliberal re-organizing.

Workplaces are re-organized on the logics of engagement. Workplace restructuring and job redundancies are legitimized through the logic of engagement.

The neoliberal organization justifies these techniques of re-organizing through the language of consultation.

Workplace policies are codified on the technologies of engagement.

To the extent that organizations follow the "right" steps, they can fire workers, reduce wages, increase hours, reduce permanent positions, and increase the number of precarious positions.

In other words, if management follows the precsribed steps of engagement, there is no valid basis for worker struggle. Workers are disciplined into internalizing the lesson, "All I need is engagement." The message is, "Engage us. Consult with us. Follow the policy guidelines. And now, you can fire us. Re-hire us. Take away our permanent positions."

The mantra, "Do whatever you want as long as you have engaged us."

The neoliberal union is accommodated into a dialogic relationship with the neoliberal organization, where the performance of engagement itself is the source of sustenance for the union. Reduced to negotiating in terms of engagement, the neoliberal union exists because of the frameworks of consultation. The job of the union is turned into a professional-managerial role of ensuring that the rules of engagement have been followed.

Now consider what would dismantling this vision of union organizing look like. What would union organizing look like when we take back our control over unions as sites of resistance. No longer are we then held to the management's dictation of engagement, defined in terms established by management. Instead, the very definition of engagement and workplace democracy is determined by workers.

Voice democracy in union organizing must begin with challenging and dismantling the neoliberal unions that have turned workplaces into precarious spaces ruled by the hegemony of dialogue.

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit

Disinformation, Zionist propaganda, and free speech: Far right cancel culture

Thursday October 12, 2023. The settler colonial occupation had unleashed its infrastructure of violence over the Palestinian people over a period of five days. Gaza was being indiscriminately bombarded, with mass civilian casualties that Amnesty International noted " must be investigated as war crimes ." At 3:32 p.m., my office phone rang. I was occupied and the call went to the voicemail. "Dutta, you are a murderous, f***ing, racist c***. Go back to where you belong...I will see to your termination in New Zealand." A couple of hours before that, an email had gone out from the Zionist Dane Giraud to the email listserv of the Free Speech Union, performed as a supposed apology for attacking my academic freedom. In the email, Giraud referred to my earlier b log post on the interlinkages between far-right Zionism, attacks on academic freedom, and the free speech union, noting how he had been enraged by the following statement on my blog: "I was therefore not surpri

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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