ECONOMIC UPDATE: Higher Ed Class Struggles

Summary

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Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Episode: Higher Ed Class Struggles

Date: September 23, 2016
Host: Richard D. Wolff
Guest: Professor Michael Pelias (Long Island University Brooklyn)

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Brief Overview

This episode of Economic Update centers on the deepening entanglement of big business and government in the U.S., exposing how their partnership perpetuates economic and social inequalities. The second half features an in-depth interview with Professor Michael Pelias, highlighting the recent unprecedented faculty lockout at Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn—framed as a case study in the ongoing class struggle within higher education. The discussion critically examines the erosion of faculty rights, student welfare, and public education under a profit-driven, corporate university model, invoking wider concerns about the future of education and societal well-being.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

I. The Revolving Door: Government & Corporate Power (00:00–14:00)

• Federal Reserve & Interest Rates:
  The decision not to raise interest rates signals fear of further stalling a weak recovery that is failing most Americans (01:40).

• Big Business & Politics Are "Two Sides of the Same Coin":
  Wolff details how politicians frequently move into lucrative private sector roles post-tenure, highlighting former Speaker John Boehner’s switch to lobbying at Squire Patton Boggs and similar cases involving John Breaux and Trent Lott (04:00).

• Wealth from Political Power:
  Sarah Palin’s multimillion-dollar home sale is cited as an example of financial reward following political prominence (06:00).

• Brexit and Declining Wages:
  Wolff connects the UK’s Brexit vote to a 10% decline in real wages for British workers from 2007–2015—a key driver of backlash against the political elite (08:30).

  • Quote: “The real wages of the British working class on average dropped 10% over the last eight years. You wonder why the British working class was angry…” (09:35)

II. Economic Inequality & Structural Problems (14:00–29:00)

• New Corporate Strategies & Job Location:
  Goldman Sachs's expansion in Salt Lake City is illustrative of shifting patterns in corporate geography—possibly to evade accountability or regulation (12:45).

• Black-White Wage Gaps:
  A study finds Black men make 22% and Black women 34.2% less than their white counterparts with equivalent qualifications—worse than in 1979—undermining narratives of racial progress (15:30).

  • Quote: “At the very least, you should raise your eyebrows” regarding supposed progress in racial economic equality (17:10)

• Historic Prison Inmate Strike:
  U.S. inmates protest “slave wages” ($0.74–$3.34 per day) and forced work, with the 13th Amendment’s loophole allowing slavery as punishment for crime (19:45).

  • Quote: “We didn’t abolish slavery in the United States because we specifically allowed it as a punishment for a crime. Think about that for a moment…” (21:32)

• Corruption, Nepotism & Drug Price Gouging:
  The EpiPen pricing scandal entwines a Senator’s daughter (Heather Bresch, Mylan CEO) and wife in both regulatory and educational positions, illustrating the marriage of state and capital (23:30).

• Billionaire Political Influence:
  Examples include Joe Ricketts and Sheldon Adelson pivoting to supporting Donald Trump after backing other GOP candidates, showing fluid, self-interested alliances among the wealthy and powerful (26:30).

• Main Takeaway:
  Wolff cautions against simplistic divides between government and business, asserting their interests are deeply aligned, regardless of partisan rhetoric (28:40).

  • Quote: “These two positions, apparently opposed, aren’t in fact very opposed. They share an unwillingness to see the tight, cooperative relationship between the top levels of capitalist business and the top levels of government.” (29:30)

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III. European Political Rejection of the Status Quo (29:00–30:00)

• Recent Berlin election saw strong rejection of Angela Merkel’s party and mainstream Social Democrats, while the anti-capitalist Die Linke—the Left Party—rises to third place, reflecting Europe’s ongoing economic crisis and political discontent.

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The Crisis in Higher Education: LIU Brooklyn Lockout

[Interview with Prof. Michael Pelias] (30:00–57:06)

A. The Context & Unprecedented Faculty Lockout (30:45–37:00)

• Contract Negotiations:
  LIU Brooklyn’s faculty union’s attempt to secure modest wage increases after years of wage stagnation despite the university’s large budget surpluses.
  • “We were asking for maybe about 10% of the actual surplus to go to the faculty. We didn’t get anywhere.” (32:18)
• Management Intransigence:
  Administration rejects most faculty proposals, underscores prioritization of surplus retention over faculty welfare.
• The Lockout:
  On August 31, 2016, LIU locks out faculty (first time in U.S. higher ed history), bars them physically from campus, suspends pay & health insurance.
• Impact on Students:
  With unqualified administrators and hastily hired replacements forced to teach, students receive substandard education.
  • “The dean of the liberal arts school…was assigned to teach ballet. The VP in charge of operations was assigned to do yoga.” (35:29)

B. Outcomes and Ongoing Negotiations (37:00–39:00)

• Resolution:
  Professors returned under the terms of the previous contract with pay docked for lost days—a de facto pay cut.
  • Quote: “Most people are working on a minus two going forward into the extension…This is one very egregious moment that has not really been discussed yet by the faculty, but they’re going to be aware of it when they get their first paycheck.” (38:46)

C. Deeper Analysis: Why Is This Happening? (39:00–45:41)

• Corporate Austerity Model:
  The board installs a president with no academic background, enforces austerity for faculty and students alike, while surpluses and endowment growth are funneled away from education.
• War on Students & Faculty:
  Tuition continues to climb ($30,000–$55,000), graduates take on heavy debt, and the educational mission shifts from cultivating citizenship to basic vocational training.
  • Quote: “You have been created as a new class of indentured servants…You are not here to think, you are not here to learn. You are here to reproduce for the system and pay back your debt.” (41:24)
• Neoliberal University Model:
  LIU and similar tuition-driven universities become laboratories for the corporate transformation of higher education—emphasizing profit, professional schools, and marginalizing humanities.

D. Education as Privilege: Return of the Pre-WWII Model? (45:41–49:00)

• Divided Outcomes:
  Elites continue to receive full “liberal education” at private universities; everyone else relegated to technical, debt-financed, vocational training.
  • Quote: “It undercuts the whole notion of a liberal education as a human right.” (45:03)
• The New Education Tax:
  Students burdened by loans financing education that is less broad, less enriching, and more expensive than ever.

E. Faculty and Student Response, and Prospects for Change (45:53–55:24)

• Faculty Mobilization:
  The lockout prompts greater solidarity among professors, almost unanimous rejection of previous contract offers, and increased militancy in the union.
• Student Uprising:
  Students stage daily walkouts and protests, demanding their professors back in the classroom.
  • Quote: “Every day of the lockout at noon, they would chant LIU professors locked out, students walkout. And they would march out... Shame, shame on you, LIU.” (46:38)
• Prospects:
  Pelias identifies hope in the fusion of student debt activism, Black Lives Matter, and anti-corporate organizing on campuses.

F. The Administrators’ Takeover and Marginalization of Faculty (55:24–57:04)

• Power Shift:
  University governance moves from faculty collectives to a corporate board/administrative class—mirroring the business world and disconnecting decision-makers from educational practice.
  • Quote (Wolff): “The administrators were under us in the sense their job was to do the administration subordinate to serving what the professors did…This collective power by those qualified to do it has been usurped.” (55:24)
  • Quote (Pelias): “The entire wage package for the faculty each year is less than what the president of the university makes—one individual.” (56:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Brexit & Declining Wages:
  “The real wages of the British working class on average dropped 10% over the last eight years. You wonder why the British working class was angry…”
  (Wolff, 09:35)

• On Black-White Wage Disparity:
  “As of 2015…Black men make 22% less and Black women 34.2% less than white people... That is a larger gap than those gaps were in 1979.”
  (Wolff, 15:30)

• On the Prison Strike:
  “We didn’t abolish slavery in the United States because we specifically allowed it as a punishment for a crime. Think about that for a moment…”
  (Wolff, 21:32)

• On The Corporate University:
  “You are not here to think, you are not here to learn. You are here to reproduce for the system and pay back your debt.”
  (Pelias, 41:24)

• On Student Solidarity:
  “Every day of the lockout at noon, they would chant LIU professors locked out, students walkout. And they would march out... Shame, shame on you, LIU.”
  (Pelias, 46:38)

• On Faculty/Administrator Wage Disparity:
  “The entire wage package for the faculty each year is less than what the president of the university makes—one individual.”
  (Pelias, 56:34)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–14:00: Wolff’s weekly roundup—government/corporate overlap, wages, Brexit, Goldman Sachs, prison labor.
• 15:00–29:00: Racial wage gaps, prison strikes, the EpiPen scandal, billionaire campaign spending.
• 29:00–30:00: Berlin election and anti-capitalist sentiment.
• 30:00–37:00: Professor Pelias describes the LIU lockout—origins, lockout logistics, student impact.
• 37:00–45:41: Analysis: austerity, disrespect for educators, class stratification of education.
• 45:41–49:00: The shift toward vocational, debt-driven education; “the new educational tax.”
• 49:00–55:24: Possible student uprisings, faculty/student solidarity, hope for organizing.
• 55:24–57:06: The corporate model of university governance, usurpation of faculty decision-making, shocking faculty/administrator pay disparities.

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Conclusion

This episode exposes the depth and breadth of economic and social class struggles—not just in politics and policy, but within America's universities. The LIU Brooklyn lockout is depicted as both a symptom and a warning, emblematic of a broader, dangerous move toward corporatized, inequitable, debt-driven education. Faculty, students, and listeners are urged to recognize and resist these trends, fostering solidarity and reasserting education as a public good central to democracy and social mobility.

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Transcript

[A]

Sam. Saint. Welcome, friends, to another welcome to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, wages, salaries, incomes, debts, those of our children and those coming down the road to confront us in the future. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life and currently I teach at the New School University in New York City. Before jumping into today's updates and a very interesting interview, I wanted to mention that someone that you hear on this program from time to time, Dr. Harriet Fraad, talking with me about the psychological dimensions of what's going on in the economy and that many of you comment on in the emails that come to us afterwards. Dr. Frad and I will be speaking in the Bay Area of California in early October and I wanted to alert you all. We will both be speaking in Oakland, California during the day on Sunday, October 2nd, and we will be speaking in San Francisco at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist on the evening of Wednesday, October 5th. If you are interested in visiting with us in seeing these events, please check our website democracyatwork.info look under the events page there. You'll find it easily and it'll give you all the specifics about those appearances of Dr. Fraad and myself. October 2nd in Oakland and October 5th in San Francisco. Well, we have many things to talk about today, more than enough to fill the hour and indeed, as usual, not enough time. Most spectacular this week was a decision by Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve not to raise interest rates. The simple and most important part of the explanation is the fact that they are afraid to do that because if you raise the interest rates, you make all kinds of borrowing that much more expensive. That will reduce the amount of borrowing businesses and individuals undertake. That in turn will reduce the spending they can afford to do and that will lessen the jobs and incomes of people. Since the so called economic recovery hasn't happened for the majority of people raising interest rates, whatever the logic is too dangerous and the Federal Reserve figured it out and that's why the rates weren't increased. We now wait until the November and December meetings, but it is a long shot whether interest will be raised. Interest rates will be raised even in December. Well, the theme for today might be, at least for the first half of the program, how and why large capitalist enterprises and the government are two sides of the same coin. I know there are many people who like to imagine to themselves that these two partners are really very distinct and different from one another, but it's been rarely less true than it is today. As if to drive the point home, let me tell you about former speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner. He doesn't spell it that way, but he wants it pronounced that way because if you didn't, it would be embarrassing. Well, he's out of the House of Representatives, but this week he took a job with a law firm in Washington, D.C. named Squire Patton Boggs. It's a Washington based law firm long known for its lobbying. Well, turns out Mr. Boehner's not a lawyer, so they probably don't want him for that. And that leaves lobbying, pressing the government to do what he was pressed to do when he was the government. The musical chairs between government and big business keeps on spinning. In case you didn't know, two other leading congresspersons already are doing that for the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs. One of them is former Senator John Breaux and the other one is former Senator Trent Lott. So Mr. Boehner will be part of the elite corporate and government that tells us all what to do. Well, here's another example of musical chairs between top government and top corporate officials. It turns out this last week that almost Vice President Sarah Palin sold her mansion in Scottsdale, Arizona. She sold it and I want to stress this because it's a good lesson in how to make money being in politics. She sold her mansion in Scottsdale for 2.275 million. And I want to tell you about the house she sold. It has six bedrooms, it has six and a half bathrooms. It has a square footage, 7,971 square feet. Wow. It has fireplaces both inside and out, large kitchen, granite countertops, a walk in pantry, a home theater, a billiard room, a wine cellar, and not but two spacious master suites. Outside there's a 4.4 acre lot that has its own basketball and volleyball court, putting greens, bocce ball area and a pool with a spa. There's a six car garage with a. I'll stop here. I have no further comment on that. My next item is a response to a question. And the question was can I explain why the British people voted for Brexit that is to leave the European Union. And I've talked about this on the program before and I don't want to go over it again. But in response to one person's question, I did look up what had happened to real wages of working people, average real wages. And by that again, I mean how much you're paid adjusted for the prices you have to pay with the wages that you earn. This is called real average wages. And the time that we're measuring is the last quarter before the crisis hit. So it's the fourth quarter of 2007 all the way up to the last quarter of 2015. So basically what happened to wages in Europe across the period of the economic crash that happened in 2008 and that is especially in Europe, very much still with us. Well, the story is horrific if you didn't know it already. The average increase in real wages over the nearly 10 year period is in the neighborhood of 4 to 5% over a 10 year period. That's a very, very slow increase. And given the problems with how these numbers are accounted for and given the decline in government services over that time, you can see that the average has been very grim for the European working class. But two countries stand out because not only was it grim there, but they didn't have any wage increase. Well, it's even worse. They had a wage decrease over that period these last eight plus years. The two countries with the worst record, Greece, well that you know, from everything we've talked about on this program for years now. But the country you might not have known had as bad a history of real wages as Greece did was Great Britain. That's right. The real wages of the British working class on average dropped 10% over the last eight years. You wonder why the British working class was angry at the leadership of their country. The big corporate leaders and government leaders who confidently predicted that the British people would vote to stay in the European Union because they were making money, excuse me, were supportive of that staying. The very fact that those leaders were for it was half the reason why the British working class needed to say something about the drop of 10% in real wages over an eight to nine year period. It's stunning. And the only thing more stunning than such a history is how few people talked about it. My next update, it's a small one, but it tells you a story. Goldman Sachs is a bank. You've all heard of it, it's been in the news and most of you probably believe it's a bank based and located in New York City, which is true, but less so than ever before. We looked into it and we discovered that the second largest office in the whole Western hemisphere for Goldman Sachs is in a place you might not have guessed, Salt Lake City, Utah. And Goldman announced that it expects to experience significant growth over the next few years. It's looking for people it can hire. It doesn't feel safe in New York City might be the reason, and thinks it's less likely to be problematically confronted if it moves to Salt Lake City, Utah. Something to think about when you wonder about where things are going and are trying to explain what's happening to the decision makers in our country. Well, going behind the news yet again, we are all confronted with extraordinary police actions against African American citizens. It doesn't seem to stop. We're confronted with the Black Lives Matter movement as one of the efforts to try to confront and deal with this situation. Is there some economics behind all this that might be interesting? Well, an answer is forthcoming in a September 20th study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. black white wage Gaps is what the article is about, written by Valerie Wilson and William Rogers III. Here's the basic takeaway from this as of 2015, relative to the average hourly wages of white men with the same education, same experience, same metropolitan location and the same area of residence, Black men make 22% less and Black women make 34.2% less than white people. And in order for you to understand how that might be bothering folks, that is a larger gap than those gaps were in 1979. So when people tell you, as they like to do, how much enormous progress has been made in the racial differences economically in the United States, at the very least you should raise your eyebrows. And if you want to know more about it, go to epi.org, read the report and try to connect in your minds, as I am doing in mine, the deterioration of African American jobs and wages relative to white people across the last 25 or 30 years. When we were told about progress and see whether it might have something to do with the issues that are in the news every day, it seems now. Next update, and we're cooking right along over the last 10 days. You might not have heard about it, but we are experiencing here in the United States the greatest strike of inmates of US Prisons in the history of the United States. It ought to be on the front page. And let me give credit where it's due. On the 14th of September, not very long ago, the Wall Street Journal actually gave a story to it. It told its readers, as well it should, that these protests were timed to happen in a number of prisons, particularly in the states of Alabama, Florida and Michigan, to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the uprising in the Attica prison in New York State. The prisoners know their history, and while they were objecting to many things as the reason for their strike, one was dominant that they get Treated like slaves, they are forced to work, and they are forced to work at pay levels that range from $0.74 per day to $3.34 per day, truly slave wages. And they're angry and upset about it. Well, I am, too. But my job is to give you some of the background and the analysis that goes with it. For those who do not know, the 13th amendment of the United States Constitution outlaws slavery. It's an amendment that came right out of the Civil War here in the United States. But that amendment, very court, very short, excuse me, very brief, has an exception. It outlaws slavery everywhere in the United States except as punishment for crimes in prisons. Here, let me do that again. We didn't abolish slavery in the United States because we specifically allowed it as a punishment for a crime. Think about that for a moment with me, won't you? A person commits a crime, a person is convicted. The person maybe didn't do the crime, we'll never know, but he or she is convicted and they go to prison. Now, we hope that in prison something will happen to that person so that they don't commit a crime when they come out. Treating them like slaves probably doesn't help a whole lot. It rarely did historically. And why would we do that now? And why would we be surprised if people who are told that liberty and freedom are the core values of a human life decide to strike, even in the terrible conditions of prison, against being treated like slaves, when indeed they are continuing? Here's one that takes the story of how the government and big business are two sides of the same coin another step further. Many of you have noticed because it's been in the news that the Mylan Pharmaceutical Company got itself into terrible trouble when it raised the price of its EpiPen, an anti allergy device, by a factor of five or more over a short period of time, making a fortune for the company and for its CEO, Heather Bresh. But over the last couple of weeks, as Ms. Bresh was forced to testify in front of the Congress, more people began looking into the story. And it gets, what shall I say, sleazier by the day. Turns out that Ms. Bresh, the CEO of Mylan, taking home a salary of 18 million bucks from this company that has jacked up the price of these anti allergy devices that are widely used in New York's. Excuse me, in American schools. Turns out she's the daughter of Joe Manchin. Who's that? He's the senator from West Virginia. Oh, goodness. The father's a senator. The daughter is the head of a big company doing things that are, at the very least, ethically challenged. But then it got better. Ms. Bresh's mother, the wife of Senator Manchin, is Gail Manchin, and she was president recently of the national association of State Boards of Education and apparently was in that position during the time, if the reports are to be believed, that schools around the country decided to make use of the EpiPen produced by Mylan Pharmaceuticals. Does this smell? Yeah. Doesn't it, though? Yet another story on the same theme of government and corporate going hand in hand. This one concerns a billionaire. Yes. Another one, this one by the name Joe Ricketts. He was the founder, is the founder of TD Ameritrade, and he owns the baseball team, the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts, along with his wife Marlene, were supporters of anybody but Mr. Trump. I believe they particularly supported a leading, brilliant leader here in the United States, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. They supported him. He flamed out kind of early. And I guess they've been wondering who to put their money to. Well, they may have supported someone against Trump at the beginning, but they've changed their mind as of last week. According to Business Insider reporter Jeremy Burke, Ricketts, along with his wife, is planning on spending $1 million in an effort to help Donald Trump win in November. The Wall Street Journal reported that and also reported that Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, is planning to spend $5 million to support Trump for president. Wow. This is sort of interesting. But here again, family, politics and business all combined. When I looked into Mr. Ricketts, the billionaire, I found out that his son Pete is the Republican governor of Nebraska who endorsed Trump back in May. Oh, goodness. Does this smell? Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's just coincidence that all these people in the government and all these people who are billionaires seem to overlap more and more as America goes along. My last update for today. Well, before I do that, let me drive home what the earlier updates talked about. Government, big business, billionaires, candidates, politicians, executives, millions of dollars made questionable use of public office. You get the picture. I stress that for a reason. There are efforts made to kind of pick apart this close partnership that governs the United States and has for a long time to pretend, in my view, that there really is a big difference between corporate leaders of big business on the one side and top politicians on the other. There are even people who want us to believe that the source of our problem isn't capitalism, big business and the power that big business has in a capitalist system. They want to believe that's not a problem. It's the government that's the problem. Libertarians of all stripes, anarchists of certain stripes, and people who simply need to have the government to blame because they either don't understand or are afraid to look at the business side of that coin. And likewise, there are others who want us to believe that big business is the problem. But the government is innocent, the government is good. And if we only get the government to do more things, liberally, things well, then we'll have a good society. And it's just important to get the government back in to playing a useful role. These two positions, apparently opposed, aren't in fact very opposed. They share an unwillingness to see the tight, coordinated, cooperative relationship between the top levels of capitalist business and the top levels of government. Does that mean nothing can ever happen to separate them? Of course not. There are moments in history when they have a clash, and those are important. But most of the time, and surely today, when the major candidates for president are a billionaire on one side and a multimillionaire on the other, we should stop with these fantasies that one side of this partnership is vanilla and the other side is bad. No matter which way you play that it makes the mistake of not seeing the solidarity, the shared interests and the coalition that they present to the rest of us. Last item for today. This one is in the nature of better news, at least for some of us who watch these things. Since last we talked, there's been an election in the city of Berlin in Germany, and what an election it was. The question will be who governs that city. It used to be that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor there, Angela Merkel, had a lot to say about that through her political party. And when she didn't have a lot to say on her own, she did it in coalition with a slightly to the left Social Democratic party, with which she has been making coalitions both at the national and regional levels. But in the election this last week, the people of Berlin strongly rejected both the Social Democratic Party, which did come in first still, but a much reduced vote. And they really gave a beating to Mrs. Merkel. They're not happy with her at all. So the two major parties suffered a stunning rejection by a whole new class of voters in the city of Berlin. Just as important was the name of the party that came in third, just a couple of percentage points less than Mrs. Merkel's party. That party is called the Die Linke Party. That's German for the left party. This is a party widely perceived in Germany to be anti capitalist. That is one of the defining slogans of the party. Runs like Germany can do better than capitalism. Oh, goodness. Third party in Berlin, couple of percentage points less than Merkel and gaining fast. Politics is shaking in a Europe beset by the crisis of 2008 from which it cannot escape. Nor is such an escape anywhere on its horizon. Capitalism is a system that thrives on people not understanding or paying attention to what's actually happening, which is one of the things this program tries very hard to overcome. We've come to the end of the first half of this program. Please stay with us across a very short break and come back and we are going to have a very important conversation about the state of higher education, the struggle between universities and the people who teach what folks go to universities to learn and what the class struggle in the university has to teach us about the United States and perhaps beyond that in this day and age. Stay with us. We'll be right back. About time. For anyone telling you after all your deeds no sound of roaring thunder stopped in Golder E. No time I get mine and make no excuses Waste of precious grit the sun shines on everyone. Everyone love yourself to death so you got to fire up. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. For this warm day in September, I want to begin by introducing a very good friend of mine for years that I'm happy to interview. His name is Professor Michael Peelias. So even before I describe who he is. Welcome, Michael.

[B]

Thank you, Rick. Glad to be here.

[A]

Michael Pelias is a professor of philosophy at Long Island University here in New York. It's Brooklyn campus. He has been doing that kind of work, being a teacher for over 25 years, social and political philosophy in courses as different as film and philosophy, European philosophy since Hegel, philosophy of education, and indeed, interestingly, courses on the black radical tradition and a course on Post Catarina, New Orleans in the Light of Disaster Capitalism. He is, I believe, from New Orleans.

[B]

Yes, I am.

[A]

He's also been an activist for 23 years as a member of the executive committee of the Long Island University Faculty Federation, the union there. And he is a member of of the current negotiating team and he has participated in all of their struggles that he's going to tell us about since at least the early 1990s. So, Michael, welcome and let me begin by asking you to summarize why I brought you here. In other words, there was a very important labor struggle at Long Island University over the first couple of weeks of September. Tell us what it is and give us A context.

[B]

Okay, I'll back up and kind of provide the context. We began our usual contract negotiations back in late March, early April, April of 2016. And we were charged as usual, to get a good contract. The previous contract, which was a five year contract, was a very minimal wage package of 0, 1, 1 and a half, 2, 2. So we decided it's time to, you know, step it up in terms of what you talked about earlier in your show, the real wages versus the nominal wages and, you know, at least help people deal with cost of living and, you know, take care of our new hires. We sat at the table for literally five months. We did not get anywhere. We put 25, 26 proposals on the table, all which I consider extremely reasonable. And they actually approved one, which was the duration of the non tenure track appointments. And that was the extent of the flexibility that management had during this contract negotiation. They came back to us with extremely low wage package, despite the fact that the President had said, the crisis at LIU is over. And they've been showing operating budget surpluses of nearly $20 million a year for the last two years. At least 20 million a year. So we're talking about a surplus that was at least $40 million. Our entire package, really, to put it in a different kind of context, was about $3.5 million over a three year contract duration. So we were asking for maybe about 10% of the actual surplus to go to the faculty. We didn't get anywhere. They would not move. We sat there all summer in a kind of charade. I call it kind of an attempt to, you know, play the mass game, a kabuki dance, with management so you don't get charged with an unfair labor practice, which is a euphemism for labor, is stuck by management's proposals. So anyway, we met on August 31 because the contract expired that day. Trying to hammer out at least some kind of agreement. We were informed that we were going to be locked out. The first time this has happened in a university in higher education in the history of the United States.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Best of my knowledge, yes. We've done a lot of research on this. There maybe was a little thing at Temple University, but I don't think they were locked out because of a late pandemic.

[A]

You were literally locked out?

[B]

Literally locked out. Effective September 3, which was the weekend before classes start. And the lockout lasted for 11, actually 12 days. A week ago, Thursday. Today, it was lifted. We went back to work.

[A]

So lockout. Just so everybody understands, lockout means you're not allowed to go into the building where your office is, or to go into the building where you teach in the classroom, you are literally excluded from your job.

[B]

From the job. And we would be charged if we did go in with criminal trespassing. We could go to jail in order to get books out of our office, meet with students that we may have in classes, things of that nature.

[A]

Let me just quickly ask you the question. I'm sure people are asking one I remember reading, they also took away your.

[B]

Health insurance during the time of the lockout. Yes. Health care was suspended. Of course, no wages were paid during this period. Yes.

[A]

Okay, and what was done for the students who came to class on the first day for that day and for the subsequent days that were the normal semester time when the professors were all locked out, what happened?

[B]

Well, the amazing thing, and to back up a little more, to provide a context, in July, early July, the university advertised for jobs. Not saying that these were jobs because of a lockout that may be coming or a possible strike. They did not advertise these jobs as such. They were advertised their positions available at liu. So they did try to create a group of replacement workers, but this was very minimal. And at the same time, they threatened administrators. You either go teach courses or you would be fired. So many administrators who were not qualified to teach actual courses. So for example, you'd have the joke was the dean of the Connolly College, the liberal arts school, who was A biologist, a PhD in biologist, was assigned to teach ballet. The vice president in charge of operations, who you know, is a woman that has been there nearly 40 years and a very important player in the history of liu, was assigned to do yoga. And then you had people teaching English classes who had no background in English literature, etc. So the students were faced on the first day of classes, which began September 7th. On the Wednesday following, well, convocation day was the 6th of Labor Day week. They were faced with replacement workers in the classroom and unqualified people.

[A]

Okay, now before we go into it, how has it been, quote, unquote, resolved? Just so we know what happened?

[B]

I don't really consider it resolved. We are continuing to negotiate. But the terms going after the lockout was lifted were that we would work on continuation of the old contract for nine months, which would expire May 31, 2016, 17. 17. Excuse me. Yes. And we would work on that nine month academic year, calendar year, and we would also be restored the health care and any out of pocket costs. However, we still would be docked for the days we did not work at school. So they actually paid the replacement workers. So we are being docked at least up to right now. This was part of the agreement. And so we've gone back to work effective September 15th, last Thursday, you know, one week into the semester. So one full week was lost. So these are the conditions. We will continue to negotiate. And also we have been assigned a mediator to maybe hopefully kick start the negotiation. I mean, that's like turning the ignition on and you're still in neutral, but you may know you're going to take a right or left turn.

[A]

You know, at least let me be an economist for a minute, because that's what I do. If they're taking a week's pay, more or less from you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's 2% of your annual salary.

[B]

That's absolutely correct.

[A]

Which means that the whole of last year's gain in your contract from before has just been erased.

[B]

Totally erased. Right. And zero going forward. So most people are working on a minus two going forward into the extension May of 2017. This is one very egregious moment that has not really been discussed yet by the faculty, but they're going to be aware of it when they get their first paycheck at the end of this month.

[A]

All right, so now let's analyze it. Tell me what's going on. Why is a university coming off of five years in which they gave the teachers raises less than what was necessary just to keep the same standard of living they had before, now wanting to stick it to the teachers even more? What's going. Why would a university jeopardize. This is a message to every professor. Go get a job someplace else. It's a message to every professor. Maybe look outside of academia. Maybe you're in the wrong place. It's a message of disrespect for what they do. It's a message of disrespect for what the students should be getting. What's going on? How do you help us understand this?

[B]

Well, I think at one level, the board of trustees of LIU brought in someone who has no academic background, has no relationship to academic value, and especially no relationship to the humanities and liberal arts. You know, the cornerstone, if you will, in terms of building citizenship and creative descent, you know, and forming young minds, at least with the capacity to make, you know, good judgments about the world they want to live in. So they have created, you know, what I would consider an overall package of austerity. Right. In which the professors are the. But the other enemy to this or target, the other target is really the Students. The students, as you know, pay enormous amount of tuition. Liu's average tuition is about 30,000. It goes up to about 55,000 if you live on campus. And further, some of the graduate programs are 40 to 50,000. And most of our population at LIU Brooklyn comes from working class backgrounds. Average family medium income is around 80,000. You know, so they don't, they qualify for some aid, but very little.

[A]

Many of them are likely borrowing money.

[B]

Absolutely. You know, I think the average debt that they carry when they graduate is between 35 to $40,000 for an undergraduate degree. And we can talk later about the value of that. But so this is a war also on the students. You know, as I tell my students, you have been created as a new class of indentured servants. You know, you are not here to think, you are not here to learn. You are here to, you know, reproduce for the system and pay back your debt. And you know, I think they get it, but still, what choice do they have, you know, given the conditions that, you know, the economy dictates. And you know, as our friend Stanley Aronowitz framed it once, go to college or die, right? Is the mantra. So this to me has become an experiment. Liu case is very important on the national and even the international level as an experiment of how you first of all can disrespect and have absolutely no feeling for your faculty as educators by locking them out, taking hold of the university, thinking you can manage it on a makeshift shift of workers, right? Basically all part time laborers pay them piecemeal work. They got paid $500 for one class and they get paid $3,000 for the entire semester had we not gone back in. And so this has become part of, I think, an attack on the value of higher education, the value of professors, and is, in my opinion a neoliberal framework to create a new model of the university that's built on only the health science professions, entrepreneurialship, business models, and at best, professional schools, especially at liu, which is oriented mostly towards pre pharmacy, pre nursing schooling. And they're starting to create this kind of new model for these second and third tier universities. And another thing to remember, in this case, LIU is a tuition driven, 91.5% of its revenue comes from tuition. And there are many schools like this that are not endowment rich. Even though Liu's endowment has gone up about 30, 40% over the last two years, I mean, you know, basically reflecting, you know, stock market advances and portfolio advances, they still do not use any of those funds towards scholarship or encouraging faculty Development, et cetera.

[A]

It does sound to me, and I'd like your opinion on this, it sounds to me like we're going back to the way higher education was before World War II, in that if you come from the elite, from the wealthy, you will go likely to a private college where your development, your overall development, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences is what the point of the education is, to make you able to analyze problems, understand the world, have a critical perspective. But if you don't come from those classes and if you can't afford or can't get into those universities, you're going to a higher education equivalent of what we used to call vocational schools. That the LIU is becoming an extension of the vocational training system, where the presumption of the business types who lead it is that all these people need to know is the technical details of whatever career they're going into. But being trained to be adult thinking citizens, we don't need them for that. That's a job for the elite and not for them. It undercuts the whole notion of a liberal education as a human right.

[B]

Absolutely. And just to make one connection to today versus I think you're absolutely right, the pre World War II model in terms of the vocational training, the difference is today they are paying enormous amount of money and also to get this vocational and going into debt, which most of them not going to be able to pay back if ever. You know, at the minimum 10 to 15 years out there, if they get a really good job and probably the rest of their lives. I call it, you know, it's the.

[A]

New educational tax, making the people getting. It's undercutting public education, the whole idea.

[B]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[A]

So how are, tell me how the professors, how are they reacting? How are the teachers, how do they understand this and what reaction is building among them?

[B]

I think that the best thing about the lockout is it did mobilize professors. You know, we voted almost unanimously, right, not to ratify a very offensive and egregious contract. It might not have been so close had we gone on strike, voted to go on strike. So this had a way of mobilizing the professors and building a kind of militancy and solidarity that is not normally there. So this has been a good thing. The best part though of the lockout was the students. The students would gather together, built a small movement internally, asking for their real professors. And then they started. Every day of the lockout at noon, they would chant LIU professors locked out, students walkout. And they would march out onto Dekalbin Flatbush around all the buildings and Chad. Shame, shame on you, liu. And you know, this really created a really, a very different feeling at liu, where you have had basically apathy for so long a period of time. So this mixing of the students and the professors really came to be in a very solid way the last week. And I think it's going to continue. You know, there's always a problem with, once people go back to teaching, to their lives, that they no longer organize or get together in meetings. But I think because of this action, we will see a different kind of militancy at liu, and particularly in the union. You know, the union has a history of going on strikes. We are probably the most, more than any other academic union, been on strike, you know, in the last in its existence in 40 years. I've been on strike eight times in 40 years. So every five years you can kind of expect a strike from Liu. There was a strike over parity with CW Post, which is one of the main issues going forward. There was a strike over tenure. They wanted to get rid of tenure. There have been strikes, of course, over wages, over the reduction of health care.

[A]

So let me ask you a question again, for me as an economist. Yeah. In the economics profession, one of the things we take as access axiomatic is that the United States as an economy, if it has a future in the world economy, has to compete whether it's with the Europeans or the Japanese and now the Chinese and so on. And that one of the key determinants of how well the American economy will be in the years ahead is the quantity and the quality of people emerging from higher education. The skilled, the trained, the sophisticated, the creative. What in the world would possess a country, knowing what I just said? Because it says it over and over again. Savaging its own colleges and universities in this way, disrespecting the teachers, making it less and less attractive to be a professor, giving students shoddier and shoddier education because of the pressures put on the teaching faculty and where money is spent. How do you help us understand how a society shoots itself in the foot in this way?

[B]

Well, I mean, it's beyond any kind of rational imagination here. But on the other hand, you know, in the era of globalization, you know, the United States is, I think, ranked 30th by the UN in terms of education. And if you're a business person in the United States and you need a mathematician, you're not really going to go to the schools in the United States to recruit. So you have much more of a market now that it's going to go towards Singapore, towards, you know, India for technology. So, you know, besides the elite schools, I really don't think that the American system is really, you know, geared towards educating its populace. I think, you know, the philosopher, since, you know, I've read him for many years, Marcuse, Herbert Marcuse, once said, the educational system of the United States is the systematic moronization of its populace. And, you know, we're really living through that right now. I mean, it's not the fault, you know, you can tell your students, you know, you come in smart and you leave dumb. And this is a real problem as we go forward. And no longer is there a drive for knowledge. It's really the era of data. And as long as you can do data, and as long as they can still create minimum wage jobs around data mining and data interpretation processing, this will go on as a consumerist economy. But forget it. I don't think the United States is geared towards, as you pointed out earlier, the Pre World War II drive towards educating its populace for the production, you know, or for, you know, the production that's needed to make this country at least functioning again. So we're really dealing with a collaboration, whether unconscious or not. I think it's partially very conscious of the ruling class to, you know, not educate people at a certain level. The elite schools remain sort of unscathed, although I think the quality has gone down there as well. But that's another story about what technology and its impact on education has happened. But they don't really care about these second and third tier schools or about public education or education fundamentally as a public good, you know, it is not a public good, it is not an asset. And as one friend of mine said, why are they going after the assets of the university, that is the teachers? But this is, you know, like, you.

[A]

Know, and it's very interesting historically because after World War II it was the demand of the returning soldiers who got the GI Bill, got a chance to go to school. That whole generation wanted their kids to get proper college educations, which that working class of America never had had before. They wanted it, they demanded. That's how public higher education really got going after World War II. Before it was a private affair. Is there any chance that a groundswell of students like those chanting at LIU is going to say, wait, you cannot devalue us and our prospects by giving us a lousy education. We won't tolerate it? In the same way that after World War II, the working class of America said, we're not going to tolerate only the elite going to college. You're going to create public higher education for all of us. And a major step in that direction was taken.

[B]

I think there's a major awakening among students now. I think the debt situation has started this in their minds. What are they paying for? You know, are they living in the age of diminishing return on investment? You know, if you want to look at this as their temporal and their psychic investment in education. And I think they're beginning to see very differently than just the. Through the careerist model or that you go to school just to get a job, because maybe the jobs won't be there or the good jobs won't be there. So at least questions have been raised and we hope that this develops into a movement. I think there's leadership and as we know, the Occupy movement raised very good questions which we still are addressing. There's certainly some, some effects from that. The Black Lives Matter. And now maybe we have some kind of possibility of a fusion of these movements coming together along on the college campuses. This is very, very important. But there is, I mean, again, I want to say this administrative class, which is the bloat in the universities where most of the pay is going, you know, there are much higher salary at the top. And those who administrate, who are not educators, have really basically destroyed any notion of what higher education could be. And I also want to add that we as professors, especially at a place like Lau, whose mission is for first generation college students or second generation students, first time gone to college. First Generation Students, which was founded in 1926 for Jewish people who could not afford to go to school. This was liu Brooklyn was formed for, you know, Mike Gold's novel Jews Without Money. Basically, you know, that this mission has been there. Now this is being completely attacked and assaulted by this administration. And it's a battle cry for all of us. So my hope is, you know, if I can add, you know, my hope is that this executive committee of the union, which has some very good people, I must say, and people have really stepped up. If we can continue to put the pressure, you know, we continue to have, you know, interviews such this as a media presence, making people more aware, we can go back to the table and hopefully negotiate a better contract and maybe see this as a small victory for teachers and a way of both standing up and, you know, making this into a transformative moment in higher education. That is the goal that we have at this point.

[A]

Just a final comment from me, if I could. I'VE been a professor all my life, too. And when we started, it was clear to us in the universities where I taught that the basic decisions about what was done in that university were made by collectives of professors. The 27 in the economics department. We got together, we discussed the curriculum. We discussed financially helping students. We were in charge. The administrators were under us in the sense their job was to do the administration subordinate to serving what the professors did. This collective power by those qualified to do it has been usurped.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

And we have now a university that copies the model, of course. Corporate enterprise with a board of directors at the top, typically having little or nothing to do with what the company does, telling everybody else what to do, paying themselves wild amounts of money, as if their control ought to be reimbursed, undermining the very function of what the university was. It's extraordinary.

[B]

I'll put it in another context because you like things like this. The entire wage package for the faculty each year is less than what the president of the university makes one individual. The entire wage package.

[A]

How many people involved is that?

[B]

That's. The entire wage package is close to.

[A]

600 people who make less than the president.

[B]

Well, this is. The raise package is the equivalent. You know, the 2% raise that is on the table. Yes.

[A]

Thank you very much, Michael. You've been very helpful.

[B]

Thank you, Rick.

[A]

And my pleasure to all of you. Here's another corner of the American economy and the world economy changing in ways we need to monitor and watch. I look forward to talking with you again next week. Your time now, baby but after a while gonna be my time, time My time, baby Thing gonna change.

[B]

Change, change.

[A]

Change, change, change, change.

[B]

Thing gonna change.

[A]

Sam.