InsaneJournal

Current mood:

contemplative

Thought on liminal workers and exploitation
As I was writing the last post, and found myself calling for a users union by the end of it, it struck me how similar the LJ users position is to the graduate teaching assistant, which is where I have my experience of union organizing.

Graduate teaching assistants work for the university and help generate its income through teaching students at the same time as they are students themselves. A student's economic relationship to the university is that of consumer. So a graduate teaching assistant is both employee and consumer. The big fight we've had with both my university and the legislature of my state is getting the graduate student recognized as an employee. The university's regard of the TA as a student allows them to justify paying them a minimal salary--for the time I was putting in when I was teaching I wasn't making much more than minimum wage and it was not a livable salary in my area. And yet, the amount of students the TA is responsible for generates as much money for the university as faculty. Keep in mind that the graduate teaching assistant is already a holder of a BA--this is a skilled labor pool. Defining this entry level teacher/employee, who stays at this less than entry level salary with no increase for as long as several years (as long as they remain in that capacity, and many more as adjunct faculty) as a student/consumer is what allows the university to exploit their labor. It's the liminality of the graduate teaching assistant's position as consumer/employee that allows this exploitation. It is also this liminality that causes many graduate teaching assistants to embrace the university's definition of them as students and not employees in their own right.

The way in which LJ users create content for the consumption of site visitors, new users, and advertisers is analogous to being in the position of a graduate teacher of undergraduate students for the benefit of the university. The fact that this teacher is also a student makes their position liminal and their work as a teacher/employee easily denied. The definition of site users as consumers of the site is masking our role as workers/employees/generators of income for the site. It's why users are so willing to let LJ exploit their labor and excuse SUP's business practices.