Volunteering to work
Huh? This can’t be right?:
David Jones has quoted Peter Ducker:
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
Presumably, in order to accept this fact, we need to understand what the heck Ducker is talking about. And who accounts for the “almost”? Who’s the unpaid slave? The longer I luxuriate in academia, the less certain I become of anything. I take this as a positive sign.
David clarifies for us his take on the matter. He knows that in order to have all the cogs in the machine pullying the various weights (to use that tired, modernist metaphor of machinery), each needs to be happily oiled and free to move ….
Now that really is a bad metaphor of mine, isn’t it. People don’t just sit dormant overnight at their office desks, waiting for the supervisors to flick the on switch, each day at 9.00am. They don’t just circle repetitively through their tasks and then turn off at 5.00pm. They feel and breath and grow. They pin their identity on what they do and the title they are given and the adhoc renumeration that fate has thrown to them. They are always engaged in a process of change. Nothing, they say, is certain except for death, taxes and restructures. Yet alikening the workplace and the people in it to a machine is commonplace. Seeing people as cogs in the machine is commonplace. Commonplace condescension and misconceptualisation abounds.
Yes, I think I have now talked myself into understanding Ducker. We can’t take volunteers for granted. They can choose to come and go. They are empowered through choice. And if we choose to work, just because we want to, even if we don’t have to, we are free and powerful and so best situated to contribute with generosity and joy. That should make for a happy and productive workplace, I suppose. Ducker might argue that we “have to” treat people as volunteers because, it the end, it’s profitable. I might add the suggestion that it is also ethical.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Jocene
I imagine an invitation to volunteer is preferable to being compelled. I wonder if invitations remove the drudgery of work and transform the context into opportunity.
Keith
December 11th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Hi Keith.
Since universities have switched to “business mode”, it’s all about bottom lines, condescension and “purl” before swine. Ironically, the Business Faculty that I was (somewhat) attached to last year did not operate in this way. They seemed to know the wisdom of respect and generousity towards each other. They boasted that their catering bill exceeded that of all other faculties, and people chose to wear suits to work. Even me. Sometimes. They lived the dream. I was proud to be part of that – until the restructure.