You may have heard that the United Auto Workers (UAW), one of the largest labor unions in North America, is now on strike (see here or here, for example). What, however, you may not know is that among the union’s demands is a call for no more “tiered labor contracts” in their industry. To this end the UAW has even approved the following strongly-worded resolution:

“The union shall reject management proposals for contract language which seek to divide the membership through tiered wages, benefits, or post-employment income and benefits. Where current contracts provide for such divisive compensation, it shall be the obligation of the International Executive Board to seek the elimination of all such tiers by raising lower tiers to the higher level, holding to the long-standing union principle of ‘equal pay for equal work.”

Is this demand a reasonable one? By way of analogy, why don’t the tenured faculty members at our esteemed institutions of higher educations — which are supposedly bastions of progressive and “Marxian” academics, especially in the humanities — demand the end of “tiered contracts” in Academia, e.g. adjuncts, lecturers, instructors, etc.? In the meantime (but don’t hold your breath), check out the following links regarding some other sundry academic “scams”:

• “Tenure is a total scam” by Bryan Caplan
• “The rise and fall of peer review” by Adam Mastroianni
• “Are you in a BS job? in Academe, you’re hardly alone” by David Graeber
• “It’s hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is” via Hacker News