Posts by Bart Janssen
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I'd love to live in a world where parents are equally supported whether they choose to be in paid work fultime, parttime or not at all and where caring for young, elderly, ill or disabled family members and friends was considered as high status a vocation as, say, investment banking.
There are two parts to this.
First is "Who pays?" That isn't a trivial question as the cost will be high. It is clear that the "free market" will not pay for such a thing. You might create fantasy scenarios where the free market might pay for it but those scenarios have yet to be made real. The only logical conclusion is that this would have to be something we all agree to pay for - the same way we agree to pay for the fire department. In short we would have to contribute tax and elect a government on the basis that they make sure our tax goes towards paying for that.
To me that logic seems utterly compelling and demands that we need to pay more tax.
The second part is harder :). "How do you value tasks?" Does a parent get paid as much as a fireman/policeman/doctor/scientist/IRD employee? Included in that is some consideration for those who are not parents? Are those who do not have children lesser in some way and hence undeserving of support?
This is not meant undermine Isabel's idea. I actually agree very much with her. But if we want it to be so, then we have to make it so ourselves and that means answering some of those questions in real terms. And then we have to convince most of New Zealand that it is worthwhile and we should really do it.
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Could I haz my thread back plz?
Certainly. Here you go.
I Lol'd
and then I had to explain why I was laughing to my office mate, which turned out to be quite difficult
"people fighting about sexism on the internet" sounds really silly when you say it out loud
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Yes, Jeremy: women can be grumpy right-wingers, too! Whatever will they do next?
Well in The South they make babies and load their husband's guns.
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The longer I'm in this country the more I get the impression that it's built, in a large degree, on the idea of just not caring about people who aren't you, or your immediate circle. It's bloody terrifying.
Hang in there Lucy. It's a big place and while you do end up in surreal conversations where it's hard to believe you are on the same planet let alone belong to the same species, there are also places full of reasonable decent friendly people who can actually think. And who actually care about their fellow humans.
You just need to accept that the loonies seems to clump together and move on to a different (better) group.
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"your treachery will not be forgotten"
Tee-shirt. Dare you.
and on the back
People are kinda stupid sometimes.
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The EU is changing the post-doc setup so that anyone who has been in the same place 5 years becomes an employee not a contractor. This is to counter the increasing casualisation of academic work.
Yup and the US is having issues with their whole academic system because of the "cheap labour" of post-docs messing up with academic career progression.
However, neither the EU nor the US are actually prepared to pay for the research so labs try and get it done cheaper with post-docs ... a little cyclic methinks.
And who says this kind of contrscting doesn't exist in NZ employment law at the moment? There are loads of post-docs happily (or unhappily, as the case may be) working around the country.
Well yes there are loads of post-docs around the country. But whether the law actually allows them to be employed the way they are is another question. Post-docs aren't litigious by nature but it is an open question still as to whether the rotation of post-docs is illegal.
The simple fact is most post-docs who come here for 3 years actually want to leave at the end of their contract and head back home or on to a new lab. Which makes the law an ass. However even in NZ I know of labs that openly abuse the post-doc system to get cheap labour knowing full well they should be hiring permanent employees.
Like I said this isn't simple stuff.
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"Why should senior CRI staff, whose career is a project to project existence, be at risk from a contractor taking them to court to be re-classified as an employee, simply because the CRI was successful at securing one project after another, and loyal enough to keep re-hiring the contractor from one project to another?"
I'm conflicted on this one. It is an issue that has been raised with govt as well.
Assume a short term grant that gets refunded. So initial funding was say 3 years with no promise of repeat funding, so a new scientist gets hired on a 3 year fixed term contract. Then lab gets new funding for an additional 3 years but if they hire a different scientist they get taken to employment court and lose. If they rehire the same scientist for another fixed term contract they get taken to employment court and lose. So they essentially have to take on the scientist as an employee but what happens if they then lose funding ... theoretically they can let the scientist go but it isn't usually that straightforward.
This is one area I am conflicted because really they shouldn't be able to boot the employee unless the employee isn't performing and if that is the case they should go through the process and remove them for poor performance.
BUT
And this is where science is a bit weird. There is a tradition of having scientists spend some time after they get their PhD working in different labs around the world to build networks and gain different experience. It's called a post-doc. They are typically about 2-3 years in any one place. So having 2-3 year fixed term positions that rotate people in and out of an ongoing research project is considered normal and good for everyone involved. And there isn't really any room in NZs employment law for such a role.
BUT
Some people abuse the system by exploiting post-docs as cheap(ish) labour which they get rid of before they start to want pay rises or benefits like holidays. And our law should protect employees from such arseholes.
As you can see this stuff isn't simple. But no worries, urgency will fix it.
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Good god its turned into the Todger Dialogue here.
And we know Emma never intended that to happen.
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I'd just like to note the importance of multiple sampling. Large numbers of measurements are the key to obtaining accurate results. Be kind to your statistician.
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This whole thing makes me think the actors union has been watching too many movies. Unfortunately Warner Bros aren't quite as stupid as the townsfolk.