According to Budd (2011) work is a purposeful human activity involving physical or mental exertion that is economic or symbolic value but not for pleasure. In this regard, work is broader that employment because it includes people like volunteers, self-employed and subsistence farmers (Budd, 2011). Work differs from leisure due to the fact that is not pursued for pleasure but rather it has purpose to be achieved. Sometimes workers find it hard to absorb the pressures that come with work and this leads to disputes. This is the case that was witnessed during the York University teaching assistants strike in 2015. The teaching assistant felt that their well-being was not provided for and that the working conditions were not in their favor. This paper seeks to highlight how the Budd’s conceptualizations would have been utilized in this scenario.
Some of the factors that led to the York University teaching assistants strike includes being forced to do enormous work and receiving low pay. The strikers claimed that for over five years they had been receiving an estimated minimum salary of $15,000 and this depicted that they were living below poverty line. Their hourly wage was recently reducing d to $43.97. They would only be making $8,231.18 annually and this is almost $750 lesser than they used to receive. Their work is expected to increase as more students were enrolling to the university and more tutorials introduced. The teaching assistants complained that they could not get another job because they were prohibited from taking outside work and were expected to do research full time. The teaching assistants were also striking because they were not guaranteed of job security and they don’t have academic freedom protections.
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Freedom is one of the major concepts that could have been used to solve the issues raised by the York university teaching assistants. They should understand that work is not pleasurable and it comes with exertion of mental and physical pressure (Budd, 2011). However, they should have accepted the work they were being offered as means to gain freedom. Budd (2011), reports that work is a freedom pertaining to individual liberty from coercion of other people. Additionally the article reports that work can be a classical source of liberty from other people and human institutions (Budd, 2011). Therefore, the teaching assistants would have taken the wok as a way to liberate them from relying on other people for survival. The work would have provided them with a means to solve their needs and to survive.
The conceptualization on work as occupational citizenship would have been utilized to improve the well-being of the teaching assistants in the sense that is offers for an opportunity of having inherent worth and of being entitled to certain rights and standards of dignity and self-determination (Budd, 2011). In this context, the workers would be entitled to some minimum working and living conditions that are determined by standards of minimum human dignity. The current wages teaching assistants are receiving is way too little and in fact they are living below poverty line. Therefore, conceptualization on occupational citizenship would have been applied to raise their standards and wages (Budd, 2011).
The fact the teaching assistants have enormous workload, means they are pushed to work for many hours and limited the opportunity to engage in pleasurable activities. This means that the conceptualization based on disutility could be used to improve the well-being of these university workers. By disutility work is regarded as a painful and stressful activity that involves the opportunity of reduced time for pleasure (Budd, 2011). In this context, work is lousy activity tolerated only to obtain goods, services and leisure that provides pleasure. The teaching assistants are also suffering because they are working to meet the interests of the university administrators.
The last conceptualization that can be applied in the York University teaching assistants strike is looking at work as a means to personal fulfillment . Academic related work requires high commitment. Consequently it leads to psychological impact and it may seem arduous. Personal fulfillment would be applicable in this scenario because it would allow for the worker to manage their cognitive and affective functioning (Budd, 2011). The university managers would also try to implement fair treatment, intrinsic rewards and provide for job security. Therefore, Budd's (2011) conceptualizations of work ideas could be utilized to solve or addresses the university teaching assistant’s issues and complains.
References
Budd, J. W. (2011). Conceptualizing Work and Worker Well Being. University of Minnesota press.
