Of course, W. knows we need to prepare for our meetings. Meetings are a serious business!
When they were trying to sack him – just after they placed his job at risk – he was called before a senior manager to justify his job. This was a new manager, specially appointed to axe staff. They brought him in from industry, W. says, because the others didn't have the nerve. They wanted to hide behind him, the axeman. They wanted him to do their work, and to leave them with clean hands.
And so there W. was, before the axeman. There he was, shuffling his papers … 'I want to make a moral case, and a financial case for my position', he said. A moral case: surely no one would want to hear that? But he did want to hear it, the axeman. He said, take as much time as you need.
W. knew something was up. He knew this wasn't how an axeman was supposed to behave. And so he made his case, his moral case. He spoke of the ethics of employment, of the duties of the institution. He spoke of the rights of the employee and of the educational duty to the students, who, after all, W. taught more than anyone.
That was the moral case, he said. Then, shuffling his papers, he began outlining his financial case. Here, he was particularly impressive, although he says so himself, W. says. Everyone said so, afterwards. He spoke with great thoroughness of the two lava streams of income. Of funding being known years in advance, so that no sudden cuts to staff numbers need be made, so long as they were covering their own salaries in FTEs.
But this was only the frame of his argument. It's horizon, W. says. He spoke of staff-student ratios and the reputation of the institution. He nearly got carried away and spoke of managerial nihilism and managerial incompetence, but he kept that to himself.
And when he finished? W. asked the panel why he was being sacked. And the axeman turned to the others, and said, 'Yes, why is he being sacked?' Because even he couldn't understand, the axeman. Even he was baffled, he who was brought in to make cuts. 'As far as I can see, he's doing all the teaching', he said, the axeman, and the other managers trembled.
W. felt exhilarated: so there was justice after all! And he'd thought the axeman was just that: an axeman, who would masturate over little pictures of sacked people in his office. He thought he was a man you couldn't reason with, when in fact, the man from industry was eminently reasonable.
The rumour was that he wanted to sack senior management, the whole lot. That he wanted to replace one of them at least with the junior member of staff who had such a firm grasp of the financial predicament, and even the moral predicament. He was said to have chewed out the particular manager who put W. on the list to be sacked, and that she fled in tears and locked herself in her office.
A change is going to come, said the union representative who had accompanied W. to the meeting. The times they are-a changing. It was going to be like '68 again they thought, the union representative and him. The authorities were crumbling! There would be no redundancies! And now the workers - the real workers – were free to play with the Law like a child his hoop …
Of course, they sacked him, too, the axeman. The very next day, the senior management met in secret, and put him on gardening leave. And W. was told his job was still under threat, after all.
Lars Iyer's Blog 