Ohio prepares to stick it to university staff

Saw the following press release recently:

“Statewide civil service reform to benefit classified staff”. Looks like a doozy. I don’t see where, in the description, there’s much “benefit” to classified staff (in the form of, oh, say control over the workplace, wage and benefit raises, etc.). What we have instead are sentences like these:

“A 1999 IUC report cited a need for greater efficiency in many aspects of state government.”

 ”universities need greater speed and agility to compete for the most talented and diverse staff; [...] the nature of staff job duties has shifted dramatically over the past decades, requiring new conceptualization of the employment arrangement [...] greater efficiencies are needed on our campuses if universities are to be nimble enough to adopt world-class practices and attract top-caliber faculty and staff.”

I cannot thing of an example where language like this didn’t translate into something more along the lines of “the powers that be in the state house want it to be easier for controllers to hire and fire at lower wages, fewer workplace protections, etc., all in the language that defends these choices as if they are necessary for efficiency.”

 There is language in the press release relating to “protections,” but I worry that will prove slim. The language I mostly see (especially about “greater efficiencies” and “world-class [not even "best" anymore!] practices” and universities needing to be “nimble”) it sounds mostly like the kind of language used to justify fewer protections, fewer benefits, and fewer (and smaller) raises for staff at state universities in Ohio.

 Universities are between a rock and a hard place. As the state continues to abandon its role of providing broad-range services to its citizens, the unversity is pressured to become more and more like a corporation out to maximize profits and get the most work for the least money out of its labor force. What worries me is when the university’s own press release mechanism