Global Crisis

Many work wellness programs work like this - get regular checkups, hit various benchmarks of health, get money! It's a way for business to lower their health care costs by rewarding people for making healthy choices.

Except that according to the ACLU, these bonuses are basically closed to people with disabilities. Moreover, there's no real evidence that they make people healthier - instead, it's a bonus for people who are already, luckily, healthy. As Susan Mizner of the ACLU said - voluntary wellness programs are neither.

Here's Claudia Center:

Voluntary wellness programs at work can provide benefits to employees, but employers are increasingly adopting “voluntary” wellness programs that unfairly burden workers with disabilities the most of all. Worse, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seems to think that’s okay, undermining core antidiscrimination protections it used to defend.
Here’s why.
Imagine a woman living with rheumatoid arthritis and severe depression who, under doctor’s care, has finally returned to work. Her medications — a corticosteroid and an antidepressant — have triggered weight gain. Now imagine this woman facing her employer’s “wellness activities:” She is instructed to fill out a detailed questionnaire about her medical conditions; she is weighed and pronounced overweight; she is told to lose weight. Oh, and the program is voluntary — but if she doesn’t comply, she will have to pay hundreds of dollars more in annual health care premiums.

Comment period at the EEOC is now closed (I shared this widely on social media when it came out), but I wanted to circle back to it and just take a look at the logic. The pressure on the disabled body to be measured and assessed by normative rubrics forces various types of compliance.

So to review:

Voluntary wellness programs are not voluntary.
Voluntary wellness programs do not produce wellness.
Voluntary wellness programs discriminate against the disabled.

Finally - Voluntary wellness programs are a kind of corporate reification of the medical model of the body. Which isn't surprising, because medical model has come to embody all kinds of neoliberal principles.

As I continue to write about language, politics, and ethics, I thought it would be useful to place statements all on one page, without comment. Eden Foods, Whole Foods, The Wedge Co-Op, Willy Street Co-op. I also have links to major reporting on the topic, especially from a year ago when their first suit was decided.

I will have a CNN piece on the topic this morning and will update the blog when it's up.

Here are some good resources.

• Irin Carmon at Salon (and now MSNBC) was all over this topic, including this first piece and then an interview with CEO Potter.
• A recent piece from USA Today.
• The controversy comes to Whole Foods.
• A good overview of the post-Hobby Lobby situation from Grist
• Potter tells his local paper that Obama is a dictator.

Eden Foods:

Eden Foods is a principled food company. We were convinced that actions of the federal government were illegal, and so filed a formal objection. The recent Supreme Court decision confirms, at least in part, that we were correct. We realized in making our objection that it would give rise to grotesque mischaracterizations and fallacious arguments. We did not fully anticipate the degree of maliciousness and corruption that would visit us. Nevertheless, we believe we did what we should have.
The objection we filed has never been part of the Hobby Lobby lawsuit

Whole Foods:

“We really do appreciate everyone who has reached out to us to share their feelings about Eden Foods. When reviewing products for our shelves, our primary consideration is whether the product’s ingredients meet our Quality Standards. We recognize and respect that customers may have their own personal criteria for buying or not buying a product, and it’s every shoppers’ right to vote with their dollars on that basis. We hope that if people have feedback for Eden Foods, they share it with them directly.”

The Wedge:

Thanks so much for sharing your views about the Eden Foods situation with the Wedge. We are aware of the recent news, and while we are disappointed by Eden Foods' stand on this issue, the Wedge has a long-standing tradition (since our earliest days as a co-op) of not engaging in boycotts that are called for political reasons. Our membership includes a wide swath of political, religious and cultural viewpoints, and we leave decisions of this kind to our members.
As an organic foods co-op, we have our own set of values to consider; Eden Foods sources from North American organic farmers. Dropping their products would punish regional organic growers who have no part in Eden company decisions and would leave our co-op with nothing but Chinese-sourced organic beans, in direct opposition to our commitment to healthy regional farm economies and a domestic organic food shed.
Basing health insurance on employment is an altogether different conversation that needs to move forward. This most-recent situation is just one part of that larger discourse, which will get worked out in the courts and in the political arena. Until then, we encourage our members to make their own purchasing decisions based on the values they hold most important to them, and we will follow your lead."

Willy Street Co-op:

A higher-than-average number of Owners have raised objections to the Co-op continuing to carry Eden Foods. The Owners who have already commented feel that the company’s legal action to avoid providing certain types of health care coverage for certain people may run contrary to our Food and Product Selection Philosophy.
On March 20, 2013, Eden Foods filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for the right to opt out of contraceptive coverage for its employees (Eden Foods, Inc v. Sylvia Burwell). Eden Foods objects to a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring companies that offer employee health care to cover an array of contraceptive choices. Eden Foods is among roughly 70 companies objecting to contraceptive coverage on account of religious freedoms. The case has been reopened in court.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was a Supreme Court case decided on June 30, 2014. The plaintiffs were Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who refused to pay on religious grounds for emergency contraceptive pills and intrauterine devices as part of their employee health care. Eden Foods was not a plaintiff in this case, however, in their Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to reconsider their earlier decisions against Eden Foods.
Read Eden Foods’ statements pertaining to their HHS lawsuit and the impact of the Hobby Lobby lawsuit.
The Co-op appreciates Eden Foods’ frontline commitments to organic, natural, and sustainable foods and practices. Eden Foods has been an industry leader in maintaining organic standards and bringing BPA-free packaging to the U.S. market. The Co-op carries a lot of Eden Foods products (almost 100). Removing their product outright would significantly change our store inventory. Potential replacement products may cost more, and may not have as pure packaging. Some products may simply be no longer available to the Co-op.
However, our Co-op also strives to support a healthy, just, and tolerant food system in which workers are valued and compensated fairly across the board. Out of respect for the diverse values of our Owners and a commitment to transparency, we now bring the question of whether or not the Co-op should continue to carry Eden Foods products to the Ownership itself.
To address Owner concerns, the Co-op has initiated a 30 day Owner comment period on Eden Foods. At the end of the comment period, we will use this input to determine the status of their product. We are currently in the process of updating our Boycott Policy so that we will have a more structured process for Owners to initiate the comment period in the future.

What would it look like if every decision at the university were made, explicitly, around the following question - How does this make the institution a better place for students to learn and develop?
Implicitly, maybe that's already built in to many discussions, but I think that the explicit language we use to define what we are doing matters.

Today I will have a new piece at Chronicle Vitae on "customer service" at the university and the model I would like to substitute. Here's some background, first, and then I'll highlight a few points from the essay.

Background

Last March, just as Spring Break was starting, a friend pointed out a job ad at Texas A&M Kingsville (TAMUK) for an early modern English professor. Job description: MUST PROVIDE EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE.

I wrote this blog called: THE END OF HIGHER EDUCATION. Hyperbole, yes, but I was aghast. My piece was quoted in a number of other blogs, got a few thousand hits (which is a lot for me), so I pitched a piece to the Chronicle that was more nuanced. The goal was to argue against the "customer service" model by saying that it shortchanged the students, not that it offended the professors.

They published it. It spent several days pegged to the "most viewed" and "most commented" (in part because of some trolls, but comments are comments!). I wrote two followup posts. I received many comments and emails, including from faculty at TAMUK, I kept digging at some threads and emailing TAMUK HR and PR for comments. And then I got a voicemail.

“Hello, my name is Steve Tallant, and I am the president of Texas A&M University at Kingsville. I understand you have some questions regarding how we run this university, and I’d like to tell you I’ve been keeping up with your blog.”

I admit that I panicked. I had been doing some commentary for a year or so, but had never gotten a response like this. Also, I am conditioned to fear university presidents as I am but a lowly prof. Once we got on the phone, however, I realized something. I'm the press and he wanted to make sure he made a good impression. And he did. He's very thoughtful, well-intentioned, has done good work with his faculty hiring, and the university has grown. Still, this customer-service thing seemed like a problem to me.

Today's Piece

So I found out from a confidential tip that there was a mandatory annual training in customer service that all employees, faculty and staff alike, had to take. In the course of my interview and followups, I was given access to that training (for which I am grateful. Again, Tallant and his staff were very helpful and I do believe TAMUK is working hard to be a great place).

I took it. It reminded me of being trained at Burger King.

I think this kind of thing, the language we use to define our identity, can be really important. In today's piece, I argue:

The words we put at the center of our institutions matter, whether in mission statements, strategic plans, or even boilerplate marketing elements. They shape communication among the disparate elements that coexist within the school, especially between the leadership and the other employees.

I also say:

Corporate catchphrases flatten all tasks into the same kind of behavior—in this case, customer service. They challenge academic identity and threaten the seriousness with which faculty in particular regard their administrators. Business-speak emphasizes the growing gap between academics and the people who manage them. Like it or not, nothing engenders eye-rolls among academics faster than corporate sloganeering.

It’s also not the only way to build institutional unity. What if instead of devoting time and resources to making analogies about customer service, we put learning first? What if the conversations, the trainings, the memos, and even the job descriptions emphasized this simple question: How does what I do make this a better place for students to learn and develop?

Learning-centered comes out of assessment-speak, so has it's own complex valences. And yet, what would it look like if "learning" trumped all other concerns.

I'm going to dream on that one for a day or two.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, on my first piece about customer service, I made this comment:

"Faculty members respond to the student-as-consumer by teaching defensively, fearing the management that we formerly referred to as administration. But administrators administrate on behalf of the faculty. Employees delivering customer service get managed."

It's kind of a throwaway line - an idea meriting its own essay. Fortunately, Tales Told Out of School has written just such an essay that explores this theme more fully. The author of Tales is a departmental chair at a public university. The piece begins:

If students are customers, receiving a product from faculty, it threatens to turn administrators into managers. And turning administrators into managers will transform their relationship with faculty in ways that do not serve the larger aims of the university.

I'm pleased to see this kind of declarative sentence off the bat. You should read the whole article, as the author argues forcefully against admin-as-manager and explores the consequences of thinking that way.
Here's the point I want to emphasize - when we adopt corporate norms, we not only screw up our educational mission, we do it BADLY. We take worst practices from corporate America and graft it onto our institutions.

Here's the example from this essay, talking about administering FOR employees, rather than managing to please customers.

Curiously, this is even an approach that some parts of the corporate world have embraced. Herb Kelleher, the then-CEO of Southwest Airlines, once famously responded to a disgruntled customer who wrote letters of complaint after each flight: Dear Mrs. Crabapple: We will miss you. Love, Herb.” His point was not to be rude to this customer, but it was to suggest that the customer is not always right and that he supported his employees over the unreasonable demands of customers. In other words, he was taking seriously the experience and morale of the people who worked for him, with the knowledge that their satisfaction would translate into a positive experience for the people boarding his planes.

I like this a lot. One of the comments I've received in reaction to my original piece is that the model of customer service with "the customer is always right" is NOT indicative of the best practices in the corporate world. Higher Ed not only is adopting ill-fitting corporate models, we're doing it badly.