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"The idea of offering pay cuts to save the jobs of precarious academic staff - canvassed for example at LSE - is well intended but naive. It’s reminiscent of the justification for the social contract in the 1970s - wage controls would benefit the lower paid. The problem is the same: what mechanism ensures that the pay saved goes to keeping on precarious staff? If university unions had the power to enforce such a mechanism against the unscrupulous bosses who run universities today they would be able to defend jobs more directly. There is no substitute for building up workers’ collective power, which means continuing the Four Fights Campaign and rejecting the employers’ offer."
—Alex Callinicos, King's College London
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The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

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