Introduction

Jake Muller

The main argument that I will present in this book is the following.




The research for this book is based on interviews undertaken in northwestern British Columbia (BC), Canada. From there I transcribed each interview. This was a long and time consuming process as anyone who has done this will acknowledge.

In this book I concentrate on the work of those community college employees who are characterized by the institution as "support" employees. All employees doing this work are members of a provincial union called the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU). The kinds of work that they do ranges from recruiting new students, to considering applications, registering students, providing various kinds of assistance to students, and making sure that these employees are able to do their work by keeping the information and computing systems of the community college running.

All the names of the people interviewed are fictitious including the name of the the community college. (The fictitious name of the community college is Sunny Forest Community College.) I am interested in describing the work that each person does for the community college or institution and not their social interactions with co-workers. Many of people that I interviewed have left the community college to find employment elsewhere or retired. Most of the senior managers have long departed.

The chapters have been organized into the following sequence.

Chapter 1 

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5