cog 復習
全米労働関係委員会(NLRB)は、ニューヨーク市にあるコロンビア大学の大学院生の申し立てを受け、私大で研究や教授の助手を行う大学院生、学生らの労働組合を結成する権利を認めました。
Graduate Students Clear Hurdle in Effort to Form Union
Punctuating a string of Obama-era moves to shore up labor rights and expand protections for workers, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities have a federally backed right to unionize.
The case arose from a petition filed by a group of graduate students at Columbia University, who are seeking to win recognition for a union that will allow them a say over such issues as the quality of their health insurance and the timeliness of stipend payments.
Echoing longstanding complaints from blue-collar workers that they have become replaceable cogs in a globalized economic machine, the effort reflects a growing view among more highly educated employees in recent decades that they, too, are at the mercy of faceless organizations and are not being treated like professionals and aspiring professionals whose opinions are worthy of respect.
“What we’re fundamentally concerned about isn’t really money,” said Paul R. Katz, one of the Columbia graduate students involved in the organizing efforts. “It’s a question of power and democracy in a space in the academy that’s increasingly corporatized, hierarchical. That’s what we’re most concerned about.”
Columbia and other universities that weighed in with the board before the ruling argued that collective bargaining would lead to a more adversarial relationship between students and the university that would undermine its educational purpose.
今回取り上げるのは、"cog"です。
LDOCEで調べてみると、"a wheel with small bits sticking out around the edge that fit together with the bits of another wheel as they turn in a machine"や"someone who only has a small unimportant job in a large organization"という意味が載っていました。
『ジーニアス英和辞典』第4版(大修館)で確認してみても、「(歯車の)歯、歯車」や「(大きな組織、企業などで)小さな役割を果たしている人(物)」とありました。"a cog in the machine [wheel] of a company"で「会社の中のちっぽけな一員」という例文もそえられていました。
ここでは、「グローバル化された経済という大きなマシーンのなかで，いつでも代りが見つかる歯車になりさがっている」と訳せるでしょうか。(Akim)
