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April 14, 2005
Why I Voted for the Union
Moosey Fate mentions that the OHR at the U. has been bombarding graduate students to oppose the establishment of a union on campus. I was never opposed to the establishment of a union, but I had my reservations. The rights of workers did not seem to be violated, and so there seemed to be little need for us to organize. As far as I can tell, Political Science graduate assistants have it pretty easy: Seldom do 20 hour per week appointments translate into 20 hours per week of real work, and even the increase in health care co-pays and fees seem pretty slight. We make more money than we would on the market as normal BA types, which almost all of us are. I do not want to call the union types in my department malcontents exactly, but they as a general rule hail from the revolutionary-socialist end of the political spectrum.
For me, the politics of protest is a last resort: I have spent far more time creating policy from within organizations than from without. My involvement in politics since my Dunsmuir tour of duty has been limited to voting in elections and attending exactly one party caucus. The union people in our office seemed less concerned about helping graduate students' plight than complaining about how tough things were. I thought "Little do they know how good we have it." It should be noted here that our department has been leading the charge to organize for years now.
What clinched my vote for the union were the completely biased emails sent out by the U. to oppose the union. They forwarded, if they did not themselves create, emails to all graduate students warning them that the union would negatively impact their relationships with professors (I did not know that individual professors negotiated with individual students about pay—I have never seen that done in our department) and that the outside union would take over all negotiations. At this point, there are no negotiations. I think the smart move for the U. would have been to remain as silent as possible, or at least as neutral as possible.
I felt vindicated in my voting when one of the union members in our department told me that the supposed "open forum" about the union vote promoted by OHR was really just the anti-union folks seeking to promote their side. They staged it too late for news of the U.'s bias to be revealed. As it was, the voting itself took place in the business school of all places, behind a huge business school event offering free pizza. At the risk of sounding paranoid, it looked to me like an attempt to smother and confuse the voting process. I hope the union gets to play hardball with OHR.
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