I thought I would write a brief posting about the results of the recent triennial elections for my former local, UAW 2865. At the statewide level, it was an immense success for the AWDU ticket. AWDU and their allies won all of the executive board seats, along with 80% of the Joint Council. I have to admit that I was very skeptical of their chances, but we saw some impressive organizing, and new reform slates arise in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside that were previously doubtful. A lot of credit should go to the activists involved who had to both negotiate a contract and win an election. In terms of the bargaining team, they won in San Diego, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Davis. Despite losing in Santa Barbara, we saw the first substantial reform ticket run for election there, and they had a fairly respectable showing, bringing in about 30% of the vote. Merced saw a split vote between reformers and admin caucus activists, despite a lack of reform candidates running for local positions. Riverside and Irvine were much more lopsided, giving landslide victories for the former leadership, who are often referred to as the administration caucus, despite their frequent re-namings. Riverside had a small core of reformers, who have a good chance to impact the local despite their small numbers.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Irvine, which had no substantial reform effort on the ground during the election. Part of that was due to the admittedly very successful efforts on the part of Coral Wheeler and Moshe Lichman to put together a decent full slate of candidates, and to construct an electoral machine. I might not like the kind of union infrastructure that they create. It's hierarchical and not directed to creating an active membership, but it is good at getting votes out at specific times. My hope is that we see some of the reform tradition taken up by the new officers of the local, but I have to admit, I hadn't seen much activity out of them during the contract campaign. The other part was due to the decision of reform activists to put their energy into other organizing endeavors, and move away from union organizing. It wouldn't have been my choice, but I'm also no longer involved. (edit: I'm also not sure that my feelings on the matter are terribly relevant.) I also can't blame those individuals for wanting to find forms of organizing that are less frustrating and more meaningful to them. Having been through the last triennial, I can't blame folks for wanting to avoid that ordeal. I really hope they find those collective efforts. (additional note: I should note that there were Irvine reform folks involved in the successful election efforts at UCLA.)
As a last note, I genuinely hope that we see a continued effort on the part of the new elected officials to actively contribute to the fight for a new contract. I suspect a number of them could be very good union representatives. But if that effort doesn't happen, I would recommend that folks take up those tasks themselves. Get a hold of me if that is the case, and I will get you in touch with people who can help you. (I also strongly suspect that despite not running for office; we'll see Irvine reform folks at the front of the contract fight.)
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Monday, May 5, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
What Do You Call A Caucus That Refuses To Call Itself A Caucus? A Critique
In the final months of my involvement in the union, I saw the revival of an interesting phenomenon, the former leadership who formed the USEJ (United For Social and Economic Justice) caucus during the last triennial election denying that they were members of that caucus, or that they were even members of a caucus at all. It is a strange claim to make. After all, that group continues to vote in a lock step fashion that puts the reform AWDU (Academic Workers for a Democratic Union) caucus to shame, and their secret caucus list serve was accidentally leaked to the full union joint council list serve.* It was pretty apparent that the group was still operating as a caucus, and that it was made up primarily of the remaining members of USEJ. (Ironically, the group has existed in previous formations before USEJ as Adam Hefty noted, but USEJ was the first time that they opened acknowledged that they were in fact a separate and independent caucus.) It was only a matter of a week or two that they finally acknowledged their existence for the triennial elections,** renaming themselves SWITCh, and erasing their past history. Which brings us to the question, what are the implications of this refusal to acknowledge caucus behavior?
I'd like to start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with being engaged in, or forming a caucus, in an of itself. After all, forming a caucus is basic aspect of self-organization. Caucuses allow for people to form groups to affect the direction of an organization or institution. Often this involves a lot of communication, frequently in private, about the ways that they can affect the direction of the organization, what is possible and what is not possible, and how the group wants to orient itself within those possibilities. Sociologist and labor studies scholar Judith Stepan-Norris, along with other labors studies scholars in fact have noted that the existence of multiple competing caucuses contributes to the health of unions, because the caucuses have to be more responsible to the needs of the membership. After all, if a caucus doesn't fulfill those needs, the membership can simply vote in another caucus. Historically, the decline of the labor movement can be linked to the expulsion of the communists from the AFL-CIO, which left the conservative leadership without competition. In many ways, we formed the AWDU caucus four years ago to return to this democratic tradition of unionism.
However, that system is dependent on an open and fair process. The right to self-organize also needs to be linked with the responsibility for your collective actions within that caucus. We can see this in play with the AWDU ticket, who has connected itself to a three year legacy, that has its flaws and contradictions despite some impressive successes. But the former leadership is trying to short circuit this process with their rebranding campaign. As I already noted, until recently, the former leadership group denied that they were even a caucus, and their current website refuses to acknowledge that a large percentage of their eboard candidates were involved in the last triennial under the USEJ banner. A number of them had bargained on previous contracts, and had created the shell of a union that existed before the AWDU take over. Two of them ran while not even being students in the previous triennial election. Whatever you think about these facts, they seem fairly significant within the context of an electoral campaign, and the rebranding campaign is a pretty egregious effort to subvert that basic aspect of democratic governance. At a basic level, you need to take responsibility for your own actions if you are a responsible member of a caucus, otherwise you are taking the democratic right to choose a political direction for the union from the membership.
The problem goes further than that, when you start bringing in the context of the debates where the denials were initially made. In each of the cases, the person denying the existence of the caucus would follow up with the statement that they were 'simply interested in the good of the union.' The implications of the statement were fairly obvious, implying that the individuals who were involved in the AWDU caucus were not. At a basic level, this sort of analysis is fundamentally flawed. Workers' organizations are simply too complex to declare that one is 'simply interested in the good of the union.' Unions have been defined by internal as well as external antagonism, debating over who should be a part of such organizations, how they should organize new workers, as well as what should be the goals of such organizations. We've seen conservative unions and revolutionary unions, deeply democratic unions and cults of personality. To claim you are 'simply interested in the good of the union' is an attempt to erase this rich history, and to place your conception of the means and ends of the union movement as the exclusive means and ends to that movement. For more context on this tradition within the UAW as a whole, I recommend reading this essay by Barry Eidlin.
It's difficult to avoid the authoritarian implications within the claim to 'simply act in the good of the union', however I'd like to spell that aspect of the claim out with a bit more clarity. We can look at the relationship between election claims and on the ground behavior to do that. In previous elections, many of the candidates linked to the former leadership group, such as Coral Wheeler and Moshe Lichman, have produced propaganda that claimed that they were opposed to caucuses per se, and wanted to abolish the caucus system. It's a claim that generally indicates a position of moderation within U.S. politics, a desire to compromise and bring people together. However, the behavior of those members has not contained those practices. Instead, we have seen a lack of any interest to compromise on any issues, whether at the Joint Council or within the bargaining table. Members of the former leadership caucus have even gone as far as to claim that AWDU activists don't support the demand for the rights for undocumented graduate students, giving management the impression we are divided on the issue, when this is an issue that both caucuses strongly support. In effect, rather than creating a strong unity on this issue to win it at the bargaining table, which is still a strong possibility at this point, they have muddled the issue for partisan purposes. We effectively find a situation in which the attempt to end caucuses is really the effort to end the reform caucus and return to the one party situation we previously saw.
To make this point a bit more concrete, it makes sense to return to a rather contentious debate that occurred last summer during a the quarterly Joint Council Meeting. That meeting had a surprise presentation by Coral Wheeler and Jason Struna about the implications about not focusing the bargaining process the summer. The presentation argued two things, that we had succeeded more than other unions, and that taking a long time to bargain would have catastrophic results. At least, that's what I got through the shoddy analogies to unions who had single digit membership numbers and scare tactics. We saw the same threat of catastrophe on the former leadership's proxy blog, Paycheck First, who also promised catastrophe if we took the route we eventually took for bargaining, and the similar dire predictions being made regularly on the email list of the Joint Council. At this point, it's pretty obvious that we're not facing catastrophe. Instead, we're looking at a potential contract that contains no take backs, has unprecedented language in support of all-gender bathrooms and lactation facilities, and continues to fight for a voice on class sizes, rights for undocumented students, and a competitive wage increase. The university is currently offering a pay increase, that while inadequate, is substantially larger than most of our previous contracts.
Rather than admit their error, the former leadership have simply moved the goal posts, and are now insisting we could have achieved the same things. Obviously, there's no way of knowing what would have happened in such a counter-history, but it's hard to imagine that we would have gotten so far on the issue of all gender bathrooms without the participation of hundreds of activists at and outside the bargaining table. It's also hard to imagine that we would have the university genuinely discussing a competitive wage gap, and even make a pretense of discussing class size and the rights of undocumented students without such input. It basically is an effort to erase the importance of rank and file activism from the contract process. But more substantially, it's a moment where the individuals who made those claims have taken no responsibility for them, either to acknowledge their falsity, or the potential damage that they could have had on the bargaining process. It subverts the possibility of having an honest debate over the contract campaign, or critically evaluating the goals and processes of the bargaining team, all of which are important to a successful contract campaign. Instead, we are offered a debate in which one side continually makes outrageous claims and simultaneously denies its previous claims as they are debunked.
More than anything else, this relentless campaign against the reform process has shown the strength and perseverance of the reform effort, which has dramatically shifted the conversation in the UC system from a system that offered only fee increases and shrinking class selection, to a system where we haven't seen a fee increase for two years, along with other reforms. It would be a lie to say that this process has been drama and error free, but it's difficult not to be impressed. We ended the perpetual cycle of fee hikes. We accomplished that through demonstrations where our members were pepper sprayed and arrested, petition drives, and even lobbying efforts. We've also seen a level of activity that has not been previously seen in our formerly moribund union, with most of elected position being filled. We've seen a bargaining process that successfully brought out student-workers in solidarity with AFSCME, and a successful strike in response to university intimidation. Above all, we've seen a level of member participation in the bargaining that is unprecedented in union history thanks to the introduction of open bargaining, and the recognition that our ability to win a great contract cannot be simply won by nine clever individuals at the bargaining table. All of that has occurred in a setting where we have received at best no support from a third of the union who still aligns themselves with the former leadership, and often opposition. It makes you wonder where we could be if they had even offered a small amount of critical support on some of the issues. (One added note: We reached none of these achievements alone. It has involved a lot of cooperation with other unions, graduate and undergraduate groups, and other groups.)
I hope everyone goes out to support their statewide and local AWDU chapters, rather switching back to the deeply authoritarian structure of business unionism we saw from our local in the past. In Irvine, you should support Michelle Glowa for President, Mar Velez for Northern Vice-President, Ren-yo Hwang for Southern Vice-President, Erik Green for Financial Secretary, Leslie Quintanella for Recording Secretary, Henry Maar, Susan Richardson, and Beezer de Martelly for Trustees, and Katy Fox-Hodess. At the Irvine level you should support Ana Baginski for Campus Unit Chair, Jordan Brocious for Recording Secretary, and Jordan Brocious and Jessica Conte for Irvine Unit Delegates (who will go to the International Union conference, where a potential dues hike will be decided on.)
*The Joint Council is the governing body of the union. It is made up of the Head Stewards, Campus Unit Chairs, and Recording Secretaries of each branch of the union, along with the statewide executive board. They meet quarterly to make decisions about the union, although they now also vote online for issues after AWDU took over.
**The triennial elections bring all union positions up for election. We're about to have another triennial election April 29th and April 30th.
I'd like to start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with being engaged in, or forming a caucus, in an of itself. After all, forming a caucus is basic aspect of self-organization. Caucuses allow for people to form groups to affect the direction of an organization or institution. Often this involves a lot of communication, frequently in private, about the ways that they can affect the direction of the organization, what is possible and what is not possible, and how the group wants to orient itself within those possibilities. Sociologist and labor studies scholar Judith Stepan-Norris, along with other labors studies scholars in fact have noted that the existence of multiple competing caucuses contributes to the health of unions, because the caucuses have to be more responsible to the needs of the membership. After all, if a caucus doesn't fulfill those needs, the membership can simply vote in another caucus. Historically, the decline of the labor movement can be linked to the expulsion of the communists from the AFL-CIO, which left the conservative leadership without competition. In many ways, we formed the AWDU caucus four years ago to return to this democratic tradition of unionism.
However, that system is dependent on an open and fair process. The right to self-organize also needs to be linked with the responsibility for your collective actions within that caucus. We can see this in play with the AWDU ticket, who has connected itself to a three year legacy, that has its flaws and contradictions despite some impressive successes. But the former leadership is trying to short circuit this process with their rebranding campaign. As I already noted, until recently, the former leadership group denied that they were even a caucus, and their current website refuses to acknowledge that a large percentage of their eboard candidates were involved in the last triennial under the USEJ banner. A number of them had bargained on previous contracts, and had created the shell of a union that existed before the AWDU take over. Two of them ran while not even being students in the previous triennial election. Whatever you think about these facts, they seem fairly significant within the context of an electoral campaign, and the rebranding campaign is a pretty egregious effort to subvert that basic aspect of democratic governance. At a basic level, you need to take responsibility for your own actions if you are a responsible member of a caucus, otherwise you are taking the democratic right to choose a political direction for the union from the membership.
The problem goes further than that, when you start bringing in the context of the debates where the denials were initially made. In each of the cases, the person denying the existence of the caucus would follow up with the statement that they were 'simply interested in the good of the union.' The implications of the statement were fairly obvious, implying that the individuals who were involved in the AWDU caucus were not. At a basic level, this sort of analysis is fundamentally flawed. Workers' organizations are simply too complex to declare that one is 'simply interested in the good of the union.' Unions have been defined by internal as well as external antagonism, debating over who should be a part of such organizations, how they should organize new workers, as well as what should be the goals of such organizations. We've seen conservative unions and revolutionary unions, deeply democratic unions and cults of personality. To claim you are 'simply interested in the good of the union' is an attempt to erase this rich history, and to place your conception of the means and ends of the union movement as the exclusive means and ends to that movement. For more context on this tradition within the UAW as a whole, I recommend reading this essay by Barry Eidlin.
It's difficult to avoid the authoritarian implications within the claim to 'simply act in the good of the union', however I'd like to spell that aspect of the claim out with a bit more clarity. We can look at the relationship between election claims and on the ground behavior to do that. In previous elections, many of the candidates linked to the former leadership group, such as Coral Wheeler and Moshe Lichman, have produced propaganda that claimed that they were opposed to caucuses per se, and wanted to abolish the caucus system. It's a claim that generally indicates a position of moderation within U.S. politics, a desire to compromise and bring people together. However, the behavior of those members has not contained those practices. Instead, we have seen a lack of any interest to compromise on any issues, whether at the Joint Council or within the bargaining table. Members of the former leadership caucus have even gone as far as to claim that AWDU activists don't support the demand for the rights for undocumented graduate students, giving management the impression we are divided on the issue, when this is an issue that both caucuses strongly support. In effect, rather than creating a strong unity on this issue to win it at the bargaining table, which is still a strong possibility at this point, they have muddled the issue for partisan purposes. We effectively find a situation in which the attempt to end caucuses is really the effort to end the reform caucus and return to the one party situation we previously saw.
To make this point a bit more concrete, it makes sense to return to a rather contentious debate that occurred last summer during a the quarterly Joint Council Meeting. That meeting had a surprise presentation by Coral Wheeler and Jason Struna about the implications about not focusing the bargaining process the summer. The presentation argued two things, that we had succeeded more than other unions, and that taking a long time to bargain would have catastrophic results. At least, that's what I got through the shoddy analogies to unions who had single digit membership numbers and scare tactics. We saw the same threat of catastrophe on the former leadership's proxy blog, Paycheck First, who also promised catastrophe if we took the route we eventually took for bargaining, and the similar dire predictions being made regularly on the email list of the Joint Council. At this point, it's pretty obvious that we're not facing catastrophe. Instead, we're looking at a potential contract that contains no take backs, has unprecedented language in support of all-gender bathrooms and lactation facilities, and continues to fight for a voice on class sizes, rights for undocumented students, and a competitive wage increase. The university is currently offering a pay increase, that while inadequate, is substantially larger than most of our previous contracts.
Rather than admit their error, the former leadership have simply moved the goal posts, and are now insisting we could have achieved the same things. Obviously, there's no way of knowing what would have happened in such a counter-history, but it's hard to imagine that we would have gotten so far on the issue of all gender bathrooms without the participation of hundreds of activists at and outside the bargaining table. It's also hard to imagine that we would have the university genuinely discussing a competitive wage gap, and even make a pretense of discussing class size and the rights of undocumented students without such input. It basically is an effort to erase the importance of rank and file activism from the contract process. But more substantially, it's a moment where the individuals who made those claims have taken no responsibility for them, either to acknowledge their falsity, or the potential damage that they could have had on the bargaining process. It subverts the possibility of having an honest debate over the contract campaign, or critically evaluating the goals and processes of the bargaining team, all of which are important to a successful contract campaign. Instead, we are offered a debate in which one side continually makes outrageous claims and simultaneously denies its previous claims as they are debunked.
More than anything else, this relentless campaign against the reform process has shown the strength and perseverance of the reform effort, which has dramatically shifted the conversation in the UC system from a system that offered only fee increases and shrinking class selection, to a system where we haven't seen a fee increase for two years, along with other reforms. It would be a lie to say that this process has been drama and error free, but it's difficult not to be impressed. We ended the perpetual cycle of fee hikes. We accomplished that through demonstrations where our members were pepper sprayed and arrested, petition drives, and even lobbying efforts. We've also seen a level of activity that has not been previously seen in our formerly moribund union, with most of elected position being filled. We've seen a bargaining process that successfully brought out student-workers in solidarity with AFSCME, and a successful strike in response to university intimidation. Above all, we've seen a level of member participation in the bargaining that is unprecedented in union history thanks to the introduction of open bargaining, and the recognition that our ability to win a great contract cannot be simply won by nine clever individuals at the bargaining table. All of that has occurred in a setting where we have received at best no support from a third of the union who still aligns themselves with the former leadership, and often opposition. It makes you wonder where we could be if they had even offered a small amount of critical support on some of the issues. (One added note: We reached none of these achievements alone. It has involved a lot of cooperation with other unions, graduate and undergraduate groups, and other groups.)
I hope everyone goes out to support their statewide and local AWDU chapters, rather switching back to the deeply authoritarian structure of business unionism we saw from our local in the past. In Irvine, you should support Michelle Glowa for President, Mar Velez for Northern Vice-President, Ren-yo Hwang for Southern Vice-President, Erik Green for Financial Secretary, Leslie Quintanella for Recording Secretary, Henry Maar, Susan Richardson, and Beezer de Martelly for Trustees, and Katy Fox-Hodess. At the Irvine level you should support Ana Baginski for Campus Unit Chair, Jordan Brocious for Recording Secretary, and Jordan Brocious and Jessica Conte for Irvine Unit Delegates (who will go to the International Union conference, where a potential dues hike will be decided on.)
*The Joint Council is the governing body of the union. It is made up of the Head Stewards, Campus Unit Chairs, and Recording Secretaries of each branch of the union, along with the statewide executive board. They meet quarterly to make decisions about the union, although they now also vote online for issues after AWDU took over.
**The triennial elections bring all union positions up for election. We're about to have another triennial election April 29th and April 30th.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Presidential Endorsement
Given the nature of the current presidential election, I thought I would break away from the typical focus and perspective of this blog in order to make an intervention into presidential politics with an endorsement. No doubt, the 10-30 readers will make the difference at the polls, marking who will win and who will lose the election. It's a heavy burden. With that in mind, Work Resumed on the Tower formally endorses.... Dinesh D'Souza's racist caricature of Barack Obama. The racist caricature of Barack Obama has the most consistently anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist positions of all nationally viable candidates, including the third parties. He has recognized that we need to challenge the fundamental structures of the capitalist world system, from the informal and formal structures of racism and sexism that define that system to the legacy of imperialism and conquest that played a foundational role in the construction of our current regime of accumulation, which has benefited the very few at the expense of the many. In addition,he recognizes the perhaps central role that white supremacy plays in the continuing legitimization of this system. Most notably, Dinesh D'Souza's racist caricature of Obama has recognized that the predominant role of the United States plays a significant role in the reproduction of the forms of domination and exploitation existing in the world today. He recognizes that our nation has taken the place of the United Kingdom in this role, and has creatively linked the two imperial systems in order to critique our current role in preserving a world system that systemically evacuates resources to a small group of metropolitan centers, and extracts the labor from billions in order to let a small group of primarily white men live like gods. In response, he proposes to radically transform both the role of United States in the current world system, and therefore create the opportunity to create a world system based on radically different principles, the principles of taking what one needs and giving what one can. He advocates, in short, the destruction of the legacy of the past 500 years of domination in the name of a common humanity.
It's unfortunate that the only coherent statement in support of these policies, policies that would link the United States to the broad masses of humanity that make up this planet to create a world based on the principles of mutual aid and solidarity, is found in a racist caricature of a mainstream, bourgeois politician. It is perhaps even more unfortunate that anyone outside of the small group of the very wealthy would vote against a candidate for expressing these principles.
It's unfortunate that the only coherent statement in support of these policies, policies that would link the United States to the broad masses of humanity that make up this planet to create a world based on the principles of mutual aid and solidarity, is found in a racist caricature of a mainstream, bourgeois politician. It is perhaps even more unfortunate that anyone outside of the small group of the very wealthy would vote against a candidate for expressing these principles.
Monday, May 9, 2011
On the victory of AWDU
Probably most folks know about the recent victory of AWDU (Academic Workers for a Democratic Union) in the recent triennial elections. The results finally came in after over a week of battles with the opposing slate, who repeatedly attempted to sabotage the vote count. AWDU won the entire executive board, and 45 of 80 joint council seats (although a couple of the seats held by USEJ (the opposing slate, United for Social and Economic Justice are not held by legitimate student workers.) I think that we can see this potential radical shift in the union as a result of the student movement of a year ago. At the most immediate level, we watched as some of the most intense and involved struggles about the nature of the public university occur in a decade without any substantial presence of the union. (particularly on the Irvine campus) But perhaps more substantially, that struggle changed the expectations and the perspective of the students on our campus. Whether students were involved in the protests, occupations, and sit-downs or not, the official narratives of the university and its administrators were viewed with a great deal more skepticism and hostility. In effect, this critical engagement was turned on the leadership of the union when they tried to sell us a bad contract. The leadership was able to force through the contract by getting large amounts of folks at the San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses to vote for the contract. The leadership took the vote as a tremendous success, but as I noted earlier, all the campuses where activists contested the contract either voted against the contract or had a very close vote. AWDU came together very quickly after this campaign. Without getting too intensely involved in the details of the campaign, USEJ showed that it was not ready for a competitive and democratic election.
That being said, I think that it is absolutely crucial that we keep AWDU together as a reform caucus. The example of the mineworkers for democracy shows the danger of closing up the reform caucus after winning the election. We need to recognize that the same pressures that eventually lead to the problems within the last leadership are going to be put on us as the reform slate. The most effective way to accomplish this is to transform AWDU into a membership organization. That way, the organization can act as an effective check and counterpower to potential problems within the union. We need this institutional structure precisely because of the potential impediments that exist within our union, a transient population, high turnover, and a group of folks who have not had much experience being in a union. A strong membership organization can provide that sense of continuity, along with fulfilling those pedagogical functions. Effectively, the union has been operating through the tyranny of structurelessness. Our end goal is to produce a substantial and participatory democracy, but in order to do that we need to strengthen our representative democracy. In part, this means some forms of decentralization, trusting local campuses and their elected leadership to have a better sense of the issues on each individual campus and their ability to make decisions, but it also means making the decision making process less opaque and confusing. We need to recognize that the problems of the union cannot be solved with one fell swoop. They're structural, and only a set of ongoing and structural solutions can solve them.
That being said, I think that it is absolutely crucial that we keep AWDU together as a reform caucus. The example of the mineworkers for democracy shows the danger of closing up the reform caucus after winning the election. We need to recognize that the same pressures that eventually lead to the problems within the last leadership are going to be put on us as the reform slate. The most effective way to accomplish this is to transform AWDU into a membership organization. That way, the organization can act as an effective check and counterpower to potential problems within the union. We need this institutional structure precisely because of the potential impediments that exist within our union, a transient population, high turnover, and a group of folks who have not had much experience being in a union. A strong membership organization can provide that sense of continuity, along with fulfilling those pedagogical functions. Effectively, the union has been operating through the tyranny of structurelessness. Our end goal is to produce a substantial and participatory democracy, but in order to do that we need to strengthen our representative democracy. In part, this means some forms of decentralization, trusting local campuses and their elected leadership to have a better sense of the issues on each individual campus and their ability to make decisions, but it also means making the decision making process less opaque and confusing. We need to recognize that the problems of the union cannot be solved with one fell swoop. They're structural, and only a set of ongoing and structural solutions can solve them.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
A Short Note on the eve of the vote count
It's been a few days since I have posted anything up here. The primary reason has been the lengthy controversy around the vote count in our Grad Student election. After a contentious first day of voting, it had seemed like the vote tally was going to be completed the next day. However, at 5pm the election committee declared a one hour break. That break stretched on for an extra two hours. The head of the election committee entered the count room at 8pm and illegally suspended the vote count until the next Joint Council meeting, putting the count of half the votes until months later. This illegal resolution passed with three votes, and no opportunity to vote against the resolution. The head of the elections committee then literally ran out of the room, knocking over empty ballot boxes and abandoning the open ballot boxes. The remaining elections committee folks closed the boxes and locked up the room. Since that Saturday, AWDU (Academic Workers for a Democratic Union) have been monitoring the locked room with the ballots. Additionally, our Berkeley colleagues have occupied the Berkeley office, demanding that their votes are counted. (Over half the Berkeley votes were challenged by USEJ challenger, and non-student, Des Harmon.)
Because of that, the only real writing that I have been able to get done has been directed towards my dissertation project. However, I thought I thought I would take a brief moment at what is possibly the last day of the vigil over the ballots to report into my unknown and most likely imagined public (and my real friends.) The process has been exhausting, but I've been genuinely impressed with all the folks involved in our slate. I'm hoping that our connections with the UCLA folks will develop further, and that we can form some strong and long lasting Southern California connections. I think that the external and internal challenges that AWDU has faced have produced a genuinely strong organization that can continue on, whether we win or not. In his analysis of 1968, Immanuel Wallerstein noted that the radical upsurge of that time period was directed against the traditional counter-systemic movements and their inability or unwillingness to challenge the capitalist world system (whether through the compromises of Moscow, or the complacency of social democracy.) At a far more modest level, AWDU is trying to do something similar with our own union, demanding that it take a meaningful role in the defense of public education and our rights as workers. It's been remarkable how combative the upper echelons of the local have been to this attempt at reform given their complacency in the face of privatization and administration push back. More than anything else, this contrast shows their real priorities.
As in other posts on this topic, I welcome comments and debate, but I will delete all anonymous postings. Union democracy demands responsibility, and if you are unwilling to put your name to a post, I'm not terribly interested in what you have to say.
Because of that, the only real writing that I have been able to get done has been directed towards my dissertation project. However, I thought I thought I would take a brief moment at what is possibly the last day of the vigil over the ballots to report into my unknown and most likely imagined public (and my real friends.) The process has been exhausting, but I've been genuinely impressed with all the folks involved in our slate. I'm hoping that our connections with the UCLA folks will develop further, and that we can form some strong and long lasting Southern California connections. I think that the external and internal challenges that AWDU has faced have produced a genuinely strong organization that can continue on, whether we win or not. In his analysis of 1968, Immanuel Wallerstein noted that the radical upsurge of that time period was directed against the traditional counter-systemic movements and their inability or unwillingness to challenge the capitalist world system (whether through the compromises of Moscow, or the complacency of social democracy.) At a far more modest level, AWDU is trying to do something similar with our own union, demanding that it take a meaningful role in the defense of public education and our rights as workers. It's been remarkable how combative the upper echelons of the local have been to this attempt at reform given their complacency in the face of privatization and administration push back. More than anything else, this contrast shows their real priorities.
As in other posts on this topic, I welcome comments and debate, but I will delete all anonymous postings. Union democracy demands responsibility, and if you are unwilling to put your name to a post, I'm not terribly interested in what you have to say.
Monday, April 25, 2011
An unpublished editorial written in support of the AWDU slate.
This was initially written as a collective editorial to go in our not so good local school paper. Since it was ignored, I will publish it here, which may get more attention from grad students anyways....
On April 26th-28th, the United Auto Workers 2865, the union for graders, tutors and teaching assistants, will be having its triennial election. This means that all positions within the union, from top to bottom, are up for election, and for the first time in the history of the union, nearly all of those offices are contested. Aside from a few exceptions, the election is between two slates, the incumbent United for Social and Economic Justice Slate and the challenging Academic Workers for a Democratic Union Slate. As the candidates of the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union slate, we’re excited that the rank and file membership has the opportunity to choose between two very different visions of the union in this upcoming election.
Most of us had gotten involved in the union during the debate over the recently ratified contract. We were concerned that the process of negotiating the contract was being undertaken in a manner that left out the concerns and participation of the rank and file membership. Additionally, the information that was provided by the leadership on the negotiation process was often lacking in clarity and detail. The leadership seemed to have forgotten that good contracts are not won by a small group of clever individuals at the bargaining table, but by the collective effort of the entire union. For us, a strong contract could only be negotiated with the collaboration and active participation of the rank and file of the union. We had spent the previous year fighting the university’s administration in the fight against the tuition increases and the budget cuts, and we were distressed to see some of the same forms of obfuscation and deception on the part of our leadership used by the administration.
Additionally, there was very little active union participation on the part of the Irvine branch in the past two years. As the Irvine campuses saw an unprecedented level of activity on its campus, and some of the largest protests in its recent history around the budget cuts, the union played little to no role in the organization of these events. It largely stayed out of the large coalition of students, workers, and professors that formed over that year. At the more immediate level of the economic life of graduate students, the majority of the bargaining team chose to ignore the issue of graduate housing, which is a major concern on this campus. Despite the fact that only 10% of graduate students have affordable housing, the issue was not considered worthwhile in the bargaining process. That issue, along with the lack of substantial economic gains caused us to oppose the contract, and the majority of our campus voted against the contract.
A group of us then decided to run for the elected positions of the union to finally have a meaningful union presence on campus, and have held elected office for the past two months. Within that time, we have worked to organize department meetings, helped organize a public social event for the union, and played a major role in coordinating the March rally against the budget cuts. We are working to make our local union play a larger role in the defense of public education in the state, coordinating with student groups and other unions on our campus. We are currently in the process of organizing campaigns to deal with the issue of the workload of our members on campus, and see this as a campaign to both defend our position as workers and students, and to defend the quality of education on the campus. We are also beginning a campaign to demand more affordable housing for students on this campus.
As we had mentioned before, the current election gives the graduate students the choice between two very different visions of the union. The current leadership has moved increasingly in the direction of running the union in a top down fashion. It’s notable that three out of four of their top candidates are no longer graduate students themselves. Ten out of twelve of the paid staff members are running on the United for Social and Economic Justice slate, including the candidate for the Irvine Unit Chair, Coral Wheeler. This vision of the union emphasizes a decision making process taken on by a small number of paid ‘experts’ with a largely passive membership. Our slate wants to reverse that trend within the union to move to a far more member run organization, allowing more decision-making power on the individual campuses and a process of decision making that is membership led. We feel that participatory democracy is not only a more ethical approach to running the union, but that this process will also produce a stronger union. It is only when the rank and file feels that they can participate in the decisions of the union that they will become active members. We encourage you to vote for the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union, April 26th-28th. For more information, see awdu.org.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
A (Not So) Short Note on the Upcoming UAW 2865 elections in Febuary
Just back from the five hours of stage-managed unpleasantness that passes for a joint council meeting at our local, I thought it would be worth the time to put out a notice on the upcoming elections in February. These elections are being held to fill the multiple vacancies that exist within the organizational structure of the union. The vast majority of offices being filled are chief steward positions, but a number of state wide offices are being filled as well, most notably, a number of trustee positions. These positions are only temporary, lasting until the next formal union election, occurring in May. Coming out of the highly contested contract negotiation process, it's not surprising that the rivalry between the 'administration caucus and the recently formed reform caucus, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) has also affected the spirit of these elections. Typically, these elections are uncontested, with only the necessary amount of candidates accepting nomination, but most of the upcoming vacancy elections are being contested, with candidates associated with each of the caucuses attempting to run for office.
The reason each of the groups is trying to fill these offices goes beyond the simple administration of the union, and providing representation for rank and file workers. In addition to this important function, there is a battle for the direction of the union. The administration caucus wants to continue following the current direction of the union, seeing the last contract fight as another in a long line of extraordinary successes. The reform caucus, on the other hand, sees the processes that got us to that contract as a set of symptoms that show the flawed nature of the current structure. Those problems take the most immediate form of irregularities in how the vote was held, but take more substantial forms when we begin to look at the nature of the negotiation process itself. I've written more about this here, but the critique largely rests on the lack of information given to the rank and file, and the lack of ways for the rank and file to participate in the fight for a better contract. The administration caucus accepted the premise that the negotiation process should operate between the people at the bargaining table, with a largely passive rank and file.
That approach is not limited to the situation during the elections. To illustrate this, I thought I would bring up the impact of the top down structures on the Irvine campus, where I reside. To begin, all forms of communication with our rank and file must pass through the central Berkeley office. Local elected officials cannot directly contact their own membership. In addition to that, the paid staff for our branch are completely out of touch with our local officials, instead reporting to the central office for instructions and to coordinate activities. We, as local activists, literally have no idea what campaigns or projects these individuals are involved in. Our work could be replicating our even contradicting that work. Finally, the leadership local literally moved the office of the local without informing our officers, aside from our truant and uninvolved unit head, Josh. The office, which is supposed allow for us to organize and coordinate our resources is inaccessible to us as activists and local elected officials. Because of this, we are unable to produce a coherent strategy of how to recruit membership, cultivate and train new organizers, and create an active and responsive structure on the ground at our university. We are told we are a grass roots and membership run organization, but elected on the ground officials are not allowed to have the responsibility to make that into a reality.
The truth is that our union, like other unions, is best described as a democratic centralist organization, power and resources move upwards to the central leadership. At its best, this structure can be extremely productive. The central leadership can be in a position to coordinate campaigns, allow for the smooth communication between extremely geographically distant workplaces, and to redistribute resources to the most urgent struggles. Additionally, the small campus organizations have access to legal aid and political structures that would be inaccessible to our tiny organizations. However, as Richard Seymour points out, for this to work, those in leadership positions in the central organization have an extraordinary responsibility put upon them. They have to use their power to allow for local organizing to flourish, rather than to act as a sort of school monitor on their communications and organizational relations. Having groups such as the reform caucus becomes a way of making that leadership responsible, because if any leadership group abandons that responsibility, it means that they can lose their positions to another group offering a more compelling vision of the union's future.
But, in addition to that, the current structure has abandoned the dialectical relationship between the leadership and the rank and file, which is at the heart of a functional democratic centralist organization. To use a term from Leninist jargon (not my favorite language in the world), the current structure of the union can be best understood to be 'ultra centralist', repressing the creative political possibilities contained in the grass roots. In addition to challenges to leadership, we need to allow for the local offices and their leadership to have more responsibility, to allow them ways to communicate directly with their rank and file, and to allow them more opportunities for horizontal communication with each other. The union is unmistakably a representative as well as a constitutive body, and that structure needs a far more federal, rather than centralized structure. That more federal structure would additionally respond to the fragmented and often decentralized nature of our workplace, allowing for more fluid and nuanced workers responses to the demands by our bosses. One does not need to read Empire to recognize that the plant structure of the mass worker is over, even in the auto industry.
Not surprisingly, I am an active participant in this process, supporting the reform oriented, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union. Within that context, I am running for one of the chief (correction: head) steward positions, along with a slate of three other people. In addition, there is a slate for the statewide offices endorsed by the reform caucus. I personally endorse these slates, and I encourage that union folks get out to vote for them. As I get permission from the folks involved, I will put up information on those campaigns, but for now, I thought I would end this posting with my own candidate statement.
The reason each of the groups is trying to fill these offices goes beyond the simple administration of the union, and providing representation for rank and file workers. In addition to this important function, there is a battle for the direction of the union. The administration caucus wants to continue following the current direction of the union, seeing the last contract fight as another in a long line of extraordinary successes. The reform caucus, on the other hand, sees the processes that got us to that contract as a set of symptoms that show the flawed nature of the current structure. Those problems take the most immediate form of irregularities in how the vote was held, but take more substantial forms when we begin to look at the nature of the negotiation process itself. I've written more about this here, but the critique largely rests on the lack of information given to the rank and file, and the lack of ways for the rank and file to participate in the fight for a better contract. The administration caucus accepted the premise that the negotiation process should operate between the people at the bargaining table, with a largely passive rank and file.
That approach is not limited to the situation during the elections. To illustrate this, I thought I would bring up the impact of the top down structures on the Irvine campus, where I reside. To begin, all forms of communication with our rank and file must pass through the central Berkeley office. Local elected officials cannot directly contact their own membership. In addition to that, the paid staff for our branch are completely out of touch with our local officials, instead reporting to the central office for instructions and to coordinate activities. We, as local activists, literally have no idea what campaigns or projects these individuals are involved in. Our work could be replicating our even contradicting that work. Finally, the leadership local literally moved the office of the local without informing our officers, aside from our truant and uninvolved unit head, Josh. The office, which is supposed allow for us to organize and coordinate our resources is inaccessible to us as activists and local elected officials. Because of this, we are unable to produce a coherent strategy of how to recruit membership, cultivate and train new organizers, and create an active and responsive structure on the ground at our university. We are told we are a grass roots and membership run organization, but elected on the ground officials are not allowed to have the responsibility to make that into a reality.
The truth is that our union, like other unions, is best described as a democratic centralist organization, power and resources move upwards to the central leadership. At its best, this structure can be extremely productive. The central leadership can be in a position to coordinate campaigns, allow for the smooth communication between extremely geographically distant workplaces, and to redistribute resources to the most urgent struggles. Additionally, the small campus organizations have access to legal aid and political structures that would be inaccessible to our tiny organizations. However, as Richard Seymour points out, for this to work, those in leadership positions in the central organization have an extraordinary responsibility put upon them. They have to use their power to allow for local organizing to flourish, rather than to act as a sort of school monitor on their communications and organizational relations. Having groups such as the reform caucus becomes a way of making that leadership responsible, because if any leadership group abandons that responsibility, it means that they can lose their positions to another group offering a more compelling vision of the union's future.
But, in addition to that, the current structure has abandoned the dialectical relationship between the leadership and the rank and file, which is at the heart of a functional democratic centralist organization. To use a term from Leninist jargon (not my favorite language in the world), the current structure of the union can be best understood to be 'ultra centralist', repressing the creative political possibilities contained in the grass roots. In addition to challenges to leadership, we need to allow for the local offices and their leadership to have more responsibility, to allow them ways to communicate directly with their rank and file, and to allow them more opportunities for horizontal communication with each other. The union is unmistakably a representative as well as a constitutive body, and that structure needs a far more federal, rather than centralized structure. That more federal structure would additionally respond to the fragmented and often decentralized nature of our workplace, allowing for more fluid and nuanced workers responses to the demands by our bosses. One does not need to read Empire to recognize that the plant structure of the mass worker is over, even in the auto industry.
Not surprisingly, I am an active participant in this process, supporting the reform oriented, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union. Within that context, I am running for one of the chief (correction: head) steward positions, along with a slate of three other people. In addition, there is a slate for the statewide offices endorsed by the reform caucus. I personally endorse these slates, and I encourage that union folks get out to vote for them. As I get permission from the folks involved, I will put up information on those campaigns, but for now, I thought I would end this posting with my own candidate statement.
"The presence of the union on our campus has been relatively low until recently. The reasons for this have been a combination of a lack of activists in steward and organizing positions and a disconnect between our branch and leadership of the local. I am running for the position of head steward to contribute to changing both situations, creating a more active union presence on the Irvine campus and working towards making the larger structures of the union relevant and responsible to the on the ground struggles of the campuses. I have been an active member of the union for six years, contributing to signing up new members, political campaigns, as well as holding the position of steward for a year. Along with that work, I have been involved in community and university organizing for over a decade. Most recently, I was involved in the organizing around the budget cuts, contributing to teach-ins, meetings, and the September 24th and March 7th demonstrations. In addition to that experience, I have been a union organizer for other unions, notably AFSCME and UFCW.
I want to draw on that experience to make the union more relevant to the lives of our rank and file members. Too often there is a disconnect between the rights that are available to us in the language of the contract and our members’ understanding of their rights. We need to work to communicate those rights, but more significantly, we need to use that process to encourage our membership to think of themselves as and to act as a participatory, membership run union, rather than simply being represented by a professional staff. Our union has also been notably absent from the day to day struggles against the university administration’s efforts to privatize the University of California system, and has fallen short in our responsibility to show solidarity with our fellow students and workers. To work towards that end, we need substantial democratic reforms in our union, and I was involved in organizing to challenge the lack of involvement on the part of the rank and file in the bargaining process, and the lack of transparency in the progress of that process.
Additionally, I am involved in the larger, long term effort to reform the union. That reform effort is committed to renewing the union’s commitment to rank and file democracy, and to taking seriously our role in the struggle for a genuinely public university. We have the capacity to transform our working conditions and, perhaps the university, as well, if we take this on collectively."
Friday, December 3, 2010
On The Results of the Vote (UAW Graduate Student Union 2865)
The advocates for the recently ratified contract between UAW 2865 and the University of California are claiming the recent vote shows a resounding support for the process. At an initial look, that may look correct. After all, the "yes" vote received a rather substantial 62% of the vote. However, this doesn't take a number of things into account. I'll begin by taking the numbers at their face value, and then bring up some potential problems with the numbers. Even if we take the numbers at their face value, the percentage of yes votes is considerably smaller than earlier contracts. This points to substantial structures of opposition that exist to the current contract. Additionally, the campuses that had students on the ground, organizing to reject the contract, overwhelmingly rejected the contract. 78% of Berkeley graduates students voted against the contract, 90% of Santa Cruz graduate students voted no, and 57% of Irvine graduate students voted no, which means the campuses that got to hear a genuine debate over the quality of the contract tended to vote against it.
Additionally, there are a number of suspicious aspects to the voting totals that came out of the election. The victory for the contract largely came out of massive votes for the contract at the San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses. Each of these campuses voted for the contract at a rate of over 90%, and more significantly, the voting percentage of members was above 40%, with San Diego at 41%, Los Angeles at 43%, and Santa Barbara at a remarkable 49%. This means that the schools who voted yes, brought in about 4% to 21% more votes than schools that voted no. This is particularly striking given the fact that the schools that supported the contract have a reputation for not being active union campuses, contrasting with the strong activist traditions such as Berkeley and Santa Cruz. The difficulty is that there is very little positive evidence for any accusations for vote rigging. There have been some problems with the voting process. In one location, a voting box was clear. There have been some problems with union officials advocating too close to the voting table, but most of these issues have been relatively minor, probably are tied up with the informalities taken in earlier elections, and don't really translate into any sort of substantial rigging of the ballots in and of themselves. Perhaps, there are revelations that will appear in the next few days, but without such material, it will be difficult to translate these suspicions into any substantial allegation. Here is a link with some of the concerns.
So the question that is put before us at this point is what is to be done at this point? There has been some muttering on the interstices about a decertification campaign. I can understand folks frustration about the process, but that is a dangerously bad idea. It would put the entire history of our bargaining process in jeopardy, in ways that union officialdom could only pretend about the current contract process. Additionally, for all the problems that have occurred within that process, the problems that we have with our union are relatively minor. One need only look at the precautions that dissident Teamsters had to take to challenge the official union line at the beginning of the Teamsters for a Democratic, often risking physical violence and death. I heard of similar circumstances with the custodial workers during my years as a student janitor. I don't intend to bring up those stores in order to dismiss our current situation, but to point out that organizations such as TDU have been able to make substantial reforms in their unions under much more precarious situations.
So as you might guess, I think the way forward is through the TDU model. We need to create and develop a reform organization within the union itself. We can use this to challenge the leadership in the upcoming elections, through a reform slate. We can use this structure to produce a new set of activists dedicated to a stronger, more participatory vision of the union. Most significantly, we can use this as a way to put ourselves in a position where we have activists overlooking the elections for all the campuses, as well as having a more militant voice on all the campuses. After all, whatever the reason, the absence of such forces on most of the campuses led to the passing of the contract. We need to capture the remaining energy from the vote no campaign, and use it to create the long term structures needed to work towards a more democratic and participatory union. There is an interesting example of this structure in Washington. (Here is their blog. Additionally, there is a organization in Berkeley.) We need to recognize that we need structure and resources to transform this small revolt into something that crosses at least the majority, if not all campuses. Unions are, at their heart, democratic centralist organization. We need structures to make sure that the leadership is accountable to an active and engaged rank and file membership.
That being said, I am by no means dismissing the remarkable activism that occurred in this campaign. Comrades from Berkeley and Santa Cruz came out with excellent material defending a no vote, and Brian Malone was particularly tireless in countering the nonsense from the leadership. (I'm probably ignoring the labor of a lot of folks who were just as tireless, I apologize, but I probably don't know you as well.) At Irvine, a small group of activists came out day and night for four days, and probably led to the campus voting no. My advocacy of organizational formality is no means a dismissal of that substantial labor. Instead, I see it as a way of creating structures and networks of communication that would allow for that labor to accomplish even more than it did. Additionally, it would give us a venue to produce a coherent counter-vision to the current business union model of the UAW, a vision that would challenge the logic of privatization that lets the top administration get millions of dollars in bonuses, while workers' salaries are cut and tuition goes up. When the union accepts the logic of the 'crisis', it legitimates the consolidation of class power that occurs under the name of 'crisis.'
Additionally, there are a number of suspicious aspects to the voting totals that came out of the election. The victory for the contract largely came out of massive votes for the contract at the San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses. Each of these campuses voted for the contract at a rate of over 90%, and more significantly, the voting percentage of members was above 40%, with San Diego at 41%, Los Angeles at 43%, and Santa Barbara at a remarkable 49%. This means that the schools who voted yes, brought in about 4% to 21% more votes than schools that voted no. This is particularly striking given the fact that the schools that supported the contract have a reputation for not being active union campuses, contrasting with the strong activist traditions such as Berkeley and Santa Cruz. The difficulty is that there is very little positive evidence for any accusations for vote rigging. There have been some problems with the voting process. In one location, a voting box was clear. There have been some problems with union officials advocating too close to the voting table, but most of these issues have been relatively minor, probably are tied up with the informalities taken in earlier elections, and don't really translate into any sort of substantial rigging of the ballots in and of themselves. Perhaps, there are revelations that will appear in the next few days, but without such material, it will be difficult to translate these suspicions into any substantial allegation. Here is a link with some of the concerns.
So the question that is put before us at this point is what is to be done at this point? There has been some muttering on the interstices about a decertification campaign. I can understand folks frustration about the process, but that is a dangerously bad idea. It would put the entire history of our bargaining process in jeopardy, in ways that union officialdom could only pretend about the current contract process. Additionally, for all the problems that have occurred within that process, the problems that we have with our union are relatively minor. One need only look at the precautions that dissident Teamsters had to take to challenge the official union line at the beginning of the Teamsters for a Democratic, often risking physical violence and death. I heard of similar circumstances with the custodial workers during my years as a student janitor. I don't intend to bring up those stores in order to dismiss our current situation, but to point out that organizations such as TDU have been able to make substantial reforms in their unions under much more precarious situations.
So as you might guess, I think the way forward is through the TDU model. We need to create and develop a reform organization within the union itself. We can use this to challenge the leadership in the upcoming elections, through a reform slate. We can use this structure to produce a new set of activists dedicated to a stronger, more participatory vision of the union. Most significantly, we can use this as a way to put ourselves in a position where we have activists overlooking the elections for all the campuses, as well as having a more militant voice on all the campuses. After all, whatever the reason, the absence of such forces on most of the campuses led to the passing of the contract. We need to capture the remaining energy from the vote no campaign, and use it to create the long term structures needed to work towards a more democratic and participatory union. There is an interesting example of this structure in Washington. (Here is their blog. Additionally, there is a organization in Berkeley.) We need to recognize that we need structure and resources to transform this small revolt into something that crosses at least the majority, if not all campuses. Unions are, at their heart, democratic centralist organization. We need structures to make sure that the leadership is accountable to an active and engaged rank and file membership.
That being said, I am by no means dismissing the remarkable activism that occurred in this campaign. Comrades from Berkeley and Santa Cruz came out with excellent material defending a no vote, and Brian Malone was particularly tireless in countering the nonsense from the leadership. (I'm probably ignoring the labor of a lot of folks who were just as tireless, I apologize, but I probably don't know you as well.) At Irvine, a small group of activists came out day and night for four days, and probably led to the campus voting no. My advocacy of organizational formality is no means a dismissal of that substantial labor. Instead, I see it as a way of creating structures and networks of communication that would allow for that labor to accomplish even more than it did. Additionally, it would give us a venue to produce a coherent counter-vision to the current business union model of the UAW, a vision that would challenge the logic of privatization that lets the top administration get millions of dollars in bonuses, while workers' salaries are cut and tuition goes up. When the union accepts the logic of the 'crisis', it legitimates the consolidation of class power that occurs under the name of 'crisis.'
Sunday, October 31, 2010
My view on the election
I just realized that I haven't utilized my somewhat small and dubious public platform to discuss the upcoming elections. We are yet again at the momentous crossroads in which, we, the public, are allowed to choose between one of two factions of wealthy property owners. It would be remiss of my esteemed position as 'public intellectual not to comment on this profound process. However, I find myself in a quandary. Who should I support? I thought that I would pose this question here to the various candidates that crowd my blog everyday, and provide a political framework, which if taken up, would lead to my endorsement, and advocacy for on this blog. I thought that the best way of framing these positions would be through a set of songs.
The Coup describe a tax policy that I can get behind....
Asian Dub Foundation provide some thoughts on immigration and a general orientation for foreign policy
The Clash take a position on our occupations...
Public Enemy offer a cogent critique of the police....
Bikini Kill critique patriarchy from an intersectional perspective
I realize that this only covers a few of the very important social problems of the country and issues of the election. I invite readers to make other suggestions for our electoral framework. Additionally, I invite all Californian politicians to explain how they will fulfill the demands contained in our platform. No doubt they will see the need for the abolition of private property, prisons, the police, white supremacy, and all patriarchal forms of domination after this thoughtful posting. I await their responses with a sovereign sense of patience.
The Coup describe a tax policy that I can get behind....
Asian Dub Foundation provide some thoughts on immigration and a general orientation for foreign policy
The Clash take a position on our occupations...
Public Enemy offer a cogent critique of the police....
Bikini Kill critique patriarchy from an intersectional perspective
I realize that this only covers a few of the very important social problems of the country and issues of the election. I invite readers to make other suggestions for our electoral framework. Additionally, I invite all Californian politicians to explain how they will fulfill the demands contained in our platform. No doubt they will see the need for the abolition of private property, prisons, the police, white supremacy, and all patriarchal forms of domination after this thoughtful posting. I await their responses with a sovereign sense of patience.
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