Kennedy vs grad students

[berlin at socrates.berkeley.edu]

Well, that's a snide article. I'm a Berkeley graduate student instructor. 
The UC president finally capitulated this week and said he'd allow
elections. That strike three months ago was really depressing even though
we 'won' in record time (perhaps only 12 hours of picketing per person
over 4 days) - only 2 people out of about 60 in my department
participated. I would guess that most people in my department have no clue
about the basic issues involved, and would have no opinion about the
points that Paul Kennedy raises here. I wouldn't even bring the topic up
among people in my lab. People don't realize that they're going to have a
1 billion expected budget shortfall next year, due to hangover from
decisions made during the Pete Wilson regime, and they're going to have to
deal with this somehow - the perspective that people seem to unanimously
hold is that a union is something that unhappy workers form after
conditions have reached an intolerable point - that it's a selfish insult
to the administration or 'boss' to say that you favor it.
Christine


> [Grad students as workers? Ha ha ha!]
> 
> Wall Street Journal - March 25, 1999
> 
> Commentary
> The International Brotherhood Of Eggheads
> 
> By Paul Kennedy, a professor of history at Yale University.
> 
> Given the excitement of NATO's military strikes in the Balkans, even the
> most avid newspaper readers may have missed reports that graduate students
> at the University of California, Los Angeles, voted on Monday in
> overwhelming numbers to form a union affiliated with the United Auto
> Workers, and that their brethren at seven other University of California
> campuses may soon follow suit.
> 
> Before rushing to conclude that we have here just another example of the
> unreal world of the West Coast, readers should note that this is a national
> trend. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the UAW already
> represents graduate students at the University of Massachusetts and has a
> bid for similar representation at New York University. The Communication
> Workers of America represents graduate assistants at most of the larger
> campuses of the State University of New York, and have bids in at Indiana