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[splendiferous]

This doesn't necessarily seem like the place to post this, but I couldn't find a better place, so, apologies in advance. In a sense, however, this is about diversity in universities, and about what happens to the least well-off people in them...

Is anyone else following the service workers' strike in the UC system? I was pretty shocked by some of what I read, such as that (according to the union) 96 percent of service employees qualify for public assistance.

My own university seems to have become more economically polarized over the years (with the president making much more than ever, but hiring becoming more limited -- which I fear can only get worse with the state of the economy), but we're not on this level... I don't think.

This article describes university employees getting cans out of the garbage for gas money, and being told by the university that this is stealing...!

http://socialistworker.org/2008/07/17/uc-strikers-shows-their-streng

[jacaranda_]

Thanks for posting this link, and I think this is as good a forum as any for starting discussion.  I was in grad school at a UC campus, and I think this situation is dreadful.  I imagine this is a very bad time for these employees to get much out of the university system, given the financial state that California is in these days.  Perhaps it will, for the moment, protect some of these workers from becoming easy targets in any creative budget-cutting strategies on each campus.

ps: I just tried reloading the article, and it's gone!  I was able to read it this morning, so I saved a pdf, but why do you think the article was taken down?  I think you should be able to link to a cached version of the article here:

http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:4CMirhDoVU4J:socialistworker.org/2008/07/17/uc-strikers-shows-their-streng+%22UC+strikers+shows+their+strength%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us 

[splendiferous]

Here's a new link; it seems that the article was simply moved, although why I can't say:
http://socialistworker.org/2008/07/17/uc-strikers-show-their-strengt

My university is crying "state budget cuts" also, which I expect to get much worse over the coming years. (Call me cynical, but I am really scared about this economy.) It does seem disingenuous, though, when some in universities are making upwards of half a million dollars -- university presidents, some sports coaches, some in the medical schools... if the budget crises are so bad, then why is this pay increasing so quickly? And maybe more importantly, how motivated are university leaders going to be to improve the living standards of their workers when their own are continuing to rise to much?

At the school where I did my MA, when they raised tuition by close to 20% one year, the incredibly-well-compensated president voluntarily gave up his bonus that year. And then lectured students upset about the tuition hike by explaining that this was a "sacrifice" for his family. Let's just say that did not go over very well.

[splendiferous]

...And, sorry to make 3 of 4 posts in this thread my own (this is a surprisingly low-traffic forum!), but here's another article on this:

"Lessons from the Picket Line"
http://socialistworker.org/2008/07/23/lessons-from-the-picket-line

I thought the part about understanding what it will take to win was interesting, as was the spelling out of the vision of something better at the end.

[jacaranda_]

I guess we can have a private little conversation over in this corner then!  I'm going to guess that you are pretty new to the boards, but you've probably read a few of the other threads in this particular forum, and most of them seem to turn into snarkfests very quickly.  That's partly why you can hear all those crickets. 

I appreciated reading the account by the one striker that you posted, and I'm glad to know that there is a little good news so far.  I wonder how involved any of the grad students are with this strike, if only in sympathy.  There was a lot going on when I was in school there -- affirmative action, unionizing grad students.  And the undergraduates were a pretty amazing force, too.  I wonder how any of this might shift when everyone's back on campus.  A five-day strike with thousands of garbage-generating students would be quite a different scenario, don't you think?

[splendiferous]

I wonder how any of this might shift when everyone's back on campus.  A five-day strike with thousands of garbage-generating students would be quite a different scenario, don't you think?

Good point! I also wonder about the role of grad student unions in this.

At the place where I did my MA, during the time I was there the grad student union went on strike. Although they received some support from undergraduates -- there was an undergrad solidarity group and some undergrads walked the picket lines -- most undergrads were not very supporting.

In part I think this reflected the elite nature of the school -- many undergrads there expected, maybe rightly, to leave and get high-paying jobs themselves, so the level of identification with unions in general was pretty low -- but I also always wondered if the union could have been more effective in countering the university propaganda. The grad student union's message to undergrads focused mostly on their classroom experience, which for many I think was secondary to their economic concerns.

The university's message to undergrads, who'd seen massive tuition hikes, was that greedy grad student TAs were responsible for their tuition going up. This was very disingenuous on the university's part (since it kept raising tuition anyway, paid the university president hundreds of thousands of dollars, etc). But I wonder if the grad students could have been more effective had they addressed this more directly -- maybe something like, "This university isn't going to reflect any of our needs until we stop making it run like a business. That's why they raise your tuition and why they underpay us, and it's why tuition is MORE likely to come under control if we win"?

Anyway, it's heartening for me to hear that in your time at Berkeley, there was good undergrad involvement. (I remember when the UC system abolished affirmative action, but I wasn't very politically conscious then.)

p.s. Yes, I am pretty new here. I've read First Person for a while, but the message boards are a new procrastination tool...