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Paul Moist has no ideas
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| CUPE_Reformer |
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 4:09 pm
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Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 241 Location: Real Solidarity |
Cupe Doll wrote: Something significant changed between the 2 strikes. It wasn't that we got more ideological. That's probably not even possible. It was that the most radical elements managed to eliminate every limitation on their power and manipulation of the membership.
Nobody's written much about the way this was accomplished. Nobody can write much since there was a gag order involved. But, in however general terms, I intend to tell that tale. And afterwards I'll re-post it here if anyone's interested. I look forward to reading about that. CUPE Local 3903 is not a sacred cow to me. _________________ Real Solidarity |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 6:50 pm
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
WMP, it isn't easy to specify what degree of specificity is best 
Anything leaving targets on peoples foreheads, jeopardizing safety or livelihood -- that's too specific. Pronouncing how nasty HR people have been the last few years -- that's not specific enough. That's useless. Way I'd do it is tell a more detailed story -- making sure to withhold enough info so no absolute positive id can be made. Here's another thing. Either 3903 dysfunctions and admin-side dysfunctions should be discussed separately. If sufficiently dysfunctional, surely each deserves its own thread. Or, alternately, if mingling everything dysfunctional @ York in 1 thread? Better not to forget there's no immoral equivalence. I hope that makes sense. Our 3903 tactics were not designed in reaction to anything York did or failed to do. Our tactics were designed to pressure government -- with York as the opportune point of siege. Regardless who got hurt -- or if those hurt were guilty, innocent, angelic or diabolic. |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 7:07 pm
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
Quote: I look forward to reading about that. CUPE Local 3903 is not a sacred cow to me. Hi CUPE_Reformer, just give me a couple weeks. Hard to see the forest due to falling trees right now -- couple things I've got to get to first... |
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| SharynS |
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:40 pm
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Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2940 Location: the 'puter |
Cupe Doll wrote: But I'd appreciate a little more specificity.  The Third Element wrote: ...and I have spoken with York people in the past about the goings on there. Spit it out 3E, what impressions did you get or conclusions did you draw? I don't know about anyone else but I will need a clue. _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie |
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| The Third Element |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:37 am
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 368 |
York University BU members and York Management are very insular and I have spoken with 4 or 5 of them over the last few years, in person. By insular I mean they don't think anyone can understand what their jobs entail. They, seemingly more than other universities. I had an argument with a fellow (a lively discussion really) who tried to explain that seniority is the only measure at York as it is impossible to quantify the job of teaching. You can't just "measure" how well someone teaches, it *only* comes with experience.
I have had the same argument with teachers out here about those exams that they don't want, the ones that measure how well a given school does versus another, and by association, how the teachers in that school measure up. (I cannot for the life of me remember the acronym for those tests). Anyway, I got into another discussion when I gave a suggestion a friend of mine came up with where a school's budget would be reduced to valued "cubits". (This is an hypothetical explanation that turned into an idea.) The school would have "X" number of these cubits to distribute within the programs at the school, described by their budget limits. Award of additional pay cubits would be dependent upon the teacher's involvement in extracurricular programs. So, if an English teacher wanted to coach the volleyball team, she would get an extra cubit above her allotment for teaching English. If you just want to teach your class, then you only get the base amount. Anyway... I got into another testy discussion about this and it was offensive to the York administration member I was talking to. This was not BU, this was management. I wasn't suggesting they go out and do this, it was in response to the idea that organized labour in a university simply *has* to exist, it just *is*. My closest analogy is the "Judge". A judge is just an old lawyer. You can't get to be a judge unless you were a lawyer. So, reform of the judicial system is dependent upon legal professionals deciding that they have been wrong all along and there may be a better way. You can see where I can go with this in organized labour but let's not side-rail this thread anymore than that. York is so far left that my opinions, as you can imagine, do not sit well with their Administration, much less their unions. _________________ No Beast so fierce knows but some small amount of pity, but I know none and so I am no beast. ~ Richard III |
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| SharynS |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 3:27 pm
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Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2940 Location: the 'puter |
I'm not too concerned about derailing anything, I will once the thread picks a note.
Interesting that you recognize or have identified "left" as the probable culprit of YU's (obvious) turmoil (Left thought: turmoil is not a bad thing). Are you saying that if it (they) all turned Right, conflicts would vanish? Good point, if people were all the same. That may be our system's end game but so far - and perhaps not until everyone drinks from the walkerton supply - it's not the reality. Before I read your conclusion 3E my first impression was of a learning institution waking up (or trying) in a System vortex. In that context, I would think trying to resolve conflicts like you've described or that YU is experiencing, would be the same as trying to decide which side of a circle to stand on. Too bad mom's, when they told us to look left and right before crossing the street, didn't tell us to also look ahead and behind. _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:19 pm
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
The Third Element wrote: York is so far left that my opinions, as you can imagine, do not sit well with their Administration, much less their unions. It's not that I disagree with your assessment, 3E. And what you describe does ring bells. But the dysfunction inside 3903 has risen to a whole different, epic scale. The dysfunction inside 3903 doesn't care less where on any spectrum -- social, political, economic, bureaucratic -- York admin perches. We couldn't care less. We have no desire to alter York University. What we want is revolution. But, soft and privileged as we are -- we won't put ourselves at real risk. That's why YorkU is perfect for us. It keeps providing us all the students we can legally hold hostage. So we can bear real pressure on government to concede our demands. |
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| SharynS |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 5:58 pm
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Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2940 Location: the 'puter |
Quote: So we can bear real pressure on government to concede our demands. _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:30 pm
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
Nah. It doesn't matter what we would demand.
It's always wrong when unelected special interests can force government to concede their demands. It makes society more totalitarian. You know? Less free and less democratic. Way less. But never mind bigger pictures. Let's have fun with this. Don't you know what we'd demand if we won the class war? One way or another, we would demand government start abolishing your private property so we can have more of it. Except we would phrase it a little more carefully than that. Like, abolish private property so working classes can have more. Except we're not among working classes. We're the privileged ones. Which is why we exploit our students so bad. Why we expropriate not only their means of production. Also their production of meaning. And the very meaning of their productivity. |
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| SharynS |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 12:03 am
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Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2940 Location: the 'puter |
Quote: It doesn't matter what we would demand. Quote: One way or another, we would demand government start abolishing your private property so we can have more of it. _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 1:29 am
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
Quote: Yes it does matter. Nope. Not in even somewhat free and democratic societies. Since forcing governments to concede undemocratic demands is contrary to anything even remotely democratic. It's totalitarian. There's no such thing as a good coup in an even somewhat free and democratic society. Quote: CD will need to explain to me how a small local union, comprised mostly of nine to five'rs could possibly be categorized as .. privileged.. Among ourselves? We refer to working for YorkU as "The Gravy Train". Since our work is so limited -- yet our pay is so great. There really isn't anything sweeter than being a part-time public servant. It is so *not* nine-to-five. I'll fill you in just how sweet it is if you like. More important? We're beyond privileged relative to our students. Since we are the ones exploiting them. See? A small, privileged leisure class of public servants exploiting our own students as hostage pawns in order to force government to concede our demands. It's brilliant. Quote: .. explain to me how a small local union.. could possibly be categorized as .. special interest... SharynS? Think. It'll come to you. If not? Then no point explaining. Quote: That reads like a line right out of the Right wing war on communism manual.
Nice zinger. 
Nevertheless. That's exactly what we would demand. Infinite public funding expropriated from private hands -- since ultimately there's no other source -- and made available on (our) demand. The reason how I expressed it? It wasn't to scare you or anyone else. It was to ridicule. To show how funny the contradiction is. Abolishing so we can have more. See? I love the idea of abolishing private property. Were it done democratically? It would be fantastic. But abolishing so we can have more? Doing it by undemocratic coup? That just sucks rodent holes. |
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| wm pasz |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:12 am
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Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 1219 Location: Toronto |
Let's clear up some misconceptions and myths about YU and Local 3903. The local is the largest union at YU. Its members fall into 3 units. The two largest groups are: Unit 1 which consists of graduate students who work as teaching assistants. These are essentially part-time workers who lead tutorials, grade papers and similar work. Whatever their issues, they are the highest paid teaching assistants in Canada. Unit 2 is made up of contract faculty. They teach undergraduate courses and are again, the highest paid contract faculty in Canada. (There is also a Unit 3 which is made up of graduate assistants).
The local has acquired a lot of power for two main reasons: YU has become dependent on its members to teach a substantial number of courses (about 50% of undergraduate courses are taught by Unit 2 members ) and its willingness to strike and to wait out the administration until the point of no return (the point where students will lose their term if a settlement is not reached). For all the attention that its leaders' political views receive, their major bargaining demands have been economic. All of the major issues in the last round of bargaining were economic. In fact, in the entire 160 or so pages of their initial proposal, I don't recall seeing any “change the world” type items. So, while I don't doubt that the leaders' are genuinely commited to a broader political agenda, they're agenda at bargaining is all about the money. The Ontario government didn't give 3903 anything. It legislated them back to work. The back to work legislation referred their unresolved items to binding arbitration and required the arbitrator to take into consideration, among other things, YU's ability to pay when determining the terms of their new agreement. The two sides eventually reached a mediated settlement with the assistance of the arbitrator who had been appointed to preside over the binding arbitration process. The settlement was not far off of YU's final offer which the local voted to reject a few weeks earlier. To call YU a “left” organization is an oversimplification. YU is a complex community made up of many constituent groups (students, faculty, administrators, blue collar workers, professionals, student workers, etc.). Within these constituencies there are left-oriented people but there are also right wingers, centrists and many who are apolitical. The leadership of Local 3903 may be left-oriented but many of its members embrace other political views. Similarly, the faculty association – YUFA – the most powerful union at YU, has its share of left-wingers but it also has many rather conservative members. Although the university is known for socially progressive programs like women's studies, social sciences, political science, labour studies, etc., it also has a prestigious business school, law school, science and engineering program – it's not all about sitting in a circle and singing Kumbayah. Senior leaders at YU are, IMHO, not left wingers. (They're not right wingers either.) And the bureaucracy – which runs the place – is mostly apolitical. Bureaucrats, especially bureaucrats-on-steroids, have not use for ideology. They go with the flow in whatever direction will help them boost their fame. If any have strong ideological leanings, they keep these to themselves. Expressing political points of view in a bureaucratic role is a career-limiting move. That said, the lefty image and heavily unionized environment has been used out for years as an excuse by pretty much everyone in the community for explaining (and doing nothing about) YU's strained labour relations and conflict-prone community landscape. People believe these excuses because they don't understand enough about what's causing their problems and what can be done to address them. This, IMHO, has been due to the dearth of HR and labour relations expertise in YU's administrative silo. You can't run a 21st century knowledge organization with huge intellectual capacity the way you might run a factory in the 1950's. That my friends is what is at the heart of YU's problems with its numerous employee groups – not just local 3903. Now, if CP is still reading, I will say that I'm not blaming YU administration exclusively for the state of the relationship with your local. 3903 presents certain challenges from a labour relations perspective. It's not comprised of conventional workers, employed in conventional working arrangements, with conventional employment interests. That said, however, YU isn't the only employer on the planet that has a challenging union to deal with. In the world of labour relations, it's ultimately up to an employer to take the lead in turning a bad situation around. Labour relationships are like any other relationships. People stuck in a bad relationship from which they can't escape do certain predictable things: They blame each other, try to rationalize the bad relationship, blame their problems on forces beyond their control and to do nothing until the other party changes their evil ways. Analyzing each of these two parties on its own can be useful but at some point you have to look at them together. Unions and employers are connected to each other. They influence each other's organizational culture and often reflect each other's behaviour. You can't really understand one without analyzing the other. CD – I sense a certain frustration on your part with the way things are. What is it that you think should be done to improve things? _________________ Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. - Malcolm X |
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| SharynS |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 2:13 am
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Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 2940 Location: the 'puter |
Quote: If not? Then no point explaining. Quote: There's no such thing as a good coup in an even somewhat free and democratic society. That aside, you've yet to tell us what you think should happen or what should have happened. Given the YU climate as concisely laid out by wm, how could this dispute have been resolved fairly. Who would or should have taken the lumps or perhaps you don't believe there were grounds for a dispute at all - do tell. Specificity counts. _________________ Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:55 am
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
wm pasz wrote: I don't recall seeing any “change the world” type items. So, while I don't doubt that the leaders' are genuinely commited to a broader political agenda, they're agenda at bargaining is all about the money. No WMP. Our whole strategy was precisely to NOT obtain realistic financial increments. Our strategy was to not be realistic at all. It was to demand the impossible. Why demand the impossible? To deadlock York. Why deadlock York? To jeopardize or destroy the academic year. To bring about such damage to York and to 50000 student hostages that the hands of government would become forced to concede our future demands. In even simpler terms? Our strategy was to always pretend negotiating in best faith. To always blame York for refusing to negotiate at the table. But meanwhile? To always kneecap York under the table instead of negotiating. And then to blame York as acting in bad faith when refusing to sit at the same table with us. The biggest problem was our own bargaining teams. Kept forgetting it was their job to NOT bargain. That's why our leadership forbade our bargaining teams to bargain. Until more general membership came (about 800 of us) and forced our leadership to let the bargaining teams bargain. So that our leadership was forced to pull some fairly outlandish crap to ensure bargaining couldn't proceed in good faith (Paul Moist mentioned some of that crap). But our leadership need not have bothered. They could have safely counted on us. Because on the eve of back to work legislation? We 3903s agreed to go right back to our most impossible demands. To roll the clock all the way back to November 5th. Don't want to believe it, WMP? Can't blame you one bit. But it's hard not to. You don't even have to take my word for it, WMP. These beans have long since been thoroughly spilled. Eric Newstadt for one example, in the very first paragraph of “The Neoliberal University: Looking at the York Strike”, wrote: ".. .. the tenor of the action was and remains pitched firmly at rolling back the “neoliberal university”…" Tyler Shipley, pretty much in the same breath as vehemently denying our "leading members gleamed with revolutionary ardour", went on to declaim in “Demanding the Impossible: Struggles for the Future of Post-Secondary Education” how YorkU “has embodied the troubling neoliberal shift,” how “the neoliberal university replicates itself in ever more nefarious forms” and how we must all become “more militant” challenging “the neoliberal status quo.” And how are we more militant 3903s supposed to challenge the entire “neoliberal“ status quo? Shipley doesn’t leave us hanging in the dark. He can’t. Because Shipley doesn’t just gleam revolutionary ardour. He blazes the whole-hogging militant trail for us: Quote: .. ‘demand the impossible’ and leave university administrators no choice but to demand, in turn, adequate funding from the province… Demanding more than what is currently ‘possible’ is simply insisting that the state alter the circumstances that define that ‘possibility’… Thus, Tyler Shipley makes the record how we struck out not just clear — but indelible. We were never out there to better membership working conditions — which we believed were best in our sector anyway. Contrary to our strike mandate, contrary to any principle of democratic governance, we were out to force YorkU’s hand to in turn force the hands of government. How? Obviously. By bringing about an intransigent hostage situation. By exploiting 50,000 York students as hostage pawns. We struck for an unelected coup to force the hands of governance — and it worked. We totally forced all hands. Against us. See, WMP? You don't have to take my word for it. Trust in Tyler Shipley, our media bro, to spill all the beans. Quote: CD – I sense a certain frustration on your part with the way things are. What is it that you think should be done to improve things?
For now, WMP, I'm trying to clarify, expose and implement honesty as the best policy. I actually do trust in that to "improve things". And do feel free to introduce the admin into the mix. I won't get frustrated again. I'll just repeat -- again: our 3903 tactics were not designed in reaction to anything York did or failed to do. Our tactics were designed to pressure government -- with York as the opportune point of siege. Regardless who got hurt -- or if those hurt were guilty, innocent, angelic or diabolic. |
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| Cupe Doll |
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 6:24 am
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Joined: 06 Jan 2010 Posts: 69 Location: Toronto |
Quote: Or you can't, which is fine too. There's no need to explain how a small local pressuring government becomes "special interest". Quote: From my vantage I'd say it's every person (or group of persons) v. what I would deem the traditional special interest groups which can purchase the system - and have. That's a huge topic, SharynS. Would you at least agree that while Canadian democracy isn't fully genuinely democratic -- that it nevertheless is somewhat democratic? If you would agree that much then my point (that our 3903 tactics are bad for Canadian democracy) can stand undefended.. Quote: .. perhaps you don't believe there were grounds for a dispute at all.. You could put it that way -- and not be all wrong summarizing where I'm coming from. Put it this way -- in your terms. Our "dispute" with YorkU was a fraud. But we needed to capitulate YorkU hard enough in order to force the hands of government. We needed to do major damage to YorkU. Major enough so the government couldn't politically take it. That's who our real fight was with. The elected Government of Ontario. And yeah -- there were no grounds for disputing with the government. No democratic grounds, anyhow. Quote: .. you've yet to tell us what you think should happen.. But I do keep telling. I'm out to expose, clarify and implement honesty as the best policy. Just that. Just more general awareness will go a long way to curing the dysfunction inside my loco local. |
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