(A fellow named Dominic Pino wrote an interesting article on America’s Unions and public sector participation recently. It happened to echo some other reverberations about the Teacher’s collectives whose donations helped finance the Covid-related school shut-downs in the pandemic. They say a generation of school-kids will be affected. There is more coming. Take a walk with us this morning, if you will. Image Livia Gordon, 2016).
First off, this is not intended to be an anti-union screed. There is plenty of that around these days as it is. We remind you that members of the Socotra House Writer’s Section and their families proudly served in labor and institutional collective bargaining groups for years. But there is something else going on at the moment you may not be aware of, so for better or worse, here it is.
We could have talked about the State of the Union Address this morning. The President made his annual summary remarks a few days ago. With the election looming, it had extraordinary publicity given his recent quite apparent cognitive decline. Ratings were reported as “up” by 32 million viewers. You understand we are a little suspicious of “truth” these days we cannot independently verify.
We did not watch it, since in order to inspire the citizenry of the Left Coast, the Right Coast (which is only a direction, not an orientation) had to stay awake well after 9:00PM. That is past our current bed-time, something we share with the Chief Executive, and there was no opportunity to reflect our immediate reaction to his words.
Those were provided by his often sycophant media, so we decided to wait until this weekend presented a chance to personally review the recorded remarks. This morning we completed that progress and decided to let the matter rest until next year and see where things will have changed, if at all.
There is another interesting development in the news this morning. Dominic reported it as a simple matter of fact. “The largest union filing of this year so far is by the non-tenure track faculty at Harvard.”
There was controversy about it this morning at Big Pink. You may be aware of recent controversy over the views of senior Harvard’s tenured faculty, which included the resignation that of the President of the University and their enormous fund of This is not an unusual occurrence, so forgive us if this issue is a little outre for those of us who collectively served in large organizations funded almost exclusively by our national government and funded (without variance) by you, a taxpayer.
First, like our routine disclaimer, the views expressed here by independent contract contributors do not necessarily represent those of Socotra House management or staff. The other is that we are no longer active members of either United Autoworkers Union (UAW) Local 538 or the Kenowa Hills Public School District Teacher’s collective.
Both are located in the civic concentration represented by the workers and educators of the Grand Rapids area of western Michigan.
The latter was Mom’s union, the one she had no alternative to joining. We still recall her resentment to being forced to walk a picket line one sunny Fall days. She didn’t believe it was appropriate. The former aggregation of laborers assembled Kelvinator-brand appliances in an 1880s-era brick structure across town.
People are free to assemble with whomever they choose, and that is a good thing. Our shop-steward on our art of the electric stove line was proficient at protesting unreasonable manufacturing steps that oppressed out shift. But we are far beyond that now, Mom separated by her tomb and the rest of us by disbelief at what has happened to organized labor since we were active contributors.
The matter came up a few months ago with a revelation. Our former collective representation started as a labor group composed of workers, some skilled and others not- who built Henry Ford’s seminal product for the US auto industry. You would be surprised, as we were, to discover that more than half the UAW laborers have nothing to do with producing cars!
The UAW once had 1.5 million members, which given the smaller national population on that particular day in recent past was pretty impressive. Today, the UAW is down to a third of its former strength- 380,000 members- and they represent a broad range of workers. More than a quarter work in higher education.
As such, they can rightly be described as “public sector” laborers, or those who do work in the public interest, like teach in most schools or patch our bedraggled roadways. As you might imagine, that gives them unique and sometimes intrusive influence over strike activity, and the attendant impact on students and commuters. Among others.
Maybe part of a larger social story this morning, as non-tenure track faculty at Harvard are also joining the UAW. As are the athletes in the Dartmouth Ivy-League NCAA program. Could this lead to some interesting strikes?
Considering this includes employees in a variety crafts, guilds and trades for 3,100 employees or appointees who perform direct or indirect instruction or research at the Cambridge hallmark institution. Those include non-tenured faculty at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s Medical School and the Divinity School. The range of responsibility includes Lecturers, Adjunct Senior Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Postdoctoral Research Fellows, Instructors, Teaching Assistants, Associates, College Fellows, Curriculum Fellows, Curriculum and Pedagogy Managers, Fellows, Junior Fellows, Peirce Fellows, Preceptors, Assistant Directors, Directors, Research Assistants, Research Associates, Research Fellows, Research Scientists, Researchers, and Engineers.
There are also those Excluded from unionization of course, since Harvard is renowned for excellence, which apparent includes the following categories of labor: Continuing Education, Dumbarton Oaks, the Center for Hellenic Studies; undergraduate students; Professors in Residence; Professors of the Practice; Professors Emeriti; visitors with a primary tenure-track appointment at higher institutions of learning plus the Supervisors, managers, and guards as defined in Act; and of course “all employees already represented by another union.”
That is a matter of solidarity as you well know, and we must move forward, marching together.
We suppose there is a reasonable argument for organizing this traditionally non-union work force. The most compelling factor is that the terms “Tenured” and “Non-tenured” employees had actually established such grounds long ago. This new categorization has a somewhat more companion adopted by the athletic participants in Dartmouth College’s NCAA sports program.
We needn’t point out that scholarship-based athletics are already subject to objective standards of performance. Those were called “winning” and “losing,” but that is one of those now-archaic concepts subject to dramatic revision by new and arbitrary standards.
We assume these will be extended to all schools with either academic or athletic standards from the old and superseded standards.
Back when some of us resided in Grand Rapids, those still had some applications. Now, it appears they do not. The new standards potentially have some impact in terms of performance, not to mention relevance. But this is the world we are marching into, and it has little to do with how things used to work, for good or ill.
Welcome to a brand-new world. One in which we can all organize, whether we like it or not! Or afford it!
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com