Investigating UC

Here’s a sampling of the investigative work Zachary Williams, the UCLA AWDU candidate for Recording Secretary, has done over the course of the past few months. For even more analysis, visit Zach’s website, Good In Theory.

1) A retrospective analysis of union transparency made during the previous triennial election, focusing especially upon communication with the membership during our last contract vote.

2) A brief account of why tuition hikes matter for the security of graduate students.

3) A comparative investigation into the UC’s use of increasingly prevalent ‘general revenue’ and ‘student tuition’ pledge structures, which finance capital projects by pledging student tuition.

4) A rough investigation into the UC’s budget and how much it spends on instruction relative to its other costs.  This post is typical of many investigations he’s made into the tuition hikes and how tuition relates to the UC budget as a whole.  These investigations give a good idea of the room UC has to actually increase outlays on instruction, including for TAs.

Prelude to an Activist

by Erin Conley

I’ve been thinking a lot about activation lately.  Each time I wander over to Occupy Los Angeles I inevitably overhear someone talking about the thrill of being involved in a political protest for the first time.  My feeling is that for many people camping out by City Hall, the Occupy movement is the first time politics has felt accessible and real.  They may have been angry before, but it took something bigger than a feeling to spark their participation.  I can sympathize with that.  I keep wanting to identify an origin point for myself.  I keep needing to rationalize the decisions I’ve made in the last few months to sacrifice sleep and school, to worry my parents, and to constantly wonder if I’m doing enough.  I don’t think I’ve pinned down exactly what made me run for office last spring, but I have some thoughts that I wanted to share.

When I was a kid, my dad would respond to uncertainty and conflict with two maxims: never make a bet you aren’t sure you can win, and always treat people the way you would want to be treated.  As a secularized Golden Rule, the second maxim stuck with me the most as I got older. That second maxim is why in the tenth grade my debate team started calling me Buffy the Cheerleader Slayer after I defaced a spirit banner urging the Emporia High Spartans to “Scalp the [Wichita East] Indians.”

But it’s a long way to jump from Buffy to activism.  At the University of Kansas, I joined the TA union, ignored an organizer pleading for people to be on the bargaining team, and sat back while others fought for my gains. Things were different when I moved to California.  At the urging of a friend I attended my first monthly membership meeting and it was a terrible experience.  Palpable discord sullied any sense of productivity at the meeting, but afterward I headed over to Brewco with some people I learned later were AWDU activists.  We talked together about the problems we saw in our departments—the uneven workloads, the growing class sizes, the decreased funding.  And we talked about the problems we saw with the union—the lack of transparency, the weak contract, the bureaucratic collaboration.  That’s when I wrote my name down on a sheet of paper where someone had scribbled “Head Steward.”  Something inside of me was stirred by that membership meeting—a feeling of powerlessness, a sense of being screwed over, I don’t know.  But that’s when I signed on.  It was scary and empowering, overwhelming and exhilarating, and for the first time I felt like I was part of something important.

This self-reflective fugue of mine has made me realize how much traction my dad’s first maxim has held in my life.  I’ve made countless pros and cons lists and carefully calculated every major decision to correspond to a privileged idea of success.  I never took a real risk because I only made sure bets—and those were only sure bets because I took advantage of a system set up to help me succeed at the expense of others.

There were no lists when I decided to sit in the UAW office for two weeks waiting for those ballots to get counted.  Every time I’m in that building I get an intense feeling of anxiety coupled with deep affection for the people who sat there with me.  There’s a strong social motivation for sticking with AWDU.  I care about these people in a very profound way, but I’m also here because I have this feeling that I’m finally acting in a way that reflects the lesson I always wanted to embrace, that second maxim of my dad’s.  I would want people to fight for me, and so now I fight.  Sometimes I think about the courage of my new friends who know so much about labor and social justice, who’ve been arrested and beaten by cops, who take honest-to-god risks for their convictions every day.  I feel like I’ve walked into the middle of their conversation and I’ll probably never catch up.  What I don’t know always seems to overwhelm what I’ve learned.  But I’m trying, and that’s why I need to eject the first maxim from my life.

That’s also why I’m excited about our local’s support of ReFund California, a statewide movement to expose how deeply unpopular and harmful “austerity” cuts are for most Californians.  Partnering with community groups, faith based organizations, and labor unions, ReFund California will stage a series of actions in cities across the state to demand Wall Street pay for the havoc it continues to wreak on Main Street.  Recently a group of activists marched on the Bank of American in downtown LA and tried to cash a check for the amount of money it would take to help save California families from foreclosure.  In the same week, ReFund California activists marched on the Bel Air home of one of California’s wealthiest bankers and crashed an exclusive meeting of bankers at the Balboa Yacht Club in Orange County to make the same demands.  Little by little people are taking action, and very soon, I think, we’ll start to see some change.

Great News: Election Appeals Have Been Dropped!

Academic Workers for a Democratic Union applauds the decision by the USEJ supporters who had previously lodged an appeal to the outcome of the last election, to withdraw their appeal.

As the appellants stated:
“We believe it is in the interest of our Local Union membership and the labor movement for us to focus our energy on building the power of our membership and on fighting off the attacks from corporate and right wing powers. At this time it is crucial to work on establishing unity rather than divisiveness.“

We too agree that focusing our energies on building the power of our membership and fighting corporate power should be the highest priority. This is true especially given recent weeks’ historic mobilization of youth and workers fighting to re-define our society’s priorities at the ongoing Wall Street occupations. Right now, we face a unique opportunity to fight against the cuts to our university and the public sector, to fight against the attacks on working people and unions across the country, and to unite our members behind this struggle for justice and equity.

We are pleased about the coalitions already formed within campuses, across campuses and across the community of people fighting for public education and for a more equitable society. We look forward to working with all academic workers, present and future members alike, to strengthen our movement.

As the appeals hearing with representatives of the UAW International is still going forward, we look forward to taking the time to continue discussing the elections procedures about which AWDU had raised concerns well before the last election took place. In our revitalized local, with more and more participants at every level, it is imperative that we continue our effort for all union procedures to be fair and as efficient as possible.

UCLA AWDU’s Statement of Support for GSA Resolution

On May 25^th, the UCLA Graduate Student Assembly voted on a resolution, written and proposed by GSA Director of Communications Jason Ball and GSA Vice President of Internal Affairs Luis Limon, condemning the administration’s unilateralism, especially with regard to budgeting decisions.  Backed by statements of support from UCLA AWDU, UCLA Fights Back, and UC-AFT President Bob Samuels, the GSA approved the resolution unanimously, with one abstention. Below is our written statement of support. For the full text of the GSA resolution, click here.

UCLA AWDU Statement in Support of the GSA Forum Resolution:

Condemnation of Administration’s Unilateralism and Demand for Democratic Budgeting

The UCLA chapter of the reform movement, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union, fought for democratization within our union not simply in order to have a more inclusive union, but in order to have a more effective union capable of participating in the governance of the UC insofar as it affects our members as student-workers – that is to say, in order to democratize our university.

Like the stated aim of this GSA resolution, one of our goals is an increased role in making the budgetary decisions which directly affect us as student workers.  In light of the strategies deployed by UCOP in our recent contract battle, which used the same obstructionist and obscurantist tactics – showing up late to meetings, failing to provide requested information, unilaterally setting the terms of negotiation, and in general attempting to keep our bargaining team in the dark and out of the negotiating room – we feel that this resolution is a necessary step in calling out the UC for its attempt to make decisions about the character of public education in California without giving students, workers, and faculty the power to shape our university’s future.

As fellow graduate students, graduate student researchers, and graduate and undergraduate TAs, readers, and tutors, UCLA AWDU recommends the ratification of this resolution.  The UC and UCLA management will not even do the bare minimum of giving us adequate access to the information it uses and the forums in which it decides.  In light of such practices, we must not let the fact that they do nominally give us some access conceal their concerted effort to exclude us from decision making.  We cannot let formal inclusion paper over real exclusion in the hope that, at some point, we will be listened to.  If we are not exercising power, we should not participate in legitimizing the administration’s decisions.

Signed on by:

Kyle Arnone (UAW Local 2865 Trustee, UCLA Sociology)
Carolina Beltran (UCLA Spanish and Portuguese)
Erin Conley (Candidate for Head Steward, UCLA English)
Renee Hudson (Candidate for Head Steward, UCLA English)
Dustianne North (UCLA Social Welfare)
Alexei Nowak (Candidate for Head Steward, UCLA Comparative Literature)
Althea Sircar (UCLA Political Science)
Julia Tomassetti (Candidate for Head Steward, UCLA Sociology)
Zachary Williams (Candidate for Head Steward, UCLA Political Science)
Elise Youn (UCLA Urban Planning)

Supported by quorum on May 25, 2011 by:

UCLA AWDU

Statement drafted by Zachary Williams

A Note on the Recent Statewide Membership Meeting

The following account of the May 21st Statewide Membership Meeting was written by Robert Wood, a doctoral student and TA in comparative literature at UC Irvine. While the meeting had the largest number of participants ever in UAW 2865 history – 144 attendees from 8 UC campuses – the atmosphere was contentious and difficult at times. We encourage you to read on to get a sense of what the mood of the meeting was like, what members decided on there, and how we hope to improve on the existing culture of UAW 2865 meetings to make them more enjoyable spaces for rank-and-file participation and empowerment.

“…The meeting had opened with a fairly triumphant and, to be honest, somewhat vindictive, mood.  There was a large crowd of AWDU supporters and small coterie of USEJ candidates and future office holders, and the former group responded to our new president, Cheryl Deutsch’s comments about the future of the union with enthusiasm.  Deutsch offered a succinct and thoughtful explanation of the [recent UAW 2865 triennial] election, as well as of the victorious AWDU slate.  The latter group [the USEJ leadership] immediately challenged the legitimacy of the meeting during the vote on the ground rules of the meeting, and called for quorum.  Remarkably, for the first time in the history of the union, we actually met the requirement of the 100 member attendance at the meeting, which was met by long and extensive applause.  These early actions largely defined the rest of the meeting, between a repetitive attempt on the part of the small USEJ faction to disrupt the meeting on procedural grounds, and the supporters of AWDU moving forward their agenda.  This conflict led to the early section of the meeting getting dragged out considerably.  We had to debate the decision to stream the meeting to the public and to allow reporters in the meeting, both of which were strongly opposed by USEJ candidates who wanted a private meeting.

This particular obscurantism moved into the process of what became the main feature of the meeting, the two major election complaints, which occurred about an hour into the meeting.  The USEJ complaint, which can be found on their blog page, was presented by Xochitl Lopez and Filiberto Nolasco.  Unfortunately, rather than simply presenting, Lopez claimed the need to go through the process of voting in the election results, despite the fact that there was no reference to this procedure in the union’s bylaws for this behavior.  It took about a half hour to get through these ridiculous entanglements, but we eventually got to the complaint.  Lopez presented the complaint, which managed to replicate the eclectic incoherence of the complaint in a very short period of time.  The AWDU response was largely conservative, challenging the basis in which the challenges could have affected the results of the election.  The response also noted the fact that most of the complaints operated on the level of hearsay, and, at times, outright deception.  The ensuing debate was fairly predictable, and the complaint was voted down.  Most likely, we will see this appealed to the UAW’s Public Review Board.

We managed to move fairly quickly into the next complaint, that against the candidacy of Sayil Camacho.  Without replicating it completely, the complaint primarily focused on the fact that Camacho was not a student when she was hired on as a organizer, and isn’t currently a student, breaking the bylaws.  There were some other issues around campaign behavior, but to be honest, it was not as significant as this basic fact, although the issue of campaigning on union time is a fairly serious charge.  USEJ used a lot of rhetoric around the term ‘witch trials’ [and specifically the term ‘political witch hunt’] to avoid this basic fact.  The complaint was eventually approved by a substantial, although smaller margin.  Before I move on, I really want to emphasize the reasoning behind this decision.  The former leadership had a tendency to take jurist Carl Schmitt’s position stated in Political Theology quite seriously, ‘Sovereign is he who creates the state of exception.’  The former leadership has effectively used a selective enforcement of the bylaws in order to hold onto power, occasionally bringing in outside friends to strengthen their position, regardless of whether they were graduate students or not.  This same approach occurs in the selective usage of Robert’s Rules of Order in the meetings run by the former leadership.  AWDU ran against this approach, and, in particular, against the large number of staff members that were on the USEJ slate.  It was crucial to challenge the Camacho candidacy to refuse to allow for this structure to continue in the local.  Additionally, it is important to change the bylaws to stop the policy of allowing [non-student] staff to run for office.  They are in a position of financial obligation, and therefore can be pressured into running in support of the current leadership, which I would find equally distasteful in our own slate if it occurred with us.

To move back to the meeting narrative, the final section of the meeting could have been the most interesting section of the proceedings, but it was largely eclipsed by the earlier conflict.  The purpose of what was supposed to be the second half of the meeting was a set of break out groups, dealing with a variety of questions, from attempts to organize GSRs to budget cuts and workload concerns.  Unfortunately, the sessions were cut short because of how long the earlier sessions ran.  Additionally, the USEJ candidates took up more time by trying to shut down the meeting early, and were able to formally close down the proceedings with another quorum call.  We decided to continue the conversations informally, but we could have had a longer set of conversations if there wasn’t a half hour delay to deal with another set of delays around the rules.  Ironically, we probably would have left the meeting earlier if it wasn’t for the set of complaints about the length of the meeting.

Before I conclude this far too lengthy narrative, I want to express something about the affective dimension of the meeting, which has been left out of the discussion thus far.  It’s difficult to fully express how unpleasant these meetings really are, at times.  It was only half way through the breakout sessions that I had decompressed from the earlier actions to the point of actually hearing what my fellow union members had to say within our conversation about classroom sizes.  This unpleasantness is really a result of the refusal to set up simple coherent rules to run the meetings, along with the tendency on the part of USEJ to treat the union as their own private property.  I had run into these folks years ago, long before the existence of AWDU, and they showed very little interest in communicating with outsiders, even then.  In my eighteen years of activism inside and outside of the formal workers’ movement, I have never come across a set of such mean-spirited, petty, and small minded individuals involved in a social movement.  They have created an environment of systemic demobilization within the local through this behavior, and my many experiences of perfidy and venality within activism are fairly mild compared to the actions of this coterie.  My hope is that we can move towards running meetings that people would like to be involved in.”

Robert Wood

Ph.D. student and TA, Comparative Literature

UCI

Two Statements in the Spirit of Moving Forward

Following are two open letters – the first from USEJ Campus Recording Secretary-elect at UCLA, Matt Luckett, and the second by UCLA AWDU supporters – calling for the USEJ leadership to drop its claim to invalidate the statewide election. Both statements argue that we must move beyond the election and instead seek out opportunities to work together, particularly at UCLA, where the election results were very close in terms of votes for the two slates. Those of us who have signed onto these letters hope that through democratic dialogue, we will be able to build a stronger union that can better fight for the rights of rank-and-file student workers amidst mounting UC budget cuts, tuition hikes, and privatization efforts.

Dear colleagues, comrades, and members of the UAW 2865,

My name is Matthew Luckett, and I am the recording secretary-elect for UCLA and a candidate for sergeant at arms in the recent UAW 2865 union election. As a member of the United for Economic and Social Justice caucus, I supported the outgoing administration’s strategic approach to bargaining, as well as the contract we’ve recently ratified. I am also proud of my slate and the campaign we ran, which I believe was mostly fair, honest, and positive, in spite of the election’s heated and divisive tone. However, I am stunned by my caucus’s decision this past weekend to reject the results of the Executive Board and Joint Council election, which we lost by several hundred votes, and to call for a new election.

Although some members of the USEJ slate have valid concerns, there is not enough evidence to justify the disenfranchisement of the thousands who voted several weeks ago and reject wholesale the results of the election. As the UCLA Graduate Students Association has pointed out, both sides are guilty of tit for tat challenges and breeches of protocol (which are inevitable, since we only run these elections once every three years, and few of us have much experience with the process). However, when all of the challenges are counted up, any suspicions of malfeasance will rightly or wrongly fall on the administration caucus, whose candidates are believed to have the most to lose. In other words, if anyone is believed to be guilty of fixing the election, it is us. Therefore, any accusations of illegality against AWDU need to meet an extremely, perhaps impossibly, heavy burden of proof in order for us to avoid being seen as sore losers. Our case needs to be airtight and above reproach, and even the GSA and the Huffington Post must be forced to admit the veracity of our claims. This particular case, however, is not convincing to me. And if I (as someone who has a lot to gain from a new election) am not convinced, then I cannot believe that public opinion will rule in its favor. If anything, I fear that public opinion will come crashing down against it.

Barring the discovery of a smoking gun that proves electoral misconduct, any effort to invalidate the election is sure to backfire. Even if the challenge is won and another election takes place, I will have serious doubts about our union’s ability to win the voters’ trust and confidence that their votes will mean something. Moreover, I will doubt our union’s ability to marshal a united front against the UC during the next round of contract negotiations. As leaders of the union, we must always put the students we serve and their interests above our own, and I am not convinced that this decision was made with those students’ interests at heart.

The first election was a positive event in the long term, even if the results weren’t what we hoped for. Over three thousand students decided to spend anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks of their time participating in a high-stakes, exciting election for the heart and soul of our union. However, the divisions between USEJ and AWDU also generated a lot of hostility and resentment, and these wounds will take time to heal. Thus, given the bad blood and conspiratorial paranoia that has existed among members of both caucuses since the election, I am afraid that a second election will destroy this union. If our local is important enough to USEJ that they are willing to run once again through the political gauntlet, then its efforts should be devoted towards bringing our union back together. As the fight against the Board of Regent’s proposed 40% tuition hike intensifies, we must not think of ourselves as members of a particular caucus, but as workers united against budget cuts in Sacramento and TA cuts in our home departments.

Finally, on a personal note, I am tired of this election. Many of the other candidates are tired of this election. In fact, I believe that most of the candidates and the vast majority of the voters are ready to move on with their lives and begin the business of rebuilding solidarity within this union. I lost my race for sergeant at arms; it is over. I conceded defeat three weeks ago. I will not wage another campaign for a race that I feel I lost fair and square, and I am having a difficult time empathizing with anyone who is ready to kick off another round.

Thus, in light of all that we’ve been through during the last few weeks, I call on the USEJ to drop its demand for a new election and to pass the torch to AWDU. Likewise, I call on AWDU to refrain from responding to this call with any retaliatory efforts to disenfranchise any of our own voters, so that we may begin to put this election behind us once and for all. Together, we must start fighting on behalf of the rank and file members with a common purpose and a shared resolve.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” In this growing hurricane of budget cuts, ballooning deficits, and corporate schemes to privatize our public universities, the union is the only shelter we have against the storm. So, rather than taking a sledgehammer to the roof, let’s all try to weather it together.

In solidarity,

Matt Luckett
UCLA Recording Secretary-elect, USEJ

—

As supporters of Academic Workers for a Democratic Union at UCLA, we agree with the spirit of Matt Luckett’s call for our union to move forward and leave the results of the election to rest. We also agree with Matt that many challenges filed in this election on both sides were supported by the thinnest of evidence, and that any outstanding protests must be “airtight.”

As a matter of full disclosure, we do support one outstanding protest that we believe is justified under strict standards of evidence. This letter of protest against the eligibility of Sayil Camacho as a head steward candidate and member of our Local can be viewed publicly in its entirety at http://www.uaw2865.org/?page_id=3315.

In brief, our grounds for protesting Ms. Camacho’s eligibility are based on three clear violations of the UAW Constitution and our Local’s Bylaws: (1) the fact that she was ineligible to become a member at the time that she filled out her membership card and the fact that she remains ineligible as she is not a current graduate student; (2) the fact that she was ineligible to run for elected office because she was granted membership less than ninety days before the election; and (3) the fact that she used union resources to gain a material advantage in the election for herself and the rest of the USEJ slate.

We will present evidence for these claims at the Statewide Membership Meeting on May 21st, leaving it up to the membership then to vote on Ms. Camacho’s case. We do not believe that Ms. Camacho’s actions invalidate the entire election. However, the UAW Constitution and Local Bylaws clearly indicate that they disqualify her as a member and candidate for elected office. While we acknowledge that UCLA voters chose Ms. Camacho as one of their head steward representatives, evidence points to the fact that Ms. Camacho misrepresented herself to voters, and that her campaign was not run in good faith to them. So we do not believe that the informed will of voters was accomplished in this case.

As this election campaign has seen an undue amount of personal slander and accusations of harassment and intimidation, in order to avoid any such claims being made against us in retaliation, we stress that we are in no way singling Ms. Camacho out personally by filing this protest. In fact, we sincerely hope that we can work together moving forward provided that she does in the future meet our Local’s eligibility criteria for membership.

Finally, we wish to note that we previously submitted a protest against the eligibility of Jacob Burstein-Stern, another candidate for head steward at UCLA. We undertook this protest for similar reasons as our protest against Ms. Camacho’s eligibility: because Mr. Burstein-Stern is not a current student, we had reason to think he was also not a member in good standing. After
notifying Mr. Burstein-Stern and Ms. Camacho of our intended protests, and inviting them both to respond to us about them, Mr. Burstein-Stern helped clarify that he was technically eligible to run. Nevertheless, we continue to question whether it is appropriate for members who are no longer students to hold elected office in our Local, since they do not represent current student workers. But our intention is to abide by the UAW Constitution and Bylaws of our Local, so we have chosen to respect Mr. Burstein-Stern’s technical right to hold office at this time.

We relinquish any claims to the remainder of UCLA election challenges precisely because we agree with Matt’s statement that further pursuit of them will strike of the kind of factionalization that will ultimately alienate members and slowly destroy our union. What is as stake is nothing less than the ability of voters to choose their own leadership in a free and fairly run election. They have done that. At UCLA, voters chose USEJ. In the spirit of Matt’s letter, we look forward to moving past the election and seeking opportunities for engaging in fair and democratic dialogue with all eligible candidates and members, together.

In solidarity,

Carolina Beltran, Spanish and Portuguese – UCLA
Ginevra Browne, Urban Planning – UCLA
Mindy Chen, Social Welfare – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Jacob Collins, History – UCLA
Erin Conley, English – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Holly Craig-Wehrle, History – UCLA
John-Edward Guevarra, Urban Planning – UCLA
Yuting Huang, Comparative Literature – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Renee Hudson, English – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Dustianne North, Social Welfare – UCLA
Alexei Nowak, Comparative Literature – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Jeremy Schmidt, English – UCLA – Candidate for Unit Chair
Althea Rani Sircar, Political Science – UCLA
Hadley Theadora Suter, French and Francophone Studies – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Julia Tomassetti, Sociology – UCLA – Candidate for Campus Recording Secretary
Zachary Williams, Political Science – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Gary Yeritsian, Sociology – UCLA
Elise Youn, Urban Planning – UCLA
Alexander Zevin, History – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward

If you would like to discuss these letters or learn more about our union, we encourage you to attend the Statewide Meeting on May 21st in Berkeley, 2-5pm, in Boalt Hall, room 100 or the monthly unit meetings at UCLA, the date/time/location for which we will also post here.

Call to All Members: Attend the Statewide Membership Meeting 5/21!

Dear UAW 2865 members, graduate students, and undergraduate students,

Over the last three weeks, the UAW 2865 Triennial Election galvanized thousands of us to speak out for different visions of a more democratic and effective union, in the face of massive budget cuts. But we all support empowering the entire membership to decide the future of our union.

As a first step, we have scheduled a special statewide membership meeting of the union to let all members decide where we go from here. Here are the details:

Special Statewide Membership Meeting for UAW 2865
Saturday, May 21st – 2 pm to 5 pm
Room 100, Boalt Hall – UC Berkeley

We are asking all members to help set the agenda for this meeting. If you can make it to the meeting, need a ride or a place to stay for the meeting, can offer a ride or a place to stay, or have an idea about what should be on the agenda, you can let us know here.

We will use signups at the link above to coordinate carpools, caravans, childcare, and housing for the meeting. We will also provide mileage reimbursement for travel to the statewide meeting.

The debate about the future of our union took place as thousands of teachers, students, and workers have rallied in Sacramento under the slogan “State of Emergency.” The cuts to public services and the UC system, including cuts to graduate student teaching positions, reader positions, and undergrad tutoring programs, are indeed an emergency. So we expect that high on the agenda will be stepping up the fight against increasing class sizes, fee hikes, rising housing costs, new budget cuts, and UC management’s capping of funding for fee remissions and health benefits for graduate student employees. But first and foremost, we expect to discuss proposals to make our union more bottom-up, democratic, and transparent so that we will be strong enough to win these fights. These proposals will likely include resolutions to any problems that occurred in our UAW 2865 Triennial Election, which just took place.

It inspired all of us to see thousands of you speak out about the future of our union in the Triennial Election. But it will take much more from all of us if we are going to maintain California’s university system along with our current jobs as teaching assistants, readers, and tutors.

We hope that you will join us for this statewide membership meeting as a critical next step.

In Solidarity,

Cheryl Deutsch, Anthropology – UC Irvine – UAW 2865 President
Elliot Kim, History – UC Riverside – UAW 2865 Southern Vice President
Sara Smith, Labor History – UC Santa Cruz – UAW 2865 Northern Vice President
Charlie Eaton, Sociology – UC Berkeley – UAW 2865 Finance Secretary
Mandy Cohen, Comparative Literature – UC Berkeley – UAW 2865 Recording Secretary
Kyle Arnone, Sociology – UCLA – UAW 2865 Trustee
Nick Kardahji, History – UC Berkeley – UAW 2865 Trustee
Brenda Medina-Hernandez, History – UC Davis – UAW 2865 Trustee
Jordan Brocious, Physices – UC Irvine – UAW 2865 Sergeant at Arms
Blanca Misse, French – UC Berkeley – UAW 2865 Guide

Olivier Dufault, History – UC Santa Barbara
Sunny Lim, History – UC Santa Barbara
Henry Maar, Modern US History – UC Santa Barbara
Jeb Sprague, Sociology – UC Santa Barbara

Josh Brahinsky, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Erin Ellison, Psychology – UC Santa Cruz
Kelsi Evans, History – UC Santa Cruz
Michelle Glowa, Environmental Studies – UC Santa Cruz – Head Steward-Elect
Jessy Lancaster, Psychology – UC Santa Cruz – Outgoing Campus Recording Secretary
Brian Malone, Literature – UC Santa Cruz – Outgoing Campus Unit Chair
Mark Paschal, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
Jeb Purucker, Literature – UC Santa Cruz
Jeff Sanceri, History – UC Santa Cruz – Graduate Student Assembly President
Jasmine Sydullah, Politics – UC Santa Cruz
Alisun Thompson, Education – UC Santa Cruz
Mary Virginia Watson, Politics – UC Santa Cruz, Unit Chair-Elect

Muni Citrin, Communications – UC San Diego

Guanyang Zhang, Entomology – UC Riverside – Head Steward-Elect
Patrick Emmett, Religious Studies – UC Riverside – Steward

Will Clark, English – UCLA
Erin Conley, English – UCLA
Yu-ting Huang, Comparative Literature – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Renee Hudson, English – UCLA
Dustianne North, Social Welfare – UCLA
Alexei Nowak, Comparative Literature – UCLA
Fernando Serrano Jr, History – UCLA – UAW 2865 Steward
Jeremy Schmidt, English – UCLA – Candidate for Unit Chair
Althea Sircar, Political Science – UCLA
Zachary Williams, Political Science – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Elise Youn, Urban Planning – UCLA

Chima Anyadike-Danes, Anthropology – UC Irvine – Head Steward-Elect
Alfredo Carlos, Political Science – UC Irvine – Head Steward Elect
Leksa Chmielewski, Anthropology – UC Irvine
Ben Cox, Anthropology – UC Irvine – UAW 2865 Campus Head Steward-Elect
Véronique Fortin, Criminology – UC Irvine – UAW 2865 Head Steward-Elect
Padma Govindan, Anthropology – UC Irvine
Anne Kelly, Earth System Science – UC Irvine – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Seneca Lindsay, Earth System Science – UC Irvine – Head Steward-Elect
Bron Tamulis, Political Science – UC Irvine
Robert Wood, Comparative Literature – UC Irvine – Unit Chair-Elect

Tim Gutierrez, Sociology – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect
Andrew Higgins, History – UC Davis – UAW 2865 Head Steward-Elect
Andrew Morgan, History – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect
Tom O’Donnell, History – UC Davis – Candidate for Head Steward
Nick Perrone, History – UC Davis – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Jessica Taal, Education – UC Davis – UAW 2865 Head Steward-Elect
Eran Zelnik, History – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect

Rachel Brahinsky, Geography – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Rob Connell, African American Studies – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Barry Eidlin, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Katy Fox-Hodess, Sociology – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Jenna Ingalls, German Literature – UC Berkeley – Steward
Pablo Gaston, Sociology, – UC Berkeley, Head Steward-Elect
Zachary Levenson, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Larisa Mann, Jurisprudence and Social Policy – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Aaron Platt, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Manuel Rosaldo, Sociology – UC Berkeley – Head Steward
Chris Schildt, City and Regional Planning – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
John Stehlin, Geography – UC Berkeley
Jennifer Tucker, City and Regional Planning – UC Berkeley – Berkeley Unit Chair-Elect

Contact Us!

Berkeley – Phone: 510-849-1628 – Email: berkeley@uaw2865.org
Davis – Phone: 530-759-9097 – Email: davis@uaw2865.org
Irvine – Phone: 949-725-2953 – Email: irvine@uaw2865.org
Los Angeles – Phone: 310-208-2429 – Email: losangeles@uaw2865.org
Merced – Phone: 510-549-3863 – Email: merced@uaw2865.org
Riverside – Phone: 951-369-8075 – Email: riverside@uaw2865.org
San Diego – Phone: 858-550-0239 – Email: sandiego@uaw2865.org
Santa – Phone: 805-685-3886 – Email: santabarbara@uaw2865.org
Santa Cruz – Phone: 831-423-9737 – Email: santacruz@uaw2865.org

Update on election from Huffpo

Click here to read the the Huffington Post’s update on news about our elections.  We especially like the comment telling us we’ll understand the work world better when we’re older.

With votes counted, a changed union

Repost of letter sent to voters following our historic victory in the 2011 triennial elections:

Dear fellow graduate and undergraduate students,

We are excited to announce that our votes have finally been counted and our reform slate has won nearly 60% of positions on our UAW 2865 union Joint Council!  The 80-member Joint Council is the highest elected body of our union with representatives from every campus.

55% of voters also cast their ballots for our Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) reform slate for the UAW 2865 Executive Board – electing our candidates to all 10 positions on the Board, including President.  The Elections Committee has certified these election results as true and fair. You can see the full results here.

The election itself and our struggle to count every vote has already transformed our union.  The debate and struggle were contentious.  But this struggle opened up a huge new space for thousands of our members to participate in deciding how to defend our interests as a union.  Turnout in the election increased to about 3,400 votes from just a few hundred votes in the last Triennial Election for the Joint Council and Executive Board.

The struggle to count the votes also deepened member involvement in our union.  Last Saturday, when three members of the election committee halted the vote count, abandoning the ballots of 1500 members regardless of their votes, UAW members spoke up.  Thousands of members wrote letters, signed petitions, and made phone calls to demand that the votes be counted.  Members organized to guard the ballots that the statewide officials abandoned in the UCLA office.  Members rallied, marched, and sat-down at the UAW statewide office.  It was an unprecedented display of member power and the result was the resumption of vote counting by the statewide officials.

Now it is time for us to bring this strength to our fight against the attacks on higher education.  As a next step, we are calling on all graduate students and undergraduate tutors – no matter who they supported in the election – to come together for a statewide membership meeting of the union on May 21st to chart the way forward.  We’ll get you more details soon.  But high on the agenda is stepping up the fight against increasing class sizes, fee hikes, rising housing costs, new budget cuts, and UC management’s capping of funding for fee remissions and health benefits for graduate student employees.

We will stand together against the attacks on higher education, in real unity borne of fruitful discussion that includes disagreement.  A grassroots, bottom-up union is strong when it provides space for open debate, and we hope that every member continues to express criticism when necessary.  We also know that many members of the USEJ slate and many USEJ supporters never wanted to stop the vote count in the first place.  We hope that the Elections Committee’s dismissal of the fabricated allegations by some of the outgoing union officers will help up us begin a more honest dialogue with each other.

The incredible diversity of our newly elected Joint Council and entire union is a vital strength that we must actively build upon.  By working together, including with the new Joint Council members from USEJ, we will win historic advances for the rights of student-workers and the expansion of public education.  We look forward to building a new kind of union together.

In Solidarity,

Molly Ball, English – UC Davis – Outgoing Campus Recording Secretary
Justin Clement, History – UC Davis – Campus Unit Chair-Elect
Tim Gutierrez, Sociology – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect
Brenda Medina-Hernandez, History – UC Davis – Trustee-Elect
Andrew Morgan, History – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect
Tom O’Donnell, History – UC Davis – Candidate for Head Steward
Nickolas Perrone, History – UC Davis – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Brian Riley, Education – UC Davis – Graduate Student Association Chair
Blake Ringeisen, Biological Systems Engineering – UC Davis
Jordan Scavo, History – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect
Jessica Taal, Education – UC Davis – Head Steward-Elect

Chima Anyadike-Danes, Anthropology – UC Irvine – Head Steward-Elect
Jordan Brocious, Physics – UC Irvine – Sergeant-at-Arms-Elect
Ben Cox, Anthropology – UC Irvine – Head Steward-Elect
Cheryl Deutsch, Anthropology – UC Irvine – President-Elect
Anne Kelly, Earth System Science – UC Irvine – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Seneca Lindsey, Earth System Science – UC Irvine – Head Steward-Elect
Nick Seaver, Anthropolgy – UC Irvine
Bron Tamulis, Political Science – UC Irvine
Natali Valdez, Anthropology – UC Irvine
Robert Wood, Comparative Literature – UC Irvine – Campus Unit Chair-Elect

Carolina Beltran, Spanish & Portuguese – UCLA
Ginny Browne, Urban Planning — UCLA
Mindy Chen, Social Welfare – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Will Clark, English – UCLA
Erin Conley, English – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Yu-ting Huang, Comparative Literature – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Renee Hudson, English – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Dan Lichtenstein-Boris, Public Health – UCLA
Dustianne North, Social Welfare – UCLA
Alexei Nowak, Comparative Literature – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Jeremy Schmidt, English – UCLA – Candidate for Unit Chair
Hadley Theodara Suter, French – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Julia Tomassetti, Sociology – UCLA – Candidate for Recording Secretary
Zachary Williams, Political Science – UCLA – Candidate for Head Steward
Elise Youn, Urban Planning – UCLA

Chris Carlson, Mathematics – UC Riverside – Steward-Elect
Elliott Kim, History – UC Riverside – Southern Vice President-Elect

John Armenta, Communications – UC San Diego – Candidate for Campus Recording Secretary
Muni Citrin, Communications – UC San Diego
John Higgins, Literature – UC San Diego – Candidate for Campus Unit Chair
Megan Turner, Literature, UC San Diego

Olivier Dufault, History – UC Santa Barbara
Sunny Lim, History – UC Santa Barbara
Jeb Sprague, Sociology – UC Santa Barbara

Josh Brahinsky, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Erin Ellison, Psychology – UC Santa Cruz
Rachel Fabian, Ocean Studies – UC Santa Cruz
Michelle Glowa, Environmental Studies – UC Santa Cruz – Head Steward-Elect
Donald Kingsbury, Politics – UC Santa Cruz
Jessy Lancaster, Psychology – UC Santa Cruz – Outgoing Campus Recording Secretary
Brian Malone, Literature – UC Santa Cruz – Outgoing Campus Unit Chair
Mark Paschal, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
Jeb Purucker, Literature – UC Santa Cruz
Sophie Rollins, Literature – UC Santa Cruz
Jeff Sanceri, History – UC Santa Cruz – Graduate Student Assembly President
Trevor Joy Sangrey, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
Sara Smith, Labor History – UC Santa Cruz – Northern Vice President-Elect
Anika Walke, History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
Mary Virginia Watson, Politics – UC Santa Cruz – Campus Unit Chair-Elect

Amanda Armstrong, Rhetoric – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Matt Bonal, Rhetoric – UC Berkeley
Rachel Brahinsky, Geography – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Shane Boyle, Performance Studies – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Dan Buch, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Chris Chen, English – UC Berkeley
Kfir Cohen, Comparative Literature – UC Berkeley
Mandy Cohen, Comparative Literature – UC Berkeley – Statewide Recording Secretary-Elect
Rob Connell, African-American Studies – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Alex Dubilet, Rhetoric – UC Berkeley
Alex Dumont, English – UC Berkeley
Charlie Eaton, Sociology – UC Berkeley – Financial Secretary-Elect
Barry Eidlin, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Eli Friedman, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Pablo Gaston – Sociology – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Jessie Hock, Comparative Literature – UC Berkeley
Nick Kardahji, History – UC Berkeley – Trustee-Elect
Sarah Knuth, Geography – UC Berkeley
Katy Fox-Hodess, Sociology – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Zachary Levenson, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Munira Lokhandwala, Film – UC Berkeley
Katherine Maich, Sociology, Berkeley
Callie Maidhof, Anthropology – UC Berkeley
Larissa Mann, Jurisprudence & Social Policy – UC Berkeley
Daniel Marcus, Art History – UC Berkeley
Micki McCoy, History of Art – UC Berkeley — Head Steward-Elect
Blanca Missé, French – UC Berkeley – Guide Elect
Megan O’Connor, English, Berkeley
Aaron Platt, Sociology – UC Berkeley
Manuel Rosaldo, Sociology – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Gustavo Oliveira, Geography – UC Berkeley
Chris Schildt, City and Regional Planning – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Jessica Smith, Chemistry – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
John Stehlin, Geography – UC Berkeley
Cate Talley, French – UC Berkeley
Alex Tarr, Geography – UC Berkeley
Jennifer Tucker, City and Regional Planning – UC Berkeley – Campus Unit Chair-Elect
Daniela Urban, Law – UC Berkeley
Megan Wachspress, Jurisprudence & Social Policy – UC Berkeley – Campus Recording Secretary-Elect
Josh Williams, Performance Studies – UC Berkeley – Head Steward-Elect
Brandon Wolf, Performance Studies – UC Berkeley

Update!

We don’t know how to use Twitter because Renee left!  We’re still counting.  We’re still alive.  We haven’t been eaten yet.  Things are looking up.