Tempest member Promise Li interviews international student worker Rao about the issues they faced during the bargaining period.
https://www.tempestmag.org/2023/12/graduate-student-workers-at-usc-make-gains-in-first-ever-union-contract/
Rao:
We need to build up a culture of social justice unionism to support marginalized workers, which encourages workers to see union organizing as a site to resist different nexus of oppressive identities. More conservative organizers often talk about “priority setting” and encourage workers to focus on “winnable” and “majority” demands, with framings like “a better wage can benefit everyone,” and “win as many core demands as possible.” Similar strategies were used in the organizing at the UCs. A former UAW 2865 shop steward, Black trans radical Blu Buchanan, helpfully explains these tactics by the Administrative Caucus in a past UAW teach-in (especially starting around 42:55).
Another organizer, Beezer de Martelly, mentioned that in the 2014 bargaining, people were told that they cannot bargain over gender-neutral bathrooms because of various technical reasons. But they later fought for them and won (at 14:43 of the teach-in). The same goes for the resolution supporting BDS. People in the UC unions have pushed for BDS resolution on their campuses. At one campus, they were told that they could not boycott their own shop. However, student workers successfully pushed several other campuses to adopt the BDS resolution. I feel these are similar to the reasons used to prevent many demands from international students from reaching the bargaining table (including ones that don’t even require changes to the current legal system).
This is a pattern in the UAW. The key question here is how much power we need to break this bureaucracy. We need to find ways to continue mobilizing, and if a demand may not be legally bargainable, we should still organize around it. Let the university go on record refusing our demands!
I want to paraphrase a fellow organizer who asked, “Who defines what are ‘bread and butter issues’?” “Bread and butter issues” can look very different depending on the needs of workers of different marginalized identities.
Many Chinese international students complained that the bargaining process felt undemocratic. The Administration Caucus’ tactics exacerbate these issues, which include using representative democracy to their advantage to shut out more militant voices and demands. Union reformers like those at Columbia University pushed instead for more direct democracy, allowing workers to vote on changes in wage proposals and other matters. I think this would appeal to many Chinese international students who often do not feel comfortable being represented. Some may think that many Chinese international students are anti-union, but in my experience, they are specifically against bureaucratic unions, which cannot adequately advocate for their issues.