Reforms in High Ed

University of Michigan

Day to day organizing

Translated from an interview of a Chinese international student on WeChat

Years ago, everyone’s understanding of a union was that it was an organization that provided services, and paying membership fees was like paying for a service. The union provided a service called strike and bargaining. Workers are not organizing themself but spending money to buy something and letting the union do something for them. (Note: Called as service model)

… we have adopted a different union ideology. It is called the organizing model. We believe that the union is not a third-party organization that provides services to everyone. Union is workers themselves. We think it’s not that everyone just pays the membership dues and that’s it, but that when we encounter a problem in the workplace, we should bring it up to the union and then work out a solution together. The union serves as a collective for everyone, and we consider how to use the power of collective action to solve the problems we encounter. In other words, we have basically started to believe that the union should not be a pure third-party organization that provides services to everyone, but should provide a place for everyone to come together to solve the problems we all face.

So we emphasize empowering in our organizing work, that is, empowering workers, making workers believe that they have to find their own solutions when they encounter problems and what the union can provide is Support. Let’s all come together to solve this problem.

Translated from chat group:

  1. When members have demands, instead of “organizing for” people and helping them do things, we are “organizing with” people and let everyone participate together.
  2. When members are dissatisfied with the union, instead of explaining why we do what we do, we ask, what do you think is better, and encourage them to take action.
  3. It’s not that the union comes up with a campaign and persuades members to participate, but the union finds existing problems in the workplace, things that people don’t like or think should be improved, and then organizes them.
  4. When organizing, we do not develop members, but develop organizers. We must develop others into people who can develop more people.

Bargaining

For drafting the proposal and counters, union members form working groups to draft the proposal related to them. Some working groups in 2022 bargaining: Transgender Healthcare, International GSIs, Parents & Caregivers, Reproductive Rights ,etc. More details.

Before sending a proposal to the university, there are discussion sessions for union members to discuss what has been drafted/modified, and then union members will vote on the proposal. And a modification list with explanations will be sent out to everyone.

They treat the bargaining as a platform and encourage union members to advocate for their own issues. They promised everyone’s demands would be kept on the table till the last minute. It is a way of social justice unionism and allows marginalized and under-represented GSWs to advocate for themselves.

They are the first GSW union that wrote transgender healthcare into contract. They expanded coverage for gender-affirming care in their student health plan, which also benefits non-union members. They fought for demands from the trans and queer community till the last minute and made ground-breaking wins.

Columbia AWDU (2022-)

In 2022, a reform caucus Columbia Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (CAWDU) was started in Columbia. They led the vote no campaign of the first tentative agreement and pushed for direct democracy during the second bargaining:

All contract articles were written in working groups with rank and file members, and all bargaining sessions were preceded by an open caucus where rank and file union members voted to approve any moves at the table.

They won a better tentative agreement after a minority strike focused on teaching assistants.

There were people saying they made concessions on non-discrimination to get higher wages, and sacrificed wage increases for people at the highest pay band. But we believe they won everything better after the second strike. Please refer to the two tentative agreements linked here with screenshot comparison at the bottom.

Further reading/watching:

University of California (UC) AWDU (2010-2018)

In 2010, a reform caucus Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) was started in UC. There were many critic about them. .e.g. Leaders come primarily from social sciences and humanities; Very low level of involvement and membership in STEM.

Reading/Watching list:

UC Rank and File (2020,2022-)

The rank and file movement started from 2020 UCSC wildcat strike, fighting for cost of living adjustment(COLA), and spread out to other campus: UCSC Rank & File, Berkeley Rank & File, UCLA Rank & File, UCLA 4 COLA, UCI Rank & File, UCSB, UCSD

UC bargaining 2022, reading list: