-----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >The UAW wants to organize "knowledge workers." That's why they absorbed >the >National Writers Union, why they represent the staff at the Village >Voice, >Barnard College, and, increasingly grad students too. Now if they could >get >around to organizing all those nonunion auto parts plants in Ohio too.... Actually, the reason TAs at UC and other knowledge workers ended up in the UAW is a bit more byzantine. UC-Berkeley officially joined District 65, which was a large autonomous grouping within the UAW encompassing the staff at the Village Voice and a number of other, mostly New York based "knowledge workers." District 65 itself had been one of the old, mostly Communist-led independent unions that survived the 1948=1949 anti-left purge of the CIO. They were an independent union, largely representing button-makers and small, independent shops - often representing workers who no one else in the New York area AFL-CIO wanted to even try to represent. Which led them (through obvious and not so obvious motivations) to make a bid for various knowledge-based workers who the AFL-CIO was not interested in, and who probably were often not that interested in the AFL-CIO in the days of the New Left 60s. In the 1980s, the economics of unionism, particularly problems in health care funds, led District 65 to decide they could not survive on their own and cut a deal to affiliate with the UAW, bringing in their motley assortment of intellectual workers. At roughly the same time in the late 80s, UC-Berkeley grad students were looking around for their own union home to affiliate with. A number of unions were approached and Dist 65 looked like a good fit- savvy on the complications of knowledge workers yet with the backing of the resources of the UAW. Part of the deal was that the Berkeley union could retain its non-UAW constitution, such as collective leadership along with other quirks. Now, as Dist 65 was fully absorbed into UAW, this had all sorts of interesting effects on the Berkeley local (and the expanding number of UAW locals at other campuses). First, the leadership of Dist 65 ended up being incredibly strong partisans of the established UAW leadership against the New Directions rank-and-file insurgency. When New Directions made a strong bid to take control of the Western region of the UAW, the staff at the Berkeley local worked hard to make sure the representatives from the campus to the UAW convention supported the UAW leadership. In fact, the Dist 65 votes were the margin of victory for the established UAW leadership over the New Directions challenge. Secondly, as time went on, the locals were increasingly remade in the image of traditional UAW locals, including the abolishment of collective leadership and the disempowerment of stewards councils in favor of the executive board. During the two-month TA strike back in Fall of 1991 at UC-Berkeley and UC-Santa Cruz, the sad thing was that the strike was basically conducted like the Caterpiller strike of the same period: walk the picket line in a mostly mindless way. No serious mobilization of the undergrads, no targetting of Regents for their economic ties, no corporate campaigns, and ultimately no creation of rank-and-file mobilization during a rather amazing act of solidarity by graduate students. The currently proposed strike is a sort of sad symbolic thing (as have all actions since 1991). TAs will strike but undergrads will be encouraged to cross the picket line to go to classes with their professors. Like so many unions, the lesson of a failure was not to be more creative and daring, but to be more timid and ineffectual. --Nathan Newman
