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In the article that Louis posted, the author states, correctly I think, that tenure-track professors don't ever take collective action to participate actively in the unionization of graduate student teachers. And the same goes for adjuncts. These professors have privileged positions, the privileges of which are due largely to the labor of grad. student teachers and adjuncts, who carry the course loads and are compelled by circumstances to do so cheaply. Many tenure-track professors at research universities would do most anything to avoid teaching, even paying others themselves, from monies they make consulting and the like. However, these things were not always so. In the early 1970s, we put together a union organizing drive at the University of Pittsburgh, under the auspices of the American Federation of Teachers. Our local was independent in terms of working out our own agenda. One of our key articles was that graduate teaching assistants were to be in our bargaining unit, full members with equal rights. We were committed to considering them as faculty members on a par with all the other teachers. In the end, the state of PA ruled against their inclusion in the unit, at which point we petitioned for a separate unit for teaching assistants. I don't remember what happened after that. That time period, the sixties and early seventies are sometimes maligned by millennials, especially some around Jacobin magazine. But we were far more radical than many DSA members are now. We were cognizant of imperialism and took a global view of politics and economics. We were interested in the radical transformation of work and much more. We were firmly anti-racist and made progress with respect to feminism. We weren't perfect, but on the whole, we were radicals and not social democrats. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
