The blueprint for what is going on between the administration and GSEAC-UAW is to be found in the University of California system, where another UAW teaching assistant union negotiated a contract last year. Both GSEAC and President McCormick understand the blueprint but most of the faculty do not. Here is what they both know.

1. The idea that the University cannot negotiate a contract because of our state laws is a smoke screen. California laws are different but that was exactly the position that UC administration took for seven years until after four different strikes and endless disruption they realized that the TA union was not going to go away and that common sense required a settlement.
2. The idea that arbitration is an unacceptable system in a university is completely bogus. That is precisely what the University of California agreed to and it is part of most union contracts. The UAW agreement with UC creates a firewall between curriculum issues and employment issues. Only the later are subject to arbitration. Both administration and GSEAC know about the precedents. Sooner or later they will work this out.
3. The big lesson from California is that TA unions do not go away. They can lose the first strike, lose the second strike, lose the third strike, but sooner or later they will win. The reasons for that are clear to any student of labor studies: TAs cannot be effectively penalized or replaced (who will take their place?). And because they form a natural community with a good lines of communication, every defeat and every attempt at intimidation just increases the solidarity and levels of anger. The fact that GSEAC is backed by a wealthy international union that has organized many campuses and knows how to win, just adds to the certainty of outcome.

So the question before our campus is not whether but when. We can follow the path of California and spend the next seven years enduring strikes or we can work it out now. I am an historian, a labor historian to be exact, and thus more interested in learning from the past than repeating it. President McCormick is an historian too.

Jim Gregory