Not all of you come from heavily unionized areas like Southeast Michigan, and not all of you think well of unions in general. But one way or the other you will be taking a side on Thursday if there is a strike. . . . (continued)
Some of us are in dire need of some of the contract improvements in our strike platform, and some of us are not. If you break your fellow GSI’s picket line you are actively fighting against their attaining improved healthcare, their improved wages, their improved protection against discrimination. By entering a university building during a strike you are not “sitting this one out” – you have taken a side against those who need
these protections.
We do not have healthcare because the university is generous and wanted us to have it. The reason we have healthcare, the reason we get paid as much as we do, the reason we can’t be made to work 50 hours a week for a professor, etc is because some grad student or construction worker that we probably don’t know stuck her neck out years ago and wrestled it from the administration. In our last round of negotiations, one of the skilled trade unions took a couple hundred dollars each in pay cuts rather than cross our line.
Some will try to tell you that taking a job action means that you don’t care about the education of your students. That is a lie. This union has consistently fought for better GSI training, smaller classes and other improvements to undergrad education. Our contract is a huge reason that this public university attracts great graduate student teachers. Your
students have skipped class before, and it won’t ruin their education to miss one more.
Whether you are teaching or not, or whether you agree whole-heartedly with every proposal our union has made or not is immaterial. I ask you to honor the picket line and, even better, spend some time walking it.
