Like, supposedly, at least half of UC postdocs, I signed a union card a few months ago; and like many of them, having learned the truth about it, I revoked my signature. While the movement appears to be largely dead now, I thought I’d post my experiences since one of the (few) web sites with a discussion about it had the union people expressing disbelief that any untoward activities had taken place on their part.
In May 2006, a woman came to my office in mid-afternoon as I was working and asked to talk to me (recruiting during work time, incidentally, is illegal). I can’t remember her name or if she said she was a postdoc or a grad student. When I told her I was in the middle of something, she said “Oh, this will just take a minute,” and asked me to sign a union card. I told her I didn’t know the issues and would like to think about them before deciding on something like that. She replied that it wasn’t a statement of support for the union, but for a vote on whether to have union representation, so I agreed; this was only about a month after I had started and I didn't know if there was strong support for unionization among the postdocs. When I read the card and pointed out to her that on the card itself it says “I authorize PRO/UAW to represent me in collective bargaining”, she reiterated that it only meant that if they got enough support, a vote would be held. No mention was made of the fact that if they got 50%+1, it is considered a fait accompli and no vote is held.
Now, I’m not a trusting person. I don’t even trust myself, and I tell other people not to trust me to be right either because sometimes I’m pulling things out on very thin evidence (note to potential employers: I do not do this in scientific papers, at least not without acknowledging that it’s poorly supported). In this case, I made the mistake of trusting that this person who claimed to be a fellow scientist was not completely lying to my face, which, it turned out, she was.
So I was quite surprised, after a few months of hearing nothing about it, to receive an email saying that PRO/UAW had filed to be the UC postdocs’ representative, with no vote. I later revoked my signature due to the false information given by the union rep. Apparently, this seems to have succeeded in stopping the PRO/UAW. Given the fairly high number of people who posted on forums saying they signed cards under false pretenses, I would be very interested to know how many signatures they had originally submitted and how many were revoked. It seems pretty clear that, despite the disbelief expressed when it was brought up with union leaders, this was not just a few recruiters neglecting to mention details but a pattern of lies and misinformation.
On a newsgroup discussion the subject, a postdoc from UC-Davis wrote :
In individual conversations with postdocs UAW reps and I have had ample
opportunities to hear about concerns and experiences that will be relevant
to the contract negotiation phase (if it is reached). It is also my
understanding that upon authorization, the UAW will help us to organize a
more public information gathering phase in which postdoc concerns,
experiences, and needs are listened to and discussed. If authorization
occurs, I hope that these activities will be receive broad participation
from the many concerned members of our community.
This is just utter nonsense (many more colorful expressions come to mind, but I’ll keep it professional). You don’t get coerced into hiring a building contractor you know is a crook and then try to get them to act better afterward – you send them packing, and if necessary sue them for fraud.
In September, I had a visit from Scott Bailey, president of the UC grad students’ union (part of the UAW) and a former UCSD grad student (I guess that qualifies him for being a postdoc?). We had a short talk (again during work time) on my revoking my signature, and he basically made a similar argument to the post above. His take on the first rep’s visit was “well, after the contract is negotiated, there’s going to be a vote on whether to accept it, so there’s still an election before you have to pay dues”. Again, this is foolishness that only makes sense if seen in the context of someone who is in the position of having to avoid admitting that his representative outright lied to me. To continue with the metaphor above, you don’t sit down with someone you know to be a crook and spend months hashing out a contract, and then decide if you want to go through with it – because chances are, you’re not going to like the results, and it’ll mean a whole lot of wasted time on everyone’s part. One thing that has struck me through this whole process is how much anonymity and secrecy there is. There are no names of supporters or organizers on the PRO/UAW web site. In all of the web sites that come up in various Google searches, Ben Weaver of LBNL is the only actual UC postdoc mentioned by name as a supporter. The host of www.antiprouaw.org (one CK at UCSF), who claims to be neutral but comes off as kind of an anti-union nutjob, remains anonymous because “I feel that by not revealing my name, I can protect myself from dirty PRO/UAW tactics.” What, does he think some thugs is going to show up in the lab and break his knees? Give me a break, this isn’t Flint in the 1950’s. If anyone wants to argue with me about it, feel free to call, send an email, or stop by (not during work), and I’d be happy to give you a piece of my mind.
The biggest thing, of course, is that there have been no public meetings. There have been a couple of meetings between union reps and postdoc organization leaders, but they didn’t seem terribly productive. Requests for a meeting with the Berkeley postdoc association were rejected. The rationale given has been that postdocs, because of their less-flexible schedules and more involved family life than grad students, tend to have poor turnout at public meetings, and therefore the organizers prefer to contact people one-on-one. While there may be some truth to that, it gives the appearance of avoiding open debate and an airing of all the facts and issues.
There was, in fact, just such an open discussion on unionization when I was a grad student at Cornell. As it happens, that movement was also under the banner of the UAW, and its defeat, by a 70-30 vote, was due in no small part to the UAW’s history in academic unions – something that has not even been brought up here, and which many postdocs probably don’t know about. You can read the story (albeit only one side of it) here.
The irony of all this is that after reading everything I’m slightly more open to unionization than I had been to begin with, though I’m still far from convinced it would be helpful or practical. However, I am quite sure that I don’t want the UAW to be representing me. The more I look into it, the more I get the feeling that it now more closely resembles a corporation that a good union, with a leadership that is searching for new members in order to fill its coffers, regardless of their need or desire for representation. It would be great if we could trust the people who claim to be on our side to actually act in our best interests. Sadly, the world doesn’t work that way.
UPDATE: As of October 31, 2006 the PRO/UAW website states that they have withdrawn the petition, supposedly because they are now 100 cards short of a majority. The fact that they are supposedly so close and yet are withdrawing completely rather than holding a vote (which would be standard procedure if a union obtains support from 30-50% of the workers) seems odd to me, but in keeping with the trend of their avoiding any kind of actual public debate on the subject. It is also noteworthy that elsewhere they offhandedly dismiss the deception that union reps used on me and apparently many others as "some unsupported and vague claims of a few individuals".