Does anyone else think GEO messed this up?
It sure feels like we just lost and have no chance of getting the university to budge on paying a living wage until at least this fall. Several members have mentioned to me before (and some have also posted in this sub) that membership is pretty low across many departments outside of the humanities and hard sciences and this is the reason why the union can't do more. Some questions about that:
- Why can't GEO even enforce the terms of its contract? The university broke the contract last fall when they didn't pay their share of CampusCare as required by the contract for a few months. Why didn't we go on strike then? If a large part of dues goes to the AFL-CIO for legal representation, why didn't we use that and lawyer up? Isn't getting a contract and enforcing it the whole point of a union?
- If we didn't go on strike then, why didn't we go on strike in January or February when the university made it clear they weren't willing to budge on some of the most important demands?
- Why did we instead go on strike only two/three weeks before most grad workers stop working for the summer anyway? Bargaining has been going on for a year with almost no movement from the university on the major demands. What leverage did we think we were going to have - wasn't it obvious that the university could just wait it out, exactly like they did? Why didn't we strike earlier in the year when it would have made much more of an impact?
- Some members can't stop calling international grad workers scabs and it's a really bad look. It's very obvious why international students might feel like they can't stick their necks out in a time like this. "Well actually, ICE's rules say foreign workers can strike" - are you crazy? Have you learned nothing about ICE following its own rules for the last year and a half? Do you know how condescending you sound saying that?
- Why does it look a lot like GEO leadership wasn't forthcoming about sexual abuse allegations against one of the leaders earlier this year before finally investigating?
- Why is there a policy about how dues can't be used to buy recreational drugs on the GEO website FAQ? What's the story behind that? Should we be worried that dues aren't even being used for union-related stuff?
Talking about how more people need to join is talking about the wrong problem. Especially now, after basically losing the current fight by pausing the strike, and on top of the issues above, how does GEO plan to convince more people to join? AFAICT it's not even clear that GEO can do the basic jobs a union is supposed to do. Why would anyone pay dues to GEO when they can't stand up for grad workers and use the ~2/3rds of the dues that pays for lawyers to take on the university when they break the contract and when GEO's own website implies the other third has been used to buy drugs before? Maybe get it together first and then ask why more people don't join. Repeating "if more people joined..." over and over is just concern trolling at this point.