In a recent address to the Associated Students of Madison, Chancellor Biddy Martin summarized a lengthy PowerPoint presentation she plans on selling around the state. While glossing over the substantive changes she ultimately sought, Martin spent most of her 30 minutes in front of ASM lauding UW’s substantial impact on Wisconsin’s culture and economy. However, flipping through the slide packet that was temporarily distributed to council members, one could see the eerie outlines of Martin’s master plan. The overall objective was to sever UW’s ties with the rest of the UW System to become independent while still benefiting from an umbilical tether to state coffers.
In the presentation there were proposals to increase tuition and financial aid. These proposals are an obvious ploy to saddle students with ever increasing debt that ultimately feeds into corporate and even military interests. These institutions become the obligate benefactors of indebted graduates and perpetuate the cycle. It’s worth keeping in mind that Martin is only one of a long lineage of chancellor’s pursuing this agenda and will likely not be the last.
Martin also noted an aspiration to bring human resources policy more in line with the “university environment.” What exactly that translates to is certainly open to interpretation, but we might be getting a preview with the current controversy over the university and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s (WARF) effort to outsource traditional union jobs to the private sector.
On Monday morning, in an overcast pre-dawn chill, more than 70 union workers and students arrived outside the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery’s (WID) nearly complete fa?ade to protest a blatant attempt at union-busting. Painters, electrical workers and others stood in solidarity with the demonstrators, refusing to cross the picket line and creating a small but notable work stoppage.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ (AFSCME) Madison Chapter, Local 171, represents over 1600 workers, many of whom work in food service and law enforcement jobs across campus. Over the years as new research buildings have been erected, the cafeteria elements within have been staffed with Local 171 members. Now the university and WARF are attempting a power play intended to break free from a tradition of staffing this public university’s institutions with public employees.
Monday’s demonstration made a loud statement and attracted prominent members of the local political establishment and friends of the labor movement. Assembly member Mark Pocan spoke to an energized crowd about the moral deficiency and obtuse corporate friendliness embodied by WARF’s decision. 77th Assembly candidate Ben Manski was in attendance to thank and encourage demonstrators. The Student Labor Action Coalition is also pursuing the issue, with a goal of reversing WARF’s attack on Local 171 and its members.
It is important to note that despite the long-term goals of administration officials, this university remains a public enterprise, and the $50 million from tax-payers that went toward WID’s construction obliged its management to hire public employees. The number of positions contested is in the low teens; a drop in the bucket relative to the Institute’s projected revenue. What matters, however, is the message being sent.
One might ask, what is the difference between hiring a unionized work force versus a non-unionized one? The answer is relatively simple. In the former case an employer furthers the cause of the working class by affirming collective bargaining, the right to a living, family-supporting wage and benefits. In the latter scenario, the employer advances the agenda of the ruling class and corporate interests that aim to divide and conquer the workforce to obtain labor at the cheapest, most profitable rate possible. It doesn’t take a graduate student to identify the underdog here.
In fact, the labor movement in this country is in more need of solidarity and support than ever before. In the mid-1970s, corporate America identified labor costs as the more profitable place to cut in a slowly growing economy and has pursued an aggressive anti-labor agenda ever since. With the economy again stagnating, labor has become a primary target of big business and increasingly the university as well. The university, for its part, has started to operate more and more like a business, treating students like customers and graduate students like a profitable, non-unionized workforce to take advantage of.
Things need not be like this, and the pressures being placed upon the working class and students are not simply the inevitable outcome of immutable circumstances. As I’ve said here before and will certainly say again, students are in a unique position to dramatically and even quickly change the circumstances around them. The interests defended at Monday’s demonstration dovetail with the interests that will be boisterously defended on October 7th during the national rally to protect and revitalize public education in America. In both cases, individuals concerned about our future are taking to the streets to defend against the de-democratization of our society and the encroachment of private industry over what used to be publicly accountable assets.
Union jobs on this campus must be protected, and students, whose situation is put at risk by the same forces attacking the working class, have a responsibility to ensure that the university and WARF are unable to attack organized labor in our name.
Sam Stevenson ([email protected]) is a graduate student in public health.
