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If you are reading this then you probably saw one of the posters I put up on campus you clicked a random link. Yes they are sarcastic. Yes, a lot of people do find them to be quite funny. Yes I am opposed to unionization. And I did not put up a couple because they were a little too harsh. Click on these to download PDFs of them:
babe   borg   cage   cake   care   cash   wise   loss   cheap   lout   thugs (bonus)   postering   money

UPDATE 10-25-2002: The union LOST 1351-580. That was with over 80% voter turnout. To celebrate I added two more posters. postering and money.

UPDATE 10-20-2002: I added two new posters: cheap and lout, because people were taking my posters down.

Why The Posters

I made these posters because of the very slick advertising done by CASE/UAW. They are organized. They have money. They are silly (some of them at least). I have been making spoof posters for a while and these were too good to pass up. The "opposition" to CASE/UAW is also organized but they lack the large amount of money to effectively mount resistance. I support what "At What Cost?" is trying to accomplish, but these posters are of my own design and are independant of their activities.

A lot of the themes stem from discussions I have had with other grad students, alumni, and lawyers. Yes, I do snicker to myself when I think of some of them.

Pros:

There are pros to unionization. Kind of...

  • My chance of getting a post-doc position will increase because post-docs will cost less to faculty. But that hurts future grad students. I am not willing to accept that. And don't decceive yourself by saying that it will not affect future grad students.
  • All the promises of salary increases, dental, vision, and dependant coverage is great. It gives people hope. But it is unrealistic. These things would have to come directly from the university/departments/advisors. Grants will not increase automagically. Grants do not cover health care. And they are just promises. Cornell WILL bargain in good faith. I am not sure we (CASE/UAW) would be doing the same thing.
  • Collective voice is louder than a single voice. But the actual collective voice of students without a union could actually be louder. A union is not needed for us to get spines to stand up against perceived (and actual) injustices.

    • Note: I would love to have dependant health care coverage. I have to pay over $4500/year (and costs are always going up) to cover my wife and daughter. It would be REALLY nice to not have to pay this. But I counted the cost before I accepted Cornell's offer. To get up in arms about not having the coverage (or better yet: childcare) is wrong. Humbly asking the administration to seriously try to get coverage would have been a MUCH better strategy (IMNSHO).

    Questions:

    Many questions really have not been answered properly.
  • Dependant coverage would cost the university $500k/year (conservative assumption of 1/5 married, 1/4 of those with kids). Where is this money going to come from? Certainly not the union. In fact, if Cornell just took 1% out of everyones pay then they probably could cover dependants. But that is not fair to those who do not have a family. The suggestion that Cornell could just "reprioritize" funds from somewhere else is ludricrous and shows a complete lack of understanding on how a university functions.
  • Leverage is a farce. We cannot strike. What is our leverage? Saying that we will work more efficiently with a union? Hardly. What is the leverage that a union will give us? A collective voice is not leverage, it is another level of obfuscation. (I like that word)
  • Why should everyone get to vote? Shouldn't only 1-3 year students get to vote? A contract stays in force for 3 years. 4+ year grad students will experience little (and in some cases none) of the benefits (curses) of a union. They can only vote from a philisophical standpoint. And I highly doubt that an ILR student (had to pick a non-science, sorry) has the same concerns as I do.
  • Would we actually see any of our dues other than in "bargaining" and "neutral arbitration"?
  • What is fundamentally wrong with the current grievance process?
  • Can a contract be negotiated that stipulates that people who do not want in can avoid dues? I do not want a corporate HQ putting in a golf course using my dues. All dues should remain local to the university graduate students. That is who is paying them afterall.

    • And finally, I must say that it is very wrong for us (especially 1st year grads) to suddenly say "GIMME GIMME GIMME". We accepted an offer from the university to study here. We knew what the terms were before we came. Many of us could have gone elsewhere. We are students. It is a privilege. If you want to be an employee, drop out and get a job. I worked for four years before coming here for graduate study. I know what it means to be an employee (even of Cornell). We are students.

    I'll stop here. I could go on for a while, especially when people are whining.