Dear friends and colleagues,

AWDU is asking for everyone — students and non-students — to come out to Sather Gate TODAY (Monday) at 11:30am to demand our union count every vote. This may sound absurd, especially during finals week when we’re all stressed, but at this point we have to fight for our votes to be counted!

Here’s what happened:

Elections for UAW Local 2865 — representing 12,000 graduate student workers UC-wide — ended on Thursday afternoon. All ballot boxes were taken to UCLA to be counted on Friday. There were many challenges concerning the boxes, their seals etc, but on Saturday morning the elections committee decided to go on with the count and then deal with each challenge afterward, as according to our bylaws.

Halfway through the count on Saturday, it became possible that AWDU (the reform slate I’m affiliated with) had won the elections. Rather than continue the count, the chair of the elections committee decided that the elections were “partially certified” and that the more than 1,500 ballots from Berkeley and UCLA (nearly half of all ballots cast) will not counted till the next meeting in July.

To put this in perspective: This is as if, in the 2008 national elections, the Republicans had decided to not count the votes of California and Hawaii, and to let a Republican-controlled congress decide how to deal with those ballots later. Would you find such a process fair? I didn’t think so. Would you do something about it?!? Hell yeah!

We need YOUR help to make sure all votes are counted!

1. Gather for a rally TOMORROW at 11:30 at Sather Gate. Then we will march to the union office in downtown Berkeley to demand that our votes are counted (meet us there at 12:30 if you can’t make it to Sather — 2070 Allston Way). We really need everyone to come out to put the political pressure on!

2. Email the current UAW President Daraka Larimore-Hall  [email protected] and demand that all the votes are counted! Please bcc me so we can keep track of how many emails are getting sent.

3. Tell your friends! Please forward this message far and wide — we need all the support we can get, from students and non-students alike!

Thank you to those of you who voted in this last election and showed your support in so many tremendous ways. In some terrible twist, if it hadn’t had been for all of your efforts, our current union leadership would not be acting so scared right now. But right now, this isn’t about which side will win or lose the elections — this is about upholding democracy and our right to vote. Please come out and show your support.

For background on the election, and what’s at stake, please see the following links:

http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/04/union_needs_internal_democracy

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_17924741

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2011/04/california-grad-students-seek-bottom-union

http://www.dailycal.org/article/112993/concern_over_voting_fraud_grows_in_union_elections

Read more about AWDU here: http://www.awdu.org/about

Late Sunday night Daraka Larimore-Hall sent a second of two dramatic emails to many UAW 2865 members. This time, though he continued to attack Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) with baseless charges, he framed his attack in a call for the resumption of the ballot count — which had been abandoned by his allies on Saturday April 30 at 8pm. For details on events leading up to Sunday night’s email, please see below, and see www.awdu.org.

With this latest email comes a new claim by USEJ — they now want to count all of the votes! We are happy that USEJ is prepared to count votes again! Since three members of the elections committee aligned with the incumbent administration of the union broke away from the process of vote-counting, created a fictitious “partial certification” and walked out of the room before the rest of the committee could have their say, we have been asking for voting to resume.

We are surprised by their demand for special conditions (diverging from normal counting procedures) before counting resumes. The union already has a procedure, laid out in the bylaws (Article 14 section 7) <http://www.uaw2865.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Bylaws_UAW_2865.pdf> and naturally the election must follow that procedure.

Vote counting is not the product of a negotiation between two slates. This is a democratic process that has rules. We have followed those rules before and we are prepared to follow those rules now. We are happy to stand together with USEJ in resuming the ballot-counting under the normal election procedures in which (most) challenges are set aside until after the count and then dealt with under procedures laid out in the bylaws and previously agreed upon. Members are waiting at this moment for the election committee to begin counting.

Challenges are an expected part of the vote-counting process, and most do not, according to the bylaws, require counting to stop. But legitimate challenges must be taken seriously. Since the recent email from Daraka Larimore-Hall labels our challenges frivolous and politically motivated, we will describe exactly what our main challenges were and why they matter:

i) One of our most serious challenges was to an entire ballot box from UCLA in which none of the individual ballots were sealed inside any envelope at all. These are spoiled ballots according to established election procedures, and at the time of that challenge the entire election committee allowed the challenge to stand.

ii)The challenge at UCSD was agreed on by the committee and challengers from both sides. An entire box was filled with ballots that were inside one envelope, but lacking the second envelope signed by the voter. Normally, the process with such ballots is to mark them as spoiled, and this had been done previously with single ballots, but because this was felt by all to be a case of poll-worker error, the box was set aside as challenged, to be dealt with after the remaining votes were counted.

iii)Regarding the bizarre assertion of ballot stuffing, supported only with a non-time-stamped photograph, we have identified the volunteer poll worker (not an AWDU activist) in the photograph, who was putting together the ballot box in the morning before the voting started. Here is his statement about this sordid accusation: <http://www.awdu.org/statement-from-the-poll-worker-accused-of-vote-tampering>

Additionally, here are pictures taken this morning showing that the picture of the poll worker must have been taken around 10am, before the poll had opened.

We look forward to the resumption of vote-counting at the earliest possible moment.

Signed,

Natalia Chousou-Polydouri Berkeley

Nick Kardahji, Berkeley

Brenda Medina-Hernandez, Davis

Larisa Mann, Berkeley

AJ Morgan, Davis

Megan Wachspress, Berkeley

….and the rest of Academic Workers for a Democratic Union

Count EVERY Vote!

Please consider signing the following petition, demanding that every vote from UCLA and UC Berkeley be counted immediately.

May Day, 2011

To the Elections Committee, Current Executive Board and International Representatives of UAW Local 2865,

It is with great dismay that we learn on this May Day, this day in celebration of the rights of workers around the world, that our most basic right to have our voices represented democratically as a union has been cast aside. It is with this sense of concern and outrage that we the undersigned demand that all of the votes cast in the election of April 26-28th, 2011 be counted immediately.

Click here to read the rest  — and to sign the petition!

In a far-reaching email on Saturday night Daraka Larimore-Hall accused Berkeley AWDU of tampering with ballots, using this photo as evidence. Read the poll worker’s response HERE.

These are your uncounted ballots, (through the window of a locked door) UCLA and Berkeley voters…..

May 1, 2011

This message goes out to everyone on the USEJ slate, everyone on the Elections Committee, and everyone who voted in the UAW election.

I am hugely appalled by the incumbent caucus’ decision to prevent the counting of votes at UCLA and UC Berkeley. I have just read the official UAW email claiming that the election has been “partially certified.” AWDU members present at the Los Angeles UAW office have informed our caucus that “At 8 pm after a break begun at 5pm in which election committee chair Travis Knowles was absent with opposition candidate Jorge Cabrera for 3 hours, the election committee returned and certified the election without counting Berkeley or UCLA ballots.” What, I wonder, could “partial certification” mean, and according to what definition of democracy? To be clear about what’s happened: imagine a U.S. Presidential election in which, in the eleventh hour of vote counting, the incumbent party—lets make them Republicans, for the sake of argument—decided not to count the remaining votes from, say, California, New York, Ohio and Tennessee. Let’s say that the incumbent party’s spokesperson went on air with the message, “Because there were challenges from both sides, and because things have been contentious, and because we’ve been counting for so long—48 hours!—we decided to call it a day.” What would you think? Would you believe the principles of democracy were being upheld?

I am even more appalled because today is May 1st, the one day of the year devoted to working men and women, not only in American, but in all nations. This is not the day to trample on the democratic rights of workers, but that is what the power-holders in USEJ have chosen to do. This is not the day to communicate to the honest workers of our local that their votes were not even counted for fear of the results. This is not the day to pretend that the “contentiousness” of an election is grounds for the nullification of the democratic process. On any other day, this behavior would be shameful and intolerable. But today, it is a gross insult and a travesty of the values of “social and economic justice” for which the incumbent caucus claims to stand. It is an insult to all of us, on both sides of the election campaign. This is not the day to defile the honor of public-sector workers; this is a day to stand together, and to cherish one of the few rights afforded us as workers in this country: the right to participate in collective bargaining. Recent events in Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere have shown that this right is under serious threat from the political Right. For too many American workers, May Day has already been tarred by political defeats and betrayals. Still, I did not expect I would be spending my May Day contemplating my own union’s betrayal of my rights as a worker.

Let me pose a question to the supporters of USEJ. When you cast your vote in the election, what image of democracy did you have in mind? Would you have felt comfortable voting for the incumbent caucus knowing that they would try to tilt the election in their favor by whatever means necessary? Are you aware, for instance, that the photograph touted in a recent USEJ email as evidence of voter fraud at Berkeley–it shows a man reaching into the ballot box–was taken prior to voting, while the polling station was still being set up? (Which is precisely what the photograph depicts: a volunteer, not an AWDU member, preparing the polling station for voting.) If you had known to what lengths the incumbents were willing to go to ensure victory, would you have voted for USEJ or for AWDU? As for candidates on the USEJ slate, I cannot understand what you mean by the phrase “social and economic justice.” Is it socially and economically just to shut out voters at UCLA and Berkeley? What should we call justice that exempts itself from judgment? What would you propose? Or are you as appalled as I am? If so, I strongly urge you to condemn your caucus’ leadership for making a mockery of the election, a mockery of union democracy, and a mockery of justice. Moreover, I urge you to join AWDU. The stakes of our caucus are real: union democracy urgently needs defenders. We want to fight with you, not against you, to build a stronger union for all of us.

Make no mistake: infamy is at work in the union. It has draped itself in the costume of “partial certification” and the legitimacy of the Joint Council of the Union, but it is infamy nonetheless. We have all been stained by this insult, and we ought all to fight it—today, tomorrow, and every day until our union is again worthy of that title. Otherwise there will be no union, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a fraud.

Daniel Marcus
UC Berkeley

In the past several days, as AWDU and other UAW 2865 members worked to fairly count the votes from last week’s election, the leadership has dramatically and irrationally stopped the vote count. The following message went out widely to the media this morning:
The UAW 2865 internal union Elections Committee has been conducting a vote count for a contentious election for the Local’s top elected leadership As the count proceeded, it appeared possible that our slate of reformers, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (www.awdu.org) would win the election. Then, at 8 pm Saturday, April 30, the incumbent-controlled Election Committee abruptly decided to terminate the vote count, leaving1500 ballots uncounted — nearly half the ballots cast.

In a blatant effort to hold on to the power and privileges of their high paying positions, paid union official Daraka Larimore-Hall and his incumbent slate have tried to spin this egregious violation of UAW election procedures. Many of the incumbent candidates are not graduate students, including three of the incumbent candidates for top officer positions. In the vote count, together these candidates stand to lose the hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and benefits they give themselves annually with our dues dollars.

Cheryl Deutsch, AWDU candidate for President, said, “We won’t know if AWDU won the election until all the votes are counted, but it’s hard to understand why else the current union administration would abandon the vote count without having counted nearly half the ballots cast in the election.”

All but three of the Elections Committee members abandoned all of the election materials in the union’s LA conference room, including boxes of more than 1500 uncounted ballots from UCLA and Berkeley union members.

A group of more than 20 UAW 2865 member reformers and three Elections Committee members still present left all materials in the conference room exactly as they were when the Elections Committee abandoned the vote count. The group then locked the conference room to preserve the integrity of the ballots, after photographing and videotaping the room and its contents in detail. UAW 2865 members remain at the LA office to monitor the ballots and ensure they are not tampered with until they can be counted.

AWDU has demanded that our UAW 2865 Elections Committee count every vote and have called on Mr. Larimore Hall and all candidates on his slate to join us in our demand.

If you haven’t yet, get out there tomorrow and vote for your union leadership! Find info about polling places here.

This election is already unprecedented in the history of our local as the first truly contested election statewide. We want the turnout to be historic, as well. Thousands of members turning out to participate should be the norm, not a once-in-history exception.

While AWDU has been working hard to make the contest one about substance–about the democratic functioning and the strength of our union–things have been getting heated and personal. The range of attacks against AWDU ranges from us being a clique of humanities students trying to disenfranchise scientists to being racist.

But when AWDU activists talk with students in the sciences about the election and we hear that they still don’t even know we have a union, it’s clear to us that the current practices of our local are what disenfranchises members because of the lack of member education and outreach. And on the charges of racism we agree that the union needs to do much more to reach out to, support and partner with the organizing efforts of students of color and we believe that our platform and commitment to recent struggles against racism on our campus and in our community are the best answer we can give. Here’s an even better response from four women of color AWDU activists at UCLA.

AWDU wants to do more to make sure the needs of every community of our membership are heard and we believe the way to do that is by creating a democratic union where every member has a voice, not one where dissent is shouted down. The incumbent leadership, in the name of USEJ, first attacks us for being divisive, then tries to incite science students to vote against a “humanities clique.” AWDU believes we need to hear and learn from the different needs and experiences of all our members, across geographic, disciplinary, gender and racial divides if we are going to find ways to come together and fight together.

This election is already changing the dynamic of our local, here are some of the stories coming out of it:

“California Grad Students Seek a Bottom-Up Union” on Labor Notes, by Chris Schildt and Mandy Cohen

“UC academic student employees set to vote in heated election” in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, by Tovin Lapan

“Union needs internal democracy” in the UCLA Daily Bruin, by Kyle Arnone, Renee Hudson, Dustianne North and Julia Tomassetti

And check out UCLA AWDU’s blog for some amazing pieces on their struggle for union democracy against an increasingly aggressive leadership, including the above mentioned post, “Invisible Women of Color”

Graduate student teachers face a serious workload problem at the University of California.  While we are paid for ten or twenty hours of work per week, we often end up working well in excess of those hours.  This is a violation of our collective bargaining agreement, but unfortunately, these violations are usually never reported.

Workload is an issue for many of us. For instance, for a GSI with a 25% appointment, little time is left after going to lecture, sections, and office hours to attend to grading, let alone answer emails and provide extra help for students that need it.  Unfortunately, these are the activities that are most crucial to the quality of instruction.  In order to meet the needs of our students, we are often forced to work well in excess of the hours for which we are paid.  In short, graduate student teachers often face a trade-off between compromising our efforts in the classroom, and working many hours for which we are never paid.

Many members across the UC system have also voiced concerns about work security.  We often don’t hear about our appointments until days before classes begin.  As TA and GSI positions are a critical source of funding for most of us, this situation harms our ability to plan our lives and complete our educations.

These workload and work security problems are exacerbated by recent cuts to the UC budget.  At UC Santa Cruz, Chancellor Blumenthal recently announced a cut of 110 TA positions, and said a further cut of 120 positions could be imminent.  On almost every UC campus, TA and GSI positions have been cut in many departments.  These cuts are a tragedy for undergraduates, as they compromise the quality of instruction.  But it’s also a serious problem for academic employees, who will need to work even more unpaid hours to pick up the slack. We expect that these will make an already serious workload issue for graduate student teachers and make it much, much worse.

Why the Contractual Grievance Procedure Doesn’t Solve the Problem

While our contract clearly states how much we should work and how much we should be paid, the way the contract says we should enforce our rights is not a tenable solution.  AWDU believes that the current hours enforcement mechanism in our contract faces two critical issues.  First, the current enforcement language doesn’t fully take into account our dual roles as teachers and students, and pits us against our instructors and our students.  Second, it just doesn’t solve the problem. The solution to the workload problem isn’t cutting back on instruction—it’s increasing the number of total positions so we can all do our job well.

Article 31 of our contract clearly stipulates that a TA with a 50% appointment should work no more than 220 hours per quarter or 340 hours per semester.  The contract’s solution to workload violations is to raise the concern with our instructor, and ultimately to file a grievance against him/her.  (http://www.uaw2865.org/?page_id=42#article31)

Most of us who face workload problems never do this because the grievance itself pits us against our teachers, and the resolution pits us against our students. Our instructors are often our advisors or others on the faculty, people who hold our careers in their hands.  They counsel us as researchers, write our recommendations, and help us get jobs.  We depend on them and care about them.  TAs and GSIs are often unwilling to confront them about hours, potentially jeopardizing our relationships with them or casting doubt on our capacity.  Few are willing to file an official grievance when it’s just them, alone, grieving against a member of the faculty.  The contract also stipulates that the resolution to a grievance is for the instructor to a) pay you more (have you ever heard of that happening?), or b) cut back on your work requirements (this can mean dropping assignments for students).

Finally, grieving against your instructor does not solve the real problem—the undersupply of teaching appointments, and the University’s dependence on unpaid work to provide instruction to undergraduates.

Working Together, Not Alone: A Campaign to Enforce Our Contract and Improve Our Teaching

While the problems are big, we at AWDU want to propose a solution.    Instead of confronting our instructors alone, we should enforce our contract language together.

Grievances can be useful, and are an important safeguard of our rights.  But we shouldn’t rely on them alone.  We should be working together, with our fellow teachers, to make sure our rights are respected. We need to take our grievances to the place where it counts: the university.  We need a public campaign to make clear how big a problem this is, and to push the university to respect our contract.

This model of contract enforcement does not have to pit us against the faculty.  On the contrary—we want to enlist them in a common project.  Faculty members care about instruction, too, and they care about us.  If we take this fight to the university, they can be our allies in a campaign to enforce our contract and improve undergraduate instruction.

This campaign is in keeping with AWDU’s core beliefs about how we should run our union.  We realize that we have the most power when we work together to improve our working lives.  This campaign can be a way to open lines of communication amongst each other, to start talking about our work and how we can change it.  And it places the power to make a difference in OUR hands—not in the hands of bureaucrats negotiating directly with the bosses. Placing real power in members’ hands is precisely what the current leadership has failed to do, and what we most want to change.

We ask you to join our campaign—first by filling out the survey, and over the next months, helping us plan and carry out our campaign.

Why Fill Out a Workload Survey?

We see this survey as a first step toward building a collective alternative to contract enforcement.  We want to know more precisely where workload problems are most serious, get a better picture of what this means for members and our students, and collect stories from members that can concretely illustrate the workload problem to each other and our allies.

Fill out the survey here: http://www.saveucteachers.org/
Or here: http://www.uaw2865.org/?page_id=2265