During organizing drives and state budget protests, unions like to preach a great deal about democracy and what it should look like. Here’s the real story – when it comes to union run elections “democracy” generally means you pay dues for the right to vote for whoever’s running unopposed. Still, when unions do decide to allow competitive elections it sure is fun to watch! Unfolding in California, that perennial hotbed of union democracy gone wild, warring factions are fighting over who should control UAW local 2865, which represents 12,000 grad students and adjunct faculty on nine campuses in the U of C system. Since the vote on April 26, both sides have accused the other of voter intimidation, ballot tampering and other behavior unbecoming an academic. And the battle got so ugly and public, including mutual sit-ins, that the vote count was suspended until calmer heads could prevail. Several labor professors weighed in (And inadvertently said a mouthful!) calling on both sides to resume counting ballots because not doing so, in the current climate, “contributes to the public perception that unions are corrupt and outmoded forms of representation for working people.” (And don’t forget, it’s just a perception!) Ironically, this call for union decorum may or may not have been appropriate or legal, seeing as these faculty members supervise bargaining unit members and were thus, technically speaking, “the boss”. “How they choose to stand up and fight — through a decentralized or a centralized approach — is, in many ways, at the philosophical heart of the conflict at UC,” said Adam Hefty, election committee member and a seventh-year doctoral student in the history of consciousness at Santa Cruz. Adam also presents us with the most perplexing philosophical question in all this – what the hell does one do with a doctorate in the history of consciousness?
