Non-Workers of the World Unite

Our grad student friends at Illinois are on strike. Some interesting takes on it are here (particularly the comments), and here (also the comments), and here. Now ordinarily, I'd be all for something that would give me more money, in return for less work (or, I guess, the same work). So, you'd figure that I'd be totally pro Union. The problem is that the concept of the union protects individuals who are less skilled, have less sought-after skills, or are otherwise lazy. On the other hand, I'm highly skilled, possess sought-after skills, and am very lazy. But the system rewards me, because I'm talented enough in areas that are deemed to be important enough such that my laziness is overlooked. So, that's great for me, and leaves me very much anti-union, particularly when that union prevents me from getting the money that I would otherwise be getting (not that I deserve, because let's face it - I don't deserve squat). So let's look at this from the ground up.

Okay. Let's say for a moment that you're 21 years old, and you're graduating from college. You made a bad life decision, and you're getting a humanities degree. You realize that you're not good enough to write for a living, and that English degree that you got isn't going to get you a whole lot, other than a job at TGIFriday's. So what do you do? Grad school. Now, you're going to grad school, and you realize that you're only making about $14,000 per year. And you realize that your cohort from college, those who made better life decisions, are now making $50, $60, $70 thousand per year. In fact, you're often labeled as "hidden unemployment" because you sort of have a job, but you're not really contributing to the GDP. And you're indignant about it. You need to make more money. You need people to subsidize your life.

Great idea: We'll make a union so that we can bargain with the Man. In fact, we somehow get a vote on board to unionize. Instead of setting it up so that it takes a majority of the grad population, it only takes a majority of the voting grad students to create a union shop. Because, let's face it, we're going to play on the apathy of voters, particularly grad student voters. So, with an overwhelming majority of votes (which represent a tiny fraction of the overall population), we have a union. Welcome, GEO.

Now, the GEO gets to negotiate with the university over contracts. And more importantly, the GEO now gets to collect dues from ALL grad students. Basically, even though the vast of majority of grad students didn't vote for the GEO, they are now empowered to take money out of our paycheck (2%, actually). As far as I can tell, the GEO was able to negotiate an extra concession from the University of $100 per semester on health insurance, and maybe slightly higher minimum stipends. The question is, am I better off with the GEO, or not?

Now, if I'm a humanities major, I'm probably much better off. I benefit from the extra $200 per year saved on health insurance, and I've gotten a higher stipend, probably by about 5% (worth about $600 per year). Each year, the GEO only takes about $300 from me, so life is great. The union has made me a few hundred bucks a year. I'm a union man.

On the other hand, if you haven't made bad life decisions and ended up as a humanities major, it's a different story. Folks in business, math, and engineering know that the market value for these individuals is higher. So, these folks get about $2000 a month, or about $18,000 per year, and likely more if they're really smart (get fellowships or grants). And as far as I know, these stipends are not negotiated by the GEO, which negotiates the minimum stipends. These departments know they have to pay more in order to get talent. So folks in these departments get about $360 skimmed off of their paychecks, and really only get the benefit of the $200 bucks per year saved on health insurance.

Now my story. I was making about $2500 per month because I was awesome. Plus, my summer pay was still about $1500 per month for my time as a doctoral student. Basically, I was making about $26,000 per year, and loving life. What I didn't love was the $520 that the GEO stole from me. The only tangible benefit that I got from the GEO was the $200 savings on health insurance. Don't get me wrong. It's not like I was doing anything particularly useful. But I embraced being a part of the hidden unemployed. I still do :-) But basically, the GEO robbed me of $320 every year so they could distribute the wealth to humanities majors. Add on the fact that humanities grad students drive me nuts, and you see my basic position on the GEO. It's that I generally dislike these people that makes them much less sympathetic. Basically, they're pretentious idiots that blame the system for things that are more easily attributed to the sins of the individual. If these were folks that I liked, I'd probably be more sympathetic to their cause, but really, just look at those photos. You want me to give more money to these people?

Now, they're striking because 92% of the votes were pro-strike. How, how many actual votes was that? 92% of 777 (see comment #1). Out of how many grad students? Over 10,000. Same idea as when the union was first created. A small, vocal majority won out over the indifference of many. Here's the question. Of those that don't vote, how many of them will care enough to actually picket? Not a lot, I'd venture to guess. And what's fascinating is that some professors are coming out in support of the GEO. Care to guess which professors? Certainly not the ones who need to get research done. It's the ones in the humanities who know that these people have made bad life decisions. The ones who don't have the funding to pay their students better because they can't bring in grant money.

In fact, I'm sort of sad that I'm not there to cross the picket line. It's not that I want to do more work. I'd actually cross the picket line just so I could hang out and read in the office. My goal would be to basically to mock the picketers who claim that they're representing grad students as a whole. The alternative would be to hang out and start my own chants like, "More pay. Less work!" or "Hell no, I don't work!" And when the folks in engineering, business, and anyone who's got a legit funding crosses the picket line, the university will see what the story it.

Sadly, there weren't any picket lines in any buildings other than in humanities buildings. A couple quotes from the Daily Illini coverage:

"Picket lines encircled Gregory Hall, the Foreign Language Building and the English Building around 8:30 this morning. However, there were no signs of picketers on the Engineering Quad."

"Personally I didn't see any picket lines on the ACES quad either....Pretty sure it's the LAS and Humanities with all the problem. Maybe these GEO students should take a look at the bigger picture and the students they are actually affecting."

Oh well. At least now I don't have to worry about humanities grad students coming by to bother me to sign up for their union. Plus, I'm vastly overpaid... more empirical evidence that having desirable skills results in better pay, whereas having unnecessary skills results in unions and strikes.

-Chairman