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All the Right Moves?
SOLIDARITY by
Greg Perkins, Guild Executive Board
“Solidarity.” In the
branches of the Glendale College family tree known as the Guild and the CSEA, we
often sign off our messages to one another “in solidarity” after the custom
of the union movement to which we belong. Many at the college speak often of
“family,” a kindred idea, but not one as powerful as solidarity.
In
good times we become complacent in our trust of the paternal family structure we
have come to enjoy for the past decade and a half, even if at times family
relations take dysfunctional turns as in the best of families. We might pursue
our work unconscious of the latent power that is our birthright as members of
the tradition of the family of union struggles and organizing through our ties
to the California Federation of Teachers and to the American Federation of Labor
and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In the face of possibly the worst
fiscal crisis the college has faced since the Great Depression, when the trade
union movement took the lead in advancing the aspirations of middle class and
working class America, now we wonder about the future of life at this college as
the waning days of the family’s patriarch coincide with daunting budget
challenges. Solidarity means unity of purpose and interest and sympathy.
The trade union movement inspired America with hope during the darkest
days of the 1930s and 1940s, championing ideas of community based around the
defense of common interests, often in the face of extremely divisive forces of
racism and other ethnic, gender and class fragmentation. It was based on the
sense of solidarity that often transcended the boundaries of individual unions
or industries and that wielded strong unity of purpose and interest to overcome
powerful corporate and political forces that threatened quality of life and
hopes for the future.
This year the employees of Glendale Community College will face painful
choices of cuts to their standard of living in the form of salary reductions and
loss of health benefits and even in the partial or complete loss of employment.
The negotiating teams of the Guild and the CSEA will have to balance the
interests and sympathies of various special interest groups within the college
to maintain an effective sense of community. How will the interests of
classified employees balance with those of certificated? How will the interests
of adjunct faculty balance with full time? How will the interests of the
recently hired balance with those between one or two decades of service or those
nearing retirement within the next five or six years? How does the union
leadership preserve the sense of community within the college?
As part of this balancing act, the members of the unions will be faced
with the issue of “progressivity” in salary reductions. After making some
across-the-board reductions, is it more just and compassionate to concentrate
the cutting effects of potential freezes in steps and columns of the salary
schedule on the higher end of the scale where greater savings to the
district’s budget can be made? Or, do we not attempt to spare the youngest and
most recently hired, who often have young families, from the bite of freezing
their expected advances in steps on the salary scale in order to achieve an
abstractly flat equity of suffering? These are the questions that challenge our
heritage of solidarity and sense of community. We should look to the history of
union struggles where so many of our parents in this movement sacrificed their
blood, sweat and tears--and even on occasion their lives--in order to win for us
a higher quality of life based upon a greater sense of community.
The Guild recently voted to make a change in its dues payment schedule based on
a highly modified concept of progressivity. Those in the higher income brackets
would pay a slightly higher rate of dues to allow for a slight relief of dues
obligation on the part of the adjunct and lower paid faculty. This proposal lead
to a heated debate in which some rejected any sense that they had a greater
obligation based upon the fact that they had benefited the most from their
affiliation to the union and the college. As I sat listening to the debate I
sometimes imagined that I was listening to a discussion among members of an
investors club concerned primarily about the bottom line on their market cash
flow and dividends rather than a discussion of union members who enjoyed a
heritage of viewing solidarity with the weaker or more disadvantaged members of
their group as their best collective defense of their common aspirations for a
better life.
I would invite all of us to keep in mind that we are part of greater whole. We
should never lose awareness that this current budget crisis is not primarily the
result of some shortcomings of local
mismanagement
or abuse of funds, but rather more the effect of the ravaging of the recent
California budget surplus by greedy corporate energy robber barons and of the
self-serving political maneuvers at the highest levels of federal and state
governments. Thus, just as we should join as one consistent and unsubduable
voice to advocate for the just cause of equitable funding for our students and
for the community college system, we should join our wills as a community of
shared interest and purpose at the local level to preserve the best possible
quality of life for even our least advantaged members. &
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