In November 1992, during my second year as a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, our union authorized a strike. The aim was modest: to win recognition that we were in fact employees. The vote in favor was overwhelming. Our departmental stewards had not anticipated that being a steward might mean real labor action, and they swiftly stepped aside.
A colleague and I stepped in. Neither of us had previously sought leadership roles. In fact, my colleague was one of the few people in our department who had voted against the strike, but she believed that the department needed leadership. In contrast, I had voted for the strike, but had reservations about the strategy the UAW embraced, especially given the apparent intransigence of the Board of Regents.
The union won some early victories. Overwhelming numbers of graduate students supported the labor action. In the history department, a surprisingly large number of students not only withheld their labor, but walked the picket lines, often in the cold and rain. Teamsters refused to cross our picket lines. Watching FedEx trucks drive up to campus and then turn around because of our lines was a boost, shutting down deliveries to the campus. But the university soon won an injunction that compelled the Teamsters to cross our lines.
By December, it was clear the university would not budge. Ir refused categorically to recognize our right to collective bargaining. As final exams approached, the numbers of grad students on picket lines dwindled. Friends and colleagues increasingly expressed their doubts about union strategy and their sympathy for undergraduates whose education was being imperiled. The university had begun to replace striking Graduate Student Instructors with students from the business school; one university administration official declared, in the tone-deaf lingo of the professional administrator, “The delivery of the education product will continue unimpeded.”
The union’s leadership was scarcely more attuned to the needs and wishes of graduate students. My fellow steward and I consulted regularly with the members of our department; we recognized that we risked losing much of our membership if the strike continued. I asked to meet the UAW representative to talk. We drove around the perimeter of the campus delivering donuts and coffee to bedraggled pickets. It was plain that the numbers of picketers had dropped, and I tried to make it clear to the UAW organizer how perilous the situation was in my department. More than half of my department, I told her, would not only refuse to picket if the strike continued; worse, it was clear to me that many of them would actually cross the picket lines. She turned to me and said, “You know, sometimes a purge is a good thing.” I was horrified. In my view, a union represents its members; in hers, the members of my union were an expendable instrument of a larger struggle.
We were losing the strike, we were also doomed to lose our membership. I thought the way out was to declare that in the interest of the students, the union, and of higher education we were suspending our action, but we failed to convince the union leadership. Rather than retreat and live to fight another day, leadership insisted that the strike continue.
As we had predicted, our members melted away — as did the bulk of members from other departments. My colleague and I found ourselves in an untenable position, unable to persuade leadership of the need to change direction and unable to convince our colleagues in the department to stick with a policy that they believed had failed. At the next general assembly, we both resigned.