In Class, On the Job, With the Union

By Andrew Tonkovich and Harya “Koko” Dillon

Welcome, UC Irvine undergrads — or welcome back! — to your public education and, yes, to our jobs. We academic student-workers (“teaching assistants” and “tutors”) and lecturers wish you good luck this academic year in your studies and participation in cultural and club activities, vigorous political engagement and, like many other UCI students, paying for exorbitant UC fees with a part-time job, too.

Indeed, you are probably a worker as well as a student. Someday, you will be just a worker or, perhaps, a manager. Either way, I’ll take this opportunity to remind you of one of the best-kept secrets at UC Irvine and most places of higher education: you attend classes, perform library research and benefit from office hours at a big, vigorously-democratic labor union job site that employs teaching professionals. It’s a working environment created for most employed here by the unions we belong to and pay dues to. They secure and protect our livelihoods, including salaries, benefits, protections and working conditions, all through collective bargaining with the University of California.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing that, likely because until now, nobody has gone out of their way to explain it to you. But let’s step back and review the three categories of trained, talented professionals teaching at UCI: Senate faculty, lecturers and academic student-workers. I’ll bet you didn’t know, however, that academic student-workers teach more than half of the classes you take at UCI. It’s why we say “UCI works because we do!” Alas, labor history and labor justice education get little attention in the welcome literature, orientations and Anteater celebrations organized for students.

That’s too bad, because as you pursue education and, eventually, research, graduate or professional school and a career, you’ll likely be represented by a labor union, whether you eventually become a pharmacist, social worker, engineer or, yes, teacher. Even doctors and health care professionals at UCI’s Student Health Center are organizing to secure their own union! And if you become a manager, become self-employed, become an entrepreneur or otherwise a “boss,” you’ll be required to negotiate with people represented by organized labor.

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[Source]: New University