Labor union locked in the Berkeley perspective warp?

May 17, 2006 | Category: Uncategorized

The (unofficial) story so far: As part of its ongoing battle with the University of California over the low wages UC pays its custodial staff, AFSCME Local 3299 yesterday told Al Gore that it would picket his appearance at the China-US Climate Change Forum scheduled for next week. Gore promptly backed out.

This comes just a few days after the union–which represents the university’s janitors, food servers and grounds workers–shut down Howard Dean’s graduation speech at Boalt Law School.

Now it does my heart good to see one of America’s struggling labor unions finally find the sack to clamp down on two anti-labor facist politicians like Gore and Dean. But why not take it all the way and cherrybomb the toilets at the journalism and law schools? God knows students and faculty in both buildings love to sodomize the little guys.

Sarcasm aside, what really takes this into the realm of the ludicrous is the union’s baffling rejection of its own success. According to my sources—which, unfortunately, have to remain anonymous for now—the union had Arnold Schwarzenegger on the phone promising wage increase if they would stop protesting the presence of (formerly) elected officials at Berkeley, a promise they rejected as too uncertain. The union was also reportedly offered time to speak at the Gore event, rejecting that as well.

It’s always been evident to me, and I assume to many others, that the aim of protest is to get one’s grievances heard. So what is this union doing? Is this part of some nuanced scheme, the genius of which we’ll all appreciate later? Or is this just another Berkeley politics masturbation story?

Everything I know about this comes second-hand or off-the-record, so I’ll have to leave it here for now, but stay tuned…

[Full disclosure: I'm a journalism student at Berkeley. I'm also one of people helping to manage the climate change conference, of which Gore's appearance was to be the main draw.]

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Ch-infamous » Blog Archive » [UPDATE] Scare “tactics” on May 20th, 2006
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About the Author

Josh Chin is a freelance journalist based in Beijing. He also once worked as a sous chef in a French restaurant in San Francisco. Neither job has been good for his health.