A sign of Albany's slow gentrification, this  upscale doggy day care storefront used to be the base of operations of Occupy Albany

Eight years, three months, and eleven days ago, GSOC-UAW's first contract with NYU expired.  Since the NLRB had struck down its own four year old precedent a year earlier, and NYU had unilaterally decided to make GSOC a thing of the past, this meant that August 31 was the last time NYU's graduate employees had union recognition.  In protest, many of them (this was the day before I started grad school, also the day I signed a union card) sat down in the street and blocked traffic in front of Bobst library, the site of invisible grad employee labor, of so many student suicides, and of the offices of President Sexton and his university leadership team.

Today GSOC is once again recognized, winning an American Arbitration Agency-supervised election by a total of 620 votes to 10.  I'm in a mild state of shock, and I'm pretty misty eyed, thinking about all of the people that made this possible, from the newer cohorts I don't even know to folks like Mike, Susan, Maggie, Tracy, Paul, Jenny, Franny, George, Steve, Andy, Miabi, Joanna, Leigh Claire, Jessie, Bekah, Sonia, Tricia, Stephanie, and everyone else who helped lead the union through the strike, Brenda and Mary and Anita and Jeffrey and Maris, who gave up a year or more of their lives for a union they didn't even belong to, the undergraduates who stormed Bobst, Rana, Patrick, Stefanie, Dacia, Lauren, Kari, Emmy, Tammy, Natan, Liz, Alex, David, Burgard, Magali, "the twins," union peter, sarah, paulette, lilly, and everyone else who sustained the union through the house of delegates and years of limbo and FAR4 and John Sexton's imperial circumatlantic (and pacific) expansions and debt-financed fire island bungalows.  Apologies to many folks I forgot to mention.

I have many criticisms of UAW strategy and leadership, but the refusal to walk away and abandon GSOC, or to sell it out to administrative trap doors like the 2005 open shop proposal or FAR4 or a TA-only, Washington Square only unit deserve a lot of praise and made this moment possible.  As folks think about what the second contract will look like, I hope one thing that people mull is a refusal to agree to noninterference in academic matters, a clause which both limited the scope of what GSOC could do (academic matters are our working conditions) and gave NYU some admittedly cynical ammunition with which to demonize the union and the grievances it filed while trying to contest administrative moves to staff union jobs with then non-union and much cheaper adjunct labor.  If the only power we have is in our labor and our ability to refuse to perform it, I don't think that academic workers should be afraid to organize to transform our workplaces beyond the limited scope of fordist collective bargaining regimes.  I also think it's important to remember that without ongoing shopfloor organizing across the university, the union is vulnerable to future attack and weakened even in the absence of any unionbusting initiative on NYU's part, so the question of a sustainable culture of constant and ongoing organizing becomes paramount.  Finally, the NYU strike and subsequent struggle have been linchpins for the broader movement across the US of the organization of contingent academic workers at private universities.  Workers at Columbia and Penn got arrested with us multiple times.  GESO sent four organizers and a researcher down for the duration of the strike and months afterwards.  I think it's important that GSOC find similarly powerful ways to be in solidarity with these and future struggles in the coming years.  Congratulations and thank you to everyone who made this possible.

Eight Years

Thanksgiving marked the eighth anniversary of John Sexton's so-called "threat letter," a long, rambling missive, released late in the strike's third week, which dropped the proverbial hammer on hundreds of striking teaching and research assistants, informing strikers that if they did not return to work by December 5, 2005, they would be fired from the positions they were striking and banned from further teaching at the university for an additional two semesters.  The punitive blacklist was ultimately rescinded, but the threats had their intended effect, sending many strikers back to work, mostly over the winter break.  Those who remained on strike eventually felt the full brunt of administrative repression, when the administration made good on its threats.  Beginning in late January of 2006, graduate student teaching assistants and instructors, first in the Sociology ad Spanish departments, and later, the vast majority of strikers in the english department, recieved letters from a mysterious administrator in the provost's office named Frank Hoppensteadt, PhD, informing them of their impending pay cutoff.  There was a grievance process on the university's terms (the union contract's expiration having been the cause of the strike in the first place) which went nowhere, and the strike gradually shifted from its semi-euphoric (semi because harassment and threats circulated intradepartmentally throughout the first few weeks, leading, for instance, to strikers in the Math department returning to work very quickly) to its apocalyptic phase, a generalized sense of frustration and hopelessness which my blog posts from the moment mid-late february, 2006, let's say) both acknowledge and attempt to move beyond with occasionally triumphalist language and frequent gestures towards New Haven as roadmap. 

Late last week, the UAW and NYU reached an agreement.  GSOC will withdraw its two petitions before the national labor relations board for TAs and RAs at NYU and NYUpoly, respectively.  The challenge to the Bush administration's legalized excision of contingent graduate student academic workers from collective bargaining and federal labor-management regimes will have to wait indefinitely.  In return, the university  administration has agreed to an election in less that two weeks for a bargaining unit which includes teaching assistants at both NYU and NYUpoly, a larger unit than the one the strike failed to preserve, and administrators have also importantly agreed to remain neutral and begin bargaining quickly in the event that the union indeed wins the election.  

I first heard about all of this in the middle of my panel at ASA, although I did not learn details immediately.  The full announcement, inlcuding one statement by President Sexton and Bob Berne and another joint statement by UAW officials and university administrators came early this week.  From those of us no longer actively organizing, which now means everyone who was around for the strike, and most of us who organized during the almost eight years since its end, there have been a range of emotions articulated in several different forms and venues, and reaction among others in the academic labor movement seems similarly unsettled, as folks try to make sense of whether this is some kind of sellout, or a worthy conclusion to a very long and very difficult struggle, pending, of course, an actual election victory and then all of the things that follow it, or neither, or both.  At the moment, and don't hold me to this, what we know about the agreement makes it look pretty good.  Though it will not change federal labor law, a victory at NYU after 8 years of administrative retrenchment and against one of the most aggressively expansionist, authoritarian, anti-union and anti-faculty administrations around, would likely spur rather than set back ongoing and future organizing at Yale, University of Chicago, and other private universities, though I am interested to hear from folks organizing there and elsewhere about how they interpret what this means and how it changes the strategy moving forward.  I do think that there is an argument to be made (and unions have been making it for well over a decade) for circumventing the ponderous and anti-worker NLRB process in any way possible.  However, GSOC will either need an eventual NLRB decision or a remarkably high level of organization - something we have struggled with in the past - to prevent a repeat of 2005, meaning another withdrawal of voluntary recognition, absent compulsory legal recognition under the National Labor Relations Act.   

Meanwhile, eight years to the day after the SCRC/GUS occupation of the tenth floor of Bobst library, eight years of organizing and waiting, dropped balls and slammed doors and clandestine organizing meetings at the four faced liar, on the second floor of dunkin donuts, at that shitty expensive bar on university place after the picket line, in the sociology department, at Liz's apartment, in SCA, in the old union office, and in the new union office the single GSOC Venceremos sticker which inexplicably remained fixed to a mirror in the West Wing bathroom on the tenth floor of Bobst, eight years of work-ins and the ghosts of the strike, eight years of phonebanking and wandering through unfamiliar departments and laboratories, eight years of picketing, incompletes, concern trolling from faculty and hostility from so-called colleagues, eight years of missed paychecks and slashed healthcare  and the whole archive of messy fucked up shit I won't go into here, it feels so strange to no longer be a part of the bargaining unit, to be on my way back to ALbany, frantically trying to find a job and finish my dissertation when I feel like I should instead be doing turnout or throwing police barriers through bobst's picture windows and declaring the reestablishment of the NYU commune or something.)

N.B.:  I started writing this post on 11/26, but finished it on 11/30 and will correct the date in a few hours.  Also, for more information about the deal and what GSOC is up to, keep checking http://makingabetternyu.org

#marxistsatthemovies, or, this just happened.

What follows is a poorly formatted collection of my 100-some-odd contributions to the #marxistsatthemovies hashtag.

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7 Oct Organic Composition Of Human Bondage, Capital #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7 Oct The Critique of Everyday Life of Brian #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7 Oct The Practice of Every Day Is a Holiday Life #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7 Oct The Suburban Commando Revolution #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7 Oct The Production of Spaceballs #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h The Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 of Equality #marxistsatthemovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h No Future For Old Men: Queer Theory and The Death Drive #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h Is The Rectum a Shallow Grave? #marxistsatthemovies #noideaifbersaniisamarxist
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h Last Chance David Harvey#MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h Rebel Cities Without A Cause #marxistsatthemovies #nodemands
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h Minor Literature Report #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical14s Joshua Cloverfield #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12m There's Something About Mariategui. #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical15m Mad Max: Beyond Horkeimer. #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical28m The Good Jameson #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical 6h They Camatte Night #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical6h The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Reemergence of The Communist Movement #marxistsatthemovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical6h Scattered Dreams, Speculations on Value #marxistsatthemovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical6h Two, Three, Many Days of The Condor #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h When Harry Haywood Met Gwendolyn Midlo Hall #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h New Modern Times #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h Theory of Orlando Bloom #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h How To Train Your Dragon Is It To Be Done? #marxistsatthemovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h The Coming To America Insurrection #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical7h Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl-Interrupted #marxistsatthemovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical11h Pages from a Black Worker's The Notebook #MarxistsAtTheMovies
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical11h Crazy Indignant Heart #MarxistsAtTheMovies #charlesdenby
from Albany, NY
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical11h Midnight Notes on a Scandal #MarxistsAtTheMovies
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vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical11h The London Hanged 'em High #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical11h Love Is A Many-Splendored-Headed Hydra #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Walk Hard Road to Renewal #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Grosse Pointe Blanqui #MarxistsAtTheMovies (inspired by @BigMeanInternet threatening to have me killed.)
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Seven Days in May 68 And Its Afterlives #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Bandung of Outsiders #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Ranciere in The Dark #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h WALL-E-rstein #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Balibars of Fury #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h Up in the 18th BrumAire #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h 62. The Civil War in Frances Ha #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h 61. Fourier Rooms. #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12h 60. Fragment on The Time Machines #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical13h 59. Labor and Monopoly Capitol Critters #MarxistsAtTheMovies #actuallytv
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical13h 58. The Black Atlantic Jacobins Dahlia #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical13h X:Men Origins of Wolverine, The Family, Private Property, And The State #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1m Time, Labor, and The Social Network Domination #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical10m The Long Kiss Goodbye Twentieth Century #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12m A Kiss Before Dying Colonialism #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical10s Facing Reality Bites #MarxistsAtTheMovies cc: @afrofabulist

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical21m The Fetish Of The Commodity and its Secrets and Lies #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical24m So-called Primitive Love Accumulation #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical44m Deconstructing Harry, Reconstructing Womanhood. #MarxistsAtTheMovies #hazelvcarby
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical48m All Quiet On the Cultural Front #MarxistsAtTheMovies #MichaelDenning
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical55m Off Limits to Capital #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical57m Critical Condition of Postmodernity #MarxistsAtTheMovies #richardpryor
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h Driving Miss Days of War, Nights of Love #MarxistsAtTheMovies #technicallyanarchists

Harry Potere Operaio and the Half-blood Modern Prince #MarxistsAtTheMovies #2for1

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical53m The Sandlotta Continua #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical54m Romano Alquati Holiday #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical54m Radio Days Alice #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h For a Few Dollars Padmore #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical15s FINALLY GOT THE NEWSIES #MarxistsAtTheMovies

vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical47s Detroit Rock City, I Do Mind Dying #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical24s Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and the Giant Peach #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical2m Bodies, Rest, and Moten. #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1m Policing the Bubblegum Crisis #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical3m The Psychic Life of Power Rangers #MarxistsAtTheMovies
vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical4m Gender Trouble in Little China #MarxistsAtTheMovies

1. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical3m

   Bifo Sunrise #MarxistsAtTheMovies

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2. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical12m

   Love at Tronti #MarxistsAtTheMovies

   Expand
3. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical17m

   Cookie's Fortunati #MarxistsAtTheMovies

   Expand
4. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical32m

   All that is holy smoke is profaned #marxistsatthemovies

    from Albany, NY
5. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical40m

   In Foucault Blood #marxistsatthemovies

    from Albany, NY
6. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical41m

   The Curious case of Walter Benjamin Buttons #marxistsatthemovies

    from Albany, NY
7. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical50m

   #FREEMARISSA

    from Albany, NY
8. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical50m

   Sergei Eisenstein #marxistsatthemovies #justsaying

    from Albany, NY
9. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical52m

   No More Marcuses #marxistsatthemovies

    from Albany, NY
10. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Stalin Down #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
11. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Rob M.N. Roy #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
12. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    In The Heat of The Proletarian Nights #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
13. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    I Hardt Guattaris #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
14. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Occupy Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
15. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Abolish Working Girl #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
16. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    How Deleuze Your Lover #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
17. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Wild at Hardt and Negri #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
18. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Subalterner and Hooch #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
19. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Against the True Romance of Community #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
20. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Gramsci's All That #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
21. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Legends of the Fall of the House of Labor #marxistsatthemovies #davidmontgomerypresente

     from Albany, NY
22. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    City of God and Country #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
23. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Timecop, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
24. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    All that is solid melts into Air Bud #MarxistsAtTheMovies

     from Albany, NY
25. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Born in Flames #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
26. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    The Salt of the Earth #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
27. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Swimfanon #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
28. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Bakunin to the Future II #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
29. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Hot to Trotsky #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
30. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Attack the Bloch #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
31. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    A Socially Necessary Labor Time To Kill #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
32. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Adams Family Use-Values #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY
33. vogelfrei ‏@nerdosyndical1h

    Midnight in Paris Commune #marxistsatthemovies

     from Albany, NY