There was a one-day strike of adjunct (temporary, non-tenure-track) faculty this week. The graduate student TA union, although contractually forbidden to go on sympathy strikes, did anyway. The buildings were picketed and many classes were shifted off-campus, despite that too being prohibited. I went in of course, and really was not given too much trouble by the picketers, although I had also taken care to pick a back service entrance that would have only a couple of picketers. Not toweringly courageous but a quiet life is worth something.

The department was pretty much empty; two other students came in, including one brave TA who taught his classes that day, but most of the professors stayed away as well. I was spotted, I found out today, and so took a minor grilling from one of the more enthusiastic girls. If that's as bad as things get, then really there'll be little enough cost. It does remind me that the biggest union supporters and the union founders are all women, and men on the whole seem much more skeptical. Of course there were men picketing, so it wasn't a clean break, but it was still pretty marked.

Anyway, the really wonderful part was what one group of picketers was chanting. I don't know whether this university goes in more for chanting than most, but it seems a necessary part of any crazy demonstrations. It was call-and-response style again. I wish I could write in the infantile, sing-song tone, but if you put a rising accent on the italicized words it should be about right; two stress accents per line.

Leader (pointing at building):
This side, bosses' side.
All:
This side, bosses' side.
Leader (pointing at picketers):
This side, workers' side.
All:
This side, workers' side.
Leader:
This is the picket line.
All:
This is the picket line.

Then repeated, because of course if it's good to chant once, it's good to chant about a hundred times in a row.

If only you could have seen the sleek, well-fed middle-class protesters, many dressed expensively. This was clearly a public act of shared fantasy, playing at being laborers oppressed by the top-hatted bosses.

While it is true that the faculty in question are payed poorly ($20k/year), their wage scarcely measures their privilege and comfort. In part that's because they come from the middle class to start with, and in part because few enough of them are the primary wage earners. Then too, they have one of the softest jobs available.

But above all, the wildly exaggerated Manichaeism of "This side bosses' side/This side workers' side" is far more black-and-white, dualistic, simplistic, etc., than I have ever heard from conservatives. It's fortunate that I have the press to tell me that conservatives are the simple-minded dualists, since I'd definitely never discover that on my own.

Flory

- posted by Ior, auritulus cinereus @ 7:11 PM