COGS News
August 2003
Recruitment Keeps Our Voice Strong
On July 1st, COGS’ fourth contract with UI and Iowa Regents went into effect. The 2003-05 agreement not only preserves benefits hard won in past COGS campaigns, but also includes a tuition scholarship for qualified graduate students for the first time. All employees enrolled for 9+ credit hours will receive a $375.00 scholarship per semester in 2003-04. In 2004-05, that number doubles to $750.00. Employees taking less than 9 credits will have their scholarships prorated accordingly.
Since 1996, UE Local 896-COGS has worked hard to provide and maintain a healthy working/learning environment for UI graduate students and their families. None of our union’s past or present victories could have been possible without the support of our members. With a new contract in place, we at COGS now have to turn our attention to maintaining an active membership—the body and soul of our organization. In any given year COGS loses anywhere from a quarter to a third of its membership as people graduate or accept jobs elsewhere. Because this is the case, COGS is always recruiting new members to keep our union and its voice strong.
The Coordinating Committee is looking for volunteers to help with COGS’ Fall membership drive which will include a series of home and office visits over the course of the semester. Home/Office visits are one of COGS’ most effective ways of recruiting new members, but we do need help. Volunteering for this important task does not take a lot of time, requires very little training, and is great way to serve the organization that serves you. Keep your eye out for the HV/OV schedule and training workshop and other opportunities to bring in new COGS members!
--Patrick Oray, Vice President for Organizing
CGEU Conference Brings Grad Student Unions Together
“The ivory tower.” We’ve all heard the epithet, shorthand for academia’s isolation from the problems of “the real world.” I won’t debate the merits of the term here, except to say that if graduate employees are assumed to be in that tower somewhere, we must be down near the bottom, where the air is bad and the view is lousy and the upper reaches beckon if only we can hold out long enough. In our hearts most of us know this, but try to explain this to your friends in “the real world” and you’ll just get mocked.
For that reason if nothing else, the annual conference of the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions was a welcome change of pace. Established in 1991 as a place to share information, build strategies, and foster solidarity among grad unions across the U.S. and Canada, the CGEU conference was designed to address the problem of being a wage slave in the ivory tower. On a July weekend, Vice President Patrick Oray and I flew out to University of Oregon in Eugene and met members and staff organizers from over thirty unions, some well established (such as Michigan, UC-Berkeley, and Iowa), others newly recognized by their universities (Illinois at Champaign-Urbana), still others embroiled in highly visible campaigns (Yale, Columbia, Penn).
We participated in several workshops on general issues of organizing, contract negotiating, using strikes or other job actions as bargaining tools; and on specific concerns, like the crisis in health benefits and the problems faced by international student employees today. By conference’s end, the attendees had agreed that the CGEU could and should be not just a forum for information, but a model for action as well. We approved creating an online network for sharing and comparing health care packages and strategies. Given the widespread crisis in higher education, we also resolved to encourage our unions to join in an international day of protest in October (stay tuned for more information).
This year’s CGEU conference was the first in which Iowa has participated. Upon leaving that Sunday, Patrick and I thought it shouldn’t be the last. We had spoken with union members in the Big 10 and elsewhere, people who, because they are affiliated with different national unions, we would have otherwise never contacted. The struggles that we face in COGS don’t seem quite as isolated anymore, and the air and light in the ivory tower feel just a little fresher.
--Kevin Esch, Campus Chief Steward
A Brief History of Labor Day
Some things to think about while you’re enjoying a day off
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, was founded as a celebration of the American labor movement and as part of a larger campaign for the eight-hour day being fought by unionists during the 1880s. At a time when American workers routinely pulled 12-hour shifts, labor activists saw the establishment of a “workingman’s holiday” as one step closer to a system in which workers had “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight ours for what they will.”
The use of the word “workingman,” however, was no accident. Although women were not entirely excluded from the labor movement during the 1880s, the holiday was directed more toward the plight of the working father, and it did not emphasize the importance of women’s work in the home.
That said, the identity of the true “father” of Labor Day remains in doubt. Peter J. McGuire, a founder of both the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) and the American Federation of Labor, claimed to have authored an anonymous article calling for a national labor holiday in a 1882. Other sources suggest that the idea originated with Matthew Maguire, a member of the Machinists Union and secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. Both men lived in the city at the time and had influence within the central labor body, which held the first Labor Day celebration on Tuesday September 5, 1882 in New York.
Following New York’s lead, municipal organizations adopted Labor Day programs in the mid-1880s, and beginning with Oregon in 1887, labor holidays were established on a state-by-state basis. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, signed the bill establishing Labor Day as a national holiday in June 1894.
Cleveland, however, was no friend of labor. In May 1894, after members of the American Railway Union (ARU) initiated a strike at George Pullman’s railroad car shop near Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland approved an injunction against the strikers and dispatched federal troops to protect the company’s strikebreakers. The administration had given the labor movement its own holiday, but handed it a major defeat that helped suppress the growth of the labor movement until the beginning of World War I.
So, long after you’ve enjoyed your brats and beer this Labor Day, keep something of labor’s history and future in mind. Although motivated to improve the living and working conditions of American workers, the founders of Labor Day tended to see those workers as skilled, white, native-born, and male. As such, we need to recommit our union and the movement as whole to the project of expanding prosperity and democracy to all peoples. Moreover, Cleveland’s role in putting down the Pullman strike should remind us that government can be a powerful friend or enemy to organized labor. Only through continued political activism can we make sure what side it’s on. Happy Labor Day!
--John McKerley, Labor Solidarity Chair
