“Big Tent” Organizing in Canada

I was pleased to see the article on Canadian organizing and the “big tent” strategy in the latest issue of the magazine (“In Canada, the Success of the Higher-Education Labor Movement Lies in 'Big Tent' Organizing,” Adjunct Advocate November-December 2004). However, I must correct a couple of important errors in quotations attributed to me. First, I did not say that the law put graduate employees in the same units as other teachers. I said that California labor law has generally been applied to include both contingents and tenure-track folks in the same bargaining units in the community colleges. In fact, the graduates in both the University of California (UC) system and California State University (CSU) system are organized separately. In CSU, as in most of the community colleges, the contingent lecturers are in the same unit as the tenure-track faculty.

The article further quotes me as stating that this legal endorsement “helped him negotiate some of the best contracts in the country....” It is true that some of the best contingent contracts in the United States are to be found in California, and usually in combined tenure-track/contingent (not including graduate students) units. However, I would never assert that I alone have ever negotiated a contract, good or otherwise. While I have advised many bargainers in California and elsewhere, I would never take such credit, nor should any single person.

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