Strike

The Graduate Student Instructors at UC Berkeley are planning a strike to protest the budget cuts at the UC system. I have not kept up with all the issues, but I know California is bankrupt and the university system is usually considered a good place for major cuts during economic downturns.

I was an undergraduate when the graduate students unionized. It was a difficult process just for them to get the right to organize as a labor movement; funny thing was they became a branch of the United Auto Workers Association. Or I should say "we" since I joined the union when I became an instructor three years ago.

Anyhow, the strike is schedule to begin the day after I get up to the Bay Area, and is supposed to last all week. Which means I am not supposed to go on campus at that time, or anyhow, if I do so, I will have to cross the picket lines.

I am a little conflicted about this, since I was planning on using the library on campus while I was in Northern California. But now a simple scholarly act has become a complex political act.

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