Management Negotiator Injured in Freak Accident

We have sad news for you reader.

In a horrific tragedy Nadine Fishel, lead negotiator for UC management, was injured in a freak laboratory accident and was turned invisible! This is not the first documented case of this happening at the UC, and it is unfortunate that Research Assistants don't have a union because horrors like this could have been avoided with some simple health and safety contract language.

The UAW team had no idea of this tragedy and ended up sitting around the bargaining room doing nothing (as usual AWDU sits on their hands) waiting for management to arrive, when in fact Nadine was there the entire time! BT members shared this false info on social media, example:

When the UAW BT finally figured things out there was only an hour left in the day. Way to waste membership dues money AWDU!

We hope that with management's lead negotiator now being invisible that maybe she will develop a perspective and compassion for those communities on campus that management has chosen to not see, such as undocumented students and transgender students.

AFSCME Sympathy Strike aka AWDU wants you to get sick!

As you all know by now UAW 2865 went out on strike Nov 20 in sympathy with AFSCME 3299 who was protesting an unfair labor practice by university management.

While we totally want any political points scored by this successful strike - both in turnout and popularity - we also want to make the following clear: This strike was just a plot by AWDU to get you all sick!

It rained in Berkeley, Davis, and Santa Cruz on the day of the strike. AWDU leaders called the strike 7 days in advance, yet current meteorological technology can forecast up to 10 days in advance - at least. This means that AWDU called a strike on a day that they knew would be rainy. They were plotting to get people out on the picket line all day in the soaking wet conditions. But why?

Because they want you to be sick.

We meant it when we said that AWDU is out to destroy the union and kill its opponents. Well now that Paycheck First has been sent to a parallel dimension  in the most extreme act of political banishment ever and we at Paycheck Only disappeared for over a month and have refused to explain why beyond cryptic statements that should totally make you assume the worst, the only opposition left is the rank and file. In their final solution to end union democracy AWDU wants to be rid of the rank and file for good, so that they can NEVER be voted out!

They knew that you are poor and over-worked and stressed out, and that you probably do't eat very healthy because you're always tired and on the run, so they were counting on your immune system being depleted and that a single day in the rain on strike would spell your demise. And it worked! You're not even reading this now because you are dead!

But how did we survive, you ask (or you would if you weren't dead)?

Remember that both we and Paycheck First have opposed contract expiration from the beginning, and if it were up to us we would have had a contract settled over the summer so that our members didn't have to worry about reading updates and coming to bargaining sessions, and attending rallies and actions, and certainly not strikes! Never strikes! We can only strike because of contract expiration, and we both have opposed contract expiration unwaveringly from the beginning.

It would have been hypocritical of us then to actually go out on strike. And we're not hypocrites. That's how we are still alive. Scabs are like roaches, but roaches are survivors.

So that's it then. Anyone who opposed contract expiration but then tries to sound all full of solidarity about the strike is really a self-serving two-faced asshole that wouldn't know solidarity if it stood by them in their time of need. We know what we are here at Paycheck Only and we are proud of it. We even got overtime pay for helping Professor Coward teach the canceled discussion sections.

Hocus Pocus - We're baaaack!!

Like magic, POOF! we're back!

We're not going to explain why we've been quiet these last few weeks, but we're back. Maybe we should say something vague to remind people of our narrative... Yeah that sounds good. We're not saying that we received any threats, but if we did we certainly have hired a bounty hunter to find the offenders and bring them to justice. And that's all we'll say about that. Just enough for you to assume something serious but not enough for anyone to accuse us of actually saying anything.

Quick updates:

No contract:The end is here! We thought we were watching The Walking Dead but it turns out that our contract expired and we are now living in the post-apocalyptic hellscape that we predicted. Oh wait... Nope, just still watching The Walking Dead. We thought last season was the finale? We're confused. Why are they still living in that prison?

Strike vote passed overwhelmingly: As much as we hate strikes (and unions really for that matter) we have to at least pretend that we are willing to act like a union and go on strike if necessary. Otherwise management wouldn't give us a big fat raise because they would see us a weak - which is their own fault for no understanding that the strongest unions never go on strike. In fact the less you strike the stronger you are!

Elections: Elections happened and AWDU candidates lost! High five! We are working on a process of endorsing candidates. So far we like Richard Blum and Janet Napolitano and we hope that they consider running. Their experience with large organizations would prove a strength. We are considering either forming a caucus called the Admin Caucus (which is what we've been pejoratively called) or maybe just continue pretending that we are unaffiliated so that we can maintain our moral high ground and don't sound condescending and partisan with our half-baked criticisms...

Superbowl ad - The union took out a huge loan for a superbowl ad showing homeless TAs shooting up heroin and selling crack to pay for books and food. Stay classy AWDU! But seriously why would you allow a rank and file member to speak to the levels of desperation and resourcefulness that we have to go to because of our poverty wages? We're all for a democratic union, but come-on, you can't just let anyone talk at bargaining! The Republican party did it right when they screened people for their town hall meetings in the primary. Then even worse this info went out to members in an e-mail! I mean sure, if this is what people are doing in oder to make ends meet than telling them that isn't news, you're just repeating what they already know. But I doubt its even true. You can't trust everything grad students say, I mean, I hear they do drugs.

Not funny. We don't find humor funny. The UAW twitter posted a "funny" image and we are offended that the union isn't super serious all the time. I mean, just because bargaining team members are working more than double the time they are getting paid for, and some are falling behind in school just to get as much organizing done as possible, doesn't mean that these same people have the RIGHT to try to diffuse their frustration with management through humor in their spare time. We think that all elected officials should be robots. Robots are cold and humorless, and can work for free 24 hours a day. Much better than our current leadership. Also did we mention that we hate laughter?

*We aren't going to mention Davis bargaining being canceled because we hate Davis. We heard all they do up there is joke around.

Paycheck First website is hacked!!

The trolls in AWDU will stop at no ends to harass their critics!

In their latest update Paycheck First goes out of their way to provide some much needed intellectual and strategic help. Since bargaining team members can't do it themselves PF provided a good idea for a wage proposal. This is totally different than AWDU's non-strategy that they have been trashing.

What does AWDU do in return? They HACK the website. Have they no shame?

Our first piece of evidence is the following text:

As for the concern that UC will trash the Bargaining Team as greedy for making such a proposal, we say hit them first and hit them hard with their own words and reasoning. UC is very fond of justifying its compensation policies with appeals to the market. For example, two prominent UC Regents recently espoused such a justification for executive compensation increases:

“The University of California competes with the world’s premier institutions, both in terms of recruitment and retention. And top talent requires competitive compensation, an unavoidable fact of life.” (UC Regents Gould and Varnier, SF Gate, August 12, 2009)

We propose the Bargaining Team use these exact words to justify our compensation increases. Will UC management trash their bosses as greedy?  We think not.

All they could do would be to argue that student workers are less worthy than UC Executives of market-based compensation increases or that our work is less valuable to UC’s mission. We say let them try it!!  We will see them on the barricades if they do–it would be “an unavoidable fact of life”!!!

Remeber, PF is against conceptual bargaining. They strongly opposed the "competitiveness" narrative, and wanted to just focus on hard numbers. The blog post this was taken from started out with lots of specific numbers, but ended with this obvious hacking of their website. Notice their advice contains NO NUMBERS and uses the same narrative that AWDU itself has been using. Clear proof that PF was hacked!

Finally notice that the title of the post is "Sincere offer to help" since when do people have to preempt what they say with sincere? Its like when someone says, "Honestly I have no idea how that happened", you know they are lying. We are guessing the original title was simply "Offer to help", and AWDU hacked it to appear tongue in cheek.

UPDATE: Paycheck First STILL stuck in Parallel Dimension

So far we have been the only place to bring you the news that in their autocratic urge to purge our union of all democracy and dissent the ruling caucus AWDU banished Paycheck First to a parallel dimension.

Because it is a parallel dimension, and only some things are bizarrely different, it has been hard to tell is PF has found their way back to our reality or not.

However, it has become clear that they are still trapped in another world.

In a recent post, PF makes a desperate plea to AWDU (as if they would listen!) to please get a bargaining strategy. The post is very angry at what they perceive as AWDU's lack of any strategy at all.

How does this prove that they are still stuck in a parallel dimension?

Well, because the AWDU that they are describing is totally different than the conspiratorial vanguardist oligarchs that they used to write about. Remember the HUGE controversy that the AWDU lead bargaining team was planning on having actions through December?? And remember the post about how a certain member of the bargaining team was boycotting a meeting that AWDU had been planning for months that was open to all members statewide to get involved in escalation planning?

There you have it. Hard proof that PF is still trapped in a parallel dimension. Luckily for them they are in a world where AWDU is like the police in the Simpsons, bumbling and aimless, as opposed to the AWDU in our world, which is like the secret police of Soviet Russia, or the machines in the Terminator series - unstoppable heartless automatons hellbent on destroying all around them.

At first we were hoping that Paycheck Only might not only take down AWDU and democratize our union, but that it would also find a way to bring back our comrades from their extra-planar exile, but now we are thinking that maybe PF lucked out, and maybe we should find a way to travel to their world. It sounds so much better than our own.

Against concepts: The case for numbers-only bargaining

To our surprise the UAW bargaining team finally passed a wages proposal. This actually comes as a shock to us. We actually thought that the team was going to ignore any economic proposals in favor of the cutsie social justice stuff they love to talk so much about.

We would actually like to take credit for them passing a wages proposal. If it wasn't for our voice and your dedicated following of this blog then they may not have felt the pressure to actually bargain over wages at all.

But lets not celebrate yet.

The proposal they passed had NO NUMBERS in it. None. Zero.... Wait... Not zero because that's a number. Nada? Is that zero in Spanish or something?... Anyways, you get the drift.

How is management supposed to know how much to pay us if they dont pass a number?? How can management pass a counter-offer if they don't know what they are countering??

From the reports we have gathered through our NSA-like intelligence netowork all we know is the following. The proposal calls for a wage that makes graduate education at the UC competitive again, and is based on a competitiveness report put out by the faculty. Th report could probably be found by googling it, and could be read, but like management we don't really feel like doing that much work. Just give us a damn number.

Sure, some might argue that there's a strategic thinking behind trying to control the narrative by talking about competitiveness, but since we don't like AWDU we're instead going to just say that management will be controlling the discussion since they put out a number and we didn't. Studies show that people like numbers. I forget what percent of people like numbers, but that doesn't matter anyways.

We are hereby calling on the bargaining team to only pass numeric proposals from now on. We've created a helpful guide for the team below.

Here's a list of demands that we oppose since they don't have numbers in them:

-Affordable Housing 

      How much is "affordable" anyways? Its not like anyone knows what this means.

-Fully subsidized childcare

     Last we checked, "fully" isn't a number...

-Abolition of the 18 quarter limit

     Again, how can management counter if we don't give them a number?!?!

-Anti-Discrimination 

     Categories of people that shouldn't be discriminated against or harassed are not numbers. This makes no sense.

-Research Assistant Bargaining Rights

     Which RAs? How many unions do we want them to have? Again the lack of numbers just stalls the process of bargaining since it gives management nothing to respond to.

-Smaller class size

     While no class size proposal has been passed yet, thankfully, we hear that the team is working on a proposal for smaller class sizes. While it isn't finalized yet we bet that there will be no numbers in it at all. 

-Better Access at Orientations

     A stronger demand would specify exactly how many feet away, and how many, union activists can sign people up during TA orientations.

Quiz- Who said it: UC Management or Paycheck First?

Quiz- Who said it: UC Management or Paycheck First?

Seems like someone thought it was funny to make a quiz where you have to figure out who said what- whether it was UC Management or Payecheck First.

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/take-quiz.php?id=1310092023469700&a=1

Well we aren't laughing.

Paycheck Only may have broken away from Paycheck First, but we still strongly agree with them and the idea that someone can't tell the rhetoric of this caucus from the rhetoric of the bosses is crazy.

What's even crazier is that we scored so low on this quiz....

AWDU sends PaycheckFirst to a parallel dimension to silence opposition!

Wow are we glad we formed this splinter group when we did! 

It seems as if AWDU has conjured up some Necronomicon-level evil and sent Paycheck First to a parallel dimension, just to silence the dissent and continue their vanguardist hegemony. 

Luckily we survived because we knew when to abandon a sinking ship. We stuck to our principles and said, Paycheck Only!, and because of that we have survived.... for now.

Why do we say that PF is in a parallel dimension, well because despite their usual lies and distortions, they seem to be FOLLWOING THE WRONG NEGOTIATIONS.

Paycheck Fist reports that UC Management has proposed to extend the current contract until June 30th. 

Here's the problem:

THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

At least, not in this dimension.

In our spacetime management proposed that the new contract (which obviously has yet to be agreed upon) should expire on June 30th, instead of September 30th (as has been custom), three years from now. 

Paycheck First is known for its extensive fact-checking, so why would they be SOOOO wrong on this? Clearly the only LOGICAL explanation is that in order to further silence opposition AWDU has cast PF off into a parallel dimension, where in that dimension management has proposed to extend the contract until June 30th. 

Its a shitty fate, but its better than being frozen in carbonite.

The procreationist bias in the AWDU dominated Bargaining Team

Something we can agree with management on: Student-Parents don't belong on the bargaining team - or really even in the university.

The UAW bargaining team has been pushing their AWDU lead procreationist agenda on the University. With calls for fully subsidized childcare and dependent care, as well as lactation rooms easily accessible to working mothers who are nursing, and parental leave for an entire quarter.

FACT: The Earth is already over populated.
FACT: We are near peak oil.
FACT: Every additional person on this planet is just another carbon footprint, and scientists say that there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere that we may not be able to turn back on global warming.

Question: Why are we wasting our precious resources on children and a future that humanity will not have?

The irrationally procrationist AWDU lead Bargaining Team is trying to push our planet over the edge by making the university more "family friendly."

UC Lead Negotiator Nadine Fishel stood her ground against this breeder blitzkreig when she sarcastically asked, ""Are you suggesting that the university is responsible for the person making a choice to have a child while in graduate school?"

Nadine is right to point to the fact that having children is a CHOICE, a bad choice at that.

We want to applaud her for standing up to the pro-baby thuggery.

We also want to point out that two single parents from Santa Cruz on the Bargaining Team were NOT at Bargaining in San Diego. How just like parents, to leave their dirty work to be done by the rest of the team.

Well we have a message for all the student-parents on the bargaining team: Get rid of your kid or get off the damn bargaining team! There is never an excuse for missing a bargaining session! 

(Note: We want to thank Paycheck First for reporting on this first!)

Scandal Hits Bargaining Team Listserve!

After what we have been saying for a long time now about AWDU, this has finally hit the listserve that the Bargaining Team uses:

Shocking!

1. This just goes to show what ends an AWDU member will go for their own agenda.
2. As we all know kids LOVE dinosaurs, so the bigger question is WHY DOES AWDU HATE KIDS?
3. Lastly, where is this mass murderer? The circumstances surrounding his stepping down from the BT are mysterious (in that we haven't written about it yet therefore any other claims must not exist). Is AWDU hiding a known genocidal maniac?

Some people have raised doubts about this message, even going so far as to saying that we ourselves sent it just so we could post it here to get you riled up. However we want you to remember one thing, if it is posted on the listserve it MUST be true.

UPDATE:
Within minutes of this being posted on PO the above email has somehow been removed from the google groups, as if it was never there to begin with....
CONSPIRACY!!

We are winning!!!

Extra! Extra! We are Winning!

Crack open the champagne!

The following was posted by PF's twitter account:

What is so great about this you may ask? Well the "parody" site they are referring to is us. So let's be clear. First, we are not a "parody" site. We are a spontaneous grassroots movement. Second, hysterical huh? Reminds us of an old saying usually attributed to Ghandi:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Well as you can see PF has not previously tweeted about us, nor comment on our blog. so that's stage 1 ignoring. Now they tweet that we are "hilarious". That's stage 2 laughing. We know where this leads....

We would like to declare victory now. Thank you.

AWDU Silences Opposition

AWDU Silences Opposition

Charges have been leveled that the ruling caucus, Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU), are not so democratic after all. We agree. Our experience with AWDU is that they are tyrannical and violently opposed to any dissent.

Charges include:

• Using consensus as a form of decision making whenever possible and when a decision is obviously too contentious to come to consensus then using a vote by majority rule. Then using the decision of that the majority rule vote to guide the actions of the union. What about what everybody else wanted to do? Huh?
• Voting for what they think, not what we think. When an AWDU member votes they act like they are some kind of elected representative and speak for their constituents. But doesn't this mean that they are discounting what people at other campuses think when they vote? For example if Duane Wright, Unit Chair of Davis, votes he only considers what he thinks and what people at Davis think. But why shouldn't he be responsive to the members at Santa Barbara. He should at least split his vote in an act of solidarity with his own opposition.
• AWDU elected leaders have actually said things. Publicly. But when they speak they do so out of their own opinion. This is partisan and is divisive.Obviously everything we say has our own biases in it. So why should AWDU be allowed to speak at all. For example: When UAW 2865 President gets on the phone to talk to other unions or the international, he speaks his own mind - not what we are thinking. Sounds like an abuse of power to us!

Couldn't AWDU do what we do, and keep the debate within our own ranks instead of sharing their ideas, opinions, and strategies publicly. Obviously no one from the University Management will ever read our blog. I mean its the internet, how easy can it be to find it?

Our Strategy

Our Strategy

Now that we have told you what we stand for (see blog post "We cannot be silent!") we feel that the next logical thing is to explain our strategy.

We feel that the biggest problem for UAW members is our low yearly income, and furthermore that the biggest obstacle to getting a fatter paycheck is the current UAW leadership. This might seem counter-intuitive, but I assure you that actually UC Management wants to give us the best paycheck they possibly can afford. We think a simple 5% pay raise isn't disagreeable. So why won't they just give it to us.

The answer is simple. Radicals have taken over the union and want to "fight" for things. That puts the bureaucrats that run the university in a stand-offish mood at best. They don't want to encourage the occupy style rhetoric and tactics that the current leadership uses, so they cannot reward this behavior by giving us all raises. If only our bargaining room were filled with respectable young men and women who saw that management and the union have overlapping interests (the welfare and administration of our university).

We stand for conciliation with President Napolitano, Chancellor Katehi, Richard Blum, Monica Lozano and others. After all, aren't they just workers too? Aren't they just trying to do their job?

This is why we will not be organizing or mobilizing against management during these contract negotiations. Instead we are simply trying to position ourselves to be in a better spot during the upcoming triennial elections next Spring, when we can take down our true enemies - other workers - because that's what solidarity really means.

We Cannot Remain Silent!

We cannot remain silent!

Paycheck First (a not-so-popular blog regarding the UAW 2865 contract campaign) claims to stand up for what matters most- our wallets! - but they have shown time and again that that is not true.

Don't get us wrong, we truly believe that PF only cares about our wallets, but our grievance is that they have capitulated to the rhetoric of the social justice, anarcho-communist leftwing extremist Marxists that rule our union.

This blog is different. We don't hide behind rhetoric- secretly working for the side of good while using the words of the anarchists and socialists-, we are UNABASHEDLY HONEST about our values. Paycheck Only stands for precisely that. We don't care about quality and accessibility of education. Let the legislature figure that out. We won't waste time talking about bathrooms in the bargaining room. We are here for one reason and one reason only: TO FATTEN YOUR WALLET.

Why should our dues money go to fighting for anti-discrimination? 
That's why we have LGBT Centers, Women's Centers, Black Student Unions, etc on campus.

Why should our dues money go to fighting for bathrooms?
That's what our Grad Student Assemblies are for.

Why should our dues money go to fighting for childcare and dependent care?
We've got the ACA now so the healthcare issue is fixed, and most members don't have children.

Why are we spending all this time on so called "rights" and "accessibility" for minorities?
I thought the current leadership wanted a democratic union, doesn't democracy mean majority rule?!

Why has bargaining taken this long?
Seriously, how long does it take to just ask for a modest 5% raise and then capitulate to a 3% raise when management says that they can't afford that? Bargaining could have been over in like 1 hour if we were in charge.

Why Paycheck ONLY not Paycheck FIRST?
Because in order to get non-economic wins (childcare, healthcare, housing subsidies, parking subsidies, transportation subsidies, appointment notification, appointment security, abolition of the 18 quarter limit, smaller class size etc...) we will have to give up some amount of an economic win. That's how all those things are always leveraged. So for every little change we want we're going to have to give up something. Everything has a cost!!!

Which is why the only way to truly stand up for our wallets is to say PAYCHECKS ONLY!!