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....