E81_ Academic Labor Solidarity (w_ James J. Brown, Jr.)

5:59PM Jun 28, 2023

Speakers:

Calvin Pollak

Dr. Jim Brown, Jr.

Keywords:

union

contract

strike

organizing

rutgers

years

talked

happening

workers

work

full time faculty

adjunct faculty

win

solidarity

bargaining

faculty

proposals

labor

part

president

Hello everyone and welcome to reverb. My name is Calvin Pollak, Alex Helberg is off this week. But I'm so excited to be joined by an old friend of the show, Jim Brown. Jim, welcome back to reverb.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm an old veteran now.

Yeah, Jim Brown is someone who's been on the show in the past, in episodes a little bit more focused on his research. Jim is an associate professor of English and director of the digital studies center at Rutgers Camden. So in the past, when Jim has been on, we've talked about everything from his research into digital rhetoric, his book, ethical programs, we have a slightly different topic to cover this time. Because, you know, for those who aren't aware, back in April wreckers faculty went on strike had a historic strike over, you know, grievances related to working conditions and pay. And here on reverb, we've done several episodes in the past on academic labor. So this is an issue that we're very interested in, we wanted to bring Jim on to talk about his experiences with this recent strike. And so Jim, just to start today, in addition to those titles that I mentioned earlier, you also recently completed a term as president of the Camden chapter of Rutgers AAUP, American Association of University Professors. And so I wondered if you could just for context, tell our listeners, how long you've been a member of that union? And what did serving as chapter president entail?

Yeah, thanks. I'm excited to talk about this. Because we, you know, we accomplish a lot in it. And it's always exciting to sort of walk everyone through kind of how long it took to get to where we were at that strike in April. So I've been a member of the Union since I got here two records in 2014. You know, sign up right away. previous institution institutions, I was a member of union as well, I was never active in my union prior to coming to Rutgers. So I was at UW Madison before this, which isn't unionized, isn't allowed to be, that's a whole other story. And then for that Wayne State where I was in a union, but never really active, but I got here, and I learned after a year or two that the union here was well, I mean, without getting too deep into the weeds, you know, in 2016, the Trump DACA stuff was happening. And our Union started to organize events around that in support of student DACA students. And that's when I realized our union was doing things that I didn't realize it was doing that it was a union that I might be more interested in, like getting involved with, and not just being a member started asking around, hey, where what's happening in Camden? Like, who's organizing stuff in Camden? And when you ask those questions, you become you know, the staff of the union or like, Haha, have found someone so that's when I became more active became began organizing on the kind of department level and then eventually the campus level. And then after about two or two years or so of that, maybe a little more. Some folks in leadership asked if I would be interested in running to be chapter president. So the way Rutgers faculty union works is the union covers all faculty across all campuses that Rutgers so New Brunswick, Camden and Newark. There's a president and vice president of the entire union. Right now, actually, we're about to have elections. But right now president is Becky Kevin. Vice President is Todd Wolfson. Todd has done a number a lot of organizing at the national level with higher ed with a organization called Higher Ed labor united. And and then each chapter, each campus chapter has a leadership structure. So I was president of that Camden chapter. So. So I've been doing that for the last few years. And then this past year, I was part of the bargaining team as well. So they asked me to be on the bargaining team. I have told folks in Camden that I would never recommend in the future, the chapter president also being on the bargaining team, that was quite a lot to carry. But that's sort of my basic trajectory in the union and kind of how I got to how it got to the point where, you know, around this time last year, I was at the bargaining table, and sort of helping to build or present proposals that we had been building for a few months. That's what was happening about a year ago right now.

That's great. And just for people who don't aren't familiar, like on a day to day basis, what does the president of a chapter of a union do?

Yeah, that likely differs campus to campus chapter to chapter. For me, it was, I'm the kind of central person that everyone on the campus comes through with questions about contract about grievances. Anything from like my paychecks wrong to I didn't get tenure. And I want to file a grievance too. I mean, it's just any number of things in Camden, especially over the last few years, it's been a lot about pay equity. So in our last contract, prior to this one, we want to pay equity process, which was largely focused on getting Canada faculty to be more equitably paid, on average, were paid 30%, less than our colleagues in New Brunswick. But we are held to the same tenure standards. So that's been a big focus in cabinet. So I get a lot of questions about that, you know, holding meetings at the chapter level, and then doing a lot of meetings at the at the Union level, too. So as chapter president, you're also a member of the Executive Council, which is the sort of governing body of the entire union, that's about want to say there's about 50 people in that body meets at least once a month, once the contract got going. It was even more than that. And you're on committees for things like organizing, I was on a Budget Committee kind of approving expenditures, a number of committees you're on as president, or because because you're presidents, you're automatically on committees. So it's like a ton of meetings and fielding a lot of emails from your colleagues, like, Hey, I don't know how to deal with this, or my grad student is not getting the right level of funding, blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things. And I see the other interesting thing about the record unit, which is super unique, is that the grad workers are in the same union as us and in the same contract as us. So what that means is, we're able to bargain at the table next to them. And it's why I mean, going into this contract, they were more like they were more well paid than the sort of typical grad worker ta GA, but they still weren't making a living wage, which is now you know, something we've we've made strides toward in this more recent contract. But that's another thing to just keep in mind during this conversation is it's a unique union in that regard. But yeah, that's the day to day, it's like a ton of email and a ton of committee meetings.

Right. And so, you know, I think that's a good piece of context for what I want to ask you about next, because I think that for those of us on the outside, not part of wreckers this strike was really exciting, and was really kind of felt like an eruption like almost out of nowhere. But for you on the inside. Being the chapter president, you surely knew, you know, the broader context that this, this strike came out of? So can you tell us just a little bit about the events leading up to that April strike? And what made it necessary to go out on strike?

Yeah, I actually kind of love hearing that, that like it sort of burst onto the scene and I know, got lots of coverage and talking to friends nationally, hearing from people during and after the strike. So I was aware that that was the sort of perception and that's not surprising, because people are just not privy to what's happening. But I think you probably know, my colleague, Don immerge, has done a number of interviews about this. And I just want to say that, first of all, that Donna is an amazing person, organizer, and scholar and, and people should look up her work on the Black Panthers and other stuff. But what she has said is you really have to go back to the pandemic, to understand the strike. And I think that's right, because in the midst of the pandemic, our union worked with a number of other unions that rockers, staff, unions, other worker unions, to build what is now called the coalition of brokers union. So there's tons of different workers that records that have that are in multiple different unions, organizing those workers is really complicated, because we're all sort of, sort of siloed and management likes those silos. They like to kind of keep everyone separate. It's really bad for them if you start to organize together, but during the pandemic, you know, layoffs started to happen almost instantaneously, of dining hall workers have adjunct faculty. And the faculty full time faculty union and grad worker Union at Rutgers is massively powerful at the time was the most organized union still is the most organized Union on campus. Especially due to the work of the last, say, eight years or so. The last two sort of contracts that the president who was in place when I started getting active in the Union was Deepa Kumar, who was like, I would say, really started this all getting the union to think in toward more sort of issues of social justice. and beyond just sort of pay issues for full time faculty. But so that so the pandemic hits and these layoffs hit and the faculty union leadership decides, look, we have the most leverage, we have the most power, we should work to somehow support and protect these workers who are less organized, who make less money, who are more precarious, who don't, of course, have tenure protections. And we so we started to work in that regard. And we, we proposed to the administration, a Work Share Program, which essentially is a partial furlough program, that would mean that we would take partial furloughs in exchange for them agreeing to not lay off workers, they rejected that plan, and then laid off workers. And then six months later, roughly or so, they did agree to that plan. And we were able to at least save some some jobs in that regard. So you have full time, full professors, distinguished professors, pretend your professors, non tenure track professors, taking partial furlough. It's called a workshop program, because the way it worked was we were we were able to apply for unemployment to make up for that furlough. But that, of course, means that Rutgers saves money. And our our position was, we'll do that we'll do that work to save records that money if that if those resources are used to save other people's jobs. So we did that we were successful. It was, I was amazed by it. Because I expected to get inundated with those emails I mentioned earlier from like full time faculty that say like, Why do I have to do this? This is too complicated. Why am I dealing? Why am I on the phone with New Jersey unemployment? And you know, we did we did some of that. But by and large people supported it. And it was a really important moment to see what we were capable of, and what the sort of most privileged, best off workers at Rutgers were willing to do.

How long did that work? Share? Yeah. And last, and when what was that in 2020, or

I want to say it was 2020. And the actual work share was maybe for, gosh, maybe six weeks sort of period, saved millions and millions of dollars for the university. Because we were drawing on like code, like pandemic funds that were made available to do just this. And, you know, there were other parts of this agreement, and this bargaining with the administration to because they had, there was a there's clause in our contract that allows them to declare fiscal emergency and then take away our raises, they had done that we bargained to get some of those razors back, not all of them. So there was there were pieces of this as well, the pieces of disagreement as well were like about getting some of those razors back. But, you know, the long and short of it was that level of organization is very difficult to to, to achieve, to to organize across multiple unions organized within a faculty union, that rep that represents 9000 workers across multiple campuses. And that are sort of by you know, I mean, the history of academic workers is that they are well off, like, class wise they are and they're not, they just don't tend to sort of care that much about what's happening outside there, sort of very specific sphere. And so that was the beginning of what you could say that those are the early rumblings of what happened in April of this year, I would say so fast forward a little bit to our contract is coming up last year, this time. You know, end of June beginning of July is when the fiscal year turns over, that's when we were out July 1, we were out of a contract. And in January 2023, we start putting proposals together for a new contract. So we are building toward a contract fight, we know it's going to be a fight. We are building proposals talking to members getting as many people involved in those proposals. That's everything from pay raises to job security, for adjuncts to job security for non tenure track faculty. One of the things we want in the contract eventually was presumptive renewal of those contracts, which basically means people who are non tenure track faculty can't be non renewed for any old reason, essentially, you have to not get renewal, your your program has to be going away at this point, it's about the closest thing you can get to tenure, huge wins in that contract. But that all you know, those proposals are being put together. And then summer hits, and we're asking for bargaining dates, it's time to bargain a contract that the contract is is coming up and then eventually it is up. And the response from management is is a sort of typical response from management, which is to slow play everything to to eventually give us a couple of hours a week to talk about these things. And that's about it. All that's happening on Zoom because we're still doing as much stuff remotely as possible. COVID is not as sort of still top of mind for everyone. We're pushing hard for as much open bargaining as we can get as much sort of people outside the bargaining team proper attending those sessions on Zoom. That's a major organizing tool that people are realizing is really, really important. It's been the case and I think the new school made big use of, of open bargaining. I think they did the same thing. In California and the strike there, but that's a major organizing tool. Because if your members can see what management does at the table, they get really, really angry and they want to get more involved. management knows that that's one of the reasons we want to do open bargaining. So they fight it. So that's what's happening in about a year ago right now, right. And that sort of slow playing continues into the fall. But I mean, really, the contract campaign knew we make clear to people from the moment we were building proposals that we thought a strike was going to be likely and we talked about that early on, right, we said, we need to be ready. And the only way we're gonna get a good contract is if we are strike ready. That's the only we need a credible strike threat, so that they will actually listen to us. And we built and built an organizing, organizing, we said the word strike often so four years ago, in the last contract, we organized toward a strike as well, we had a strike vote, we a strike authorization vote, our members authorized to strike. But we were not organized in the same way we were this year. And when we talked about a strike, we were more careful with members, people were very afraid of a strike COVID changed a lot of things, the changing labor environment changed a lot of things, but we did not have to be as careful talking strike this time around. So we talked about it a lot. We organized a lot. We had strike schools, we called them on Zoom, where people could come learn about what it means to go on strike, what what would happen in a strike, you know how to get more involved. All of that was happening summer fall into the new year. And then you know, after like January hits, and we kind of knew it was like time, the timing of an academic strike, academic workers strike is really weird, right? Because when the academic year ends, your leverage ends, your people go away. Also, when you get toward the end of the year, you're getting close to graduation, you have to work with students think about how you're gonna work with students are they going to be worried about not graduating, so you have a window, a very specific window, that's like, you know, anything past something like April, you're bumping up against the end of the academic year, and we knew that. So it wasn't, it wasn't a surprise to anyone that March or April was going to be when it happened if it happened. So that's the kind of longer story of like, how we got to where we got in April, it was yours, in some ways, years of organizing, and then a very, very intense year of organizing.

And was there like an event or moment in the negotiation where you said, now we do it, you know, in that second week of April, or whenever that was that it affects? A lot of

folks have asked that actually, a number of journalists, were always asking that question like, why now? Why now? And it's actually that's a very difficult question to answer, because there really wasn't, there was that timing issue, you know, and that timing was not a secret. Like we weren't coming out and saying on this date, we will strike that's a that'll be a silly thing to say, right. But everybody kind of knew on the management side, you have to think they're looking at the same calendar we are. And as we got closer and closer to the date, where you would assume where everyone had to be assuming, okay, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen in the next few weeks or a month, they became so here's here's a good answer your question, as we got closer to that time, they became more recalcitrant, like, they were doing less. They were bargaining. They were taking longer at bargaining. They would caucus for hours at a time and we didn't know what they were doing. They were, you know, coming back to the table with these, like, offers for adjunct pay that were ridiculous. But they were saying this is kind of like, you know, this is our last and best saying things like it was their last investment. We were like, This is absurd. We've been talking to you for a year now about our goals for adjunct pay. And you know, another thing to, you know, this doesn't actually fit with this question. But it should also be said, the other weird structural thing that was happening at Rutgers was the adjunct faculty are in our union, but on a separate contract. And so they're a UPA ft just like us, but they're actually a different bargaining unit. And so what that means is in the past, what that meant is management bargains with us the full time faculty and grads and then the adjuncts completely separate table. And we broke that structure. This time around one we tried to we had them sign cards to get added to our union meant Rutgers continues to fight that, we were able to get the medical faculty added to our union that took years of organizing as well. So now they are part of the Wreckers au Pft. They were at the table as well. But you know, we're sitting at the table with adjunct faculty in the same sessions, which is the first time that's ever happened. And so I just want to point that out that like this sort of surprising solidarity that I talked about during the pandemic extended to adjuncts as well, where full time faculty were saying, Look, if we go on strike, it's going to be for graduate worker pay, and adjunct pay. Those are the people that have the least job security and make the least and that's what we want. And I think management did not believe that they thought we were posturing. They thought it was sort of virtue signaling. They thought for sure once the rubber hit the road that like full time faculty would would split from those groups, and would not actually strike that didn't happen that That must have been their calculus, they never said it. But it had to have been, but it didn't work. So all of that is to say, you know, if in as as February and March hit, and they seem to not be moving really at all. You know, we were in this position where we we planned for a credible strike threat. And here we are, as we got really, really close, the state started to hear this and sent mediators and mediators in New Jersey can't impose any kind of binding, anything binding on the parties, they're basically just there to kind of help you work better, it didn't really change anything about the dynamic. So it became clear that like they weren't moving, and we weren't moving, at least not in the ways that anybody expected. I mean, to be clear, you have to move in some ways, have to move your proposals in some ways, if you stop moving, they can declare an impasse, and you don't want that. Legally, that means basically everything stops. And it goes to this fact finding sort of legal process that you do not want. That means you won't have a contract for multiple years. But there just wasn't the kind of movement that anybody thought was serious. And so that's kind of when we were like, Okay, we set this timeline, we have a basic sense of what we need to do. And when the wheels went in motion we had, we had already done a strike authorization vote from the members. That means the members are saying to leadership, look, if you determine that you think we should call a strike, you're empowered to do so the leadership body did that. And the vote happened. And then you know, that Monday, we were on strike, we had been talking to students about it for for weeks and months at that point. So they were ready. And so

one of the tools that the administration used against your union was they prospectively sought a legal injunction against the strike. And they walked this back a few days later. But what did you make of that tactic? As you know, as someone on the ground, what was the impact of that tactic?

So that was a big part of our organizing from the jump. And in fact, it was a part of our organizing four years ago, and the previous contract to we always knew that that was going to be a possibility, because the sort of legal precedent for for workers in the state of New Jersey is, you know, an employer can go get an injunction to essentially force you back to work. And we so we message that to members constantly, like, here's what's going to happen, we're going to, if we go on strike, here's what's going to happen, the President University is going to get an injunction. So there were a bunch of things we did to sort of organize against that one was, you know, a letter that went out from the President to President Holloway, president of Rutgers from many of his colleagues, colleagues nationally, saying, do not do this. This is like, your, your labor historian, Jonathan Holloway

was this little letter that Ibram Kendi was on

Kendi was on Judith Butler was on, Robin DG Kelley was on, any huge name, you could imagine in history in the US and beyond probably was on that letter saying, like, don't do this, like, rethink this. So that was part of you know, there was that kind of stuff happening. We were talking to members about it, here's what happens if we go to an injunction it goes to court. That doesn't necessarily mean we all have to go back to work the very next day, we have to figure out if they're how they're gonna enforce an injunction, like, are they gonna say that every member of the union is in violation of a court order, then what does that mean? Or do they go after leadership? And what does that mean for the leaders? Are they going to find them the union? Are they going to seek jail time, all those things were things we talked about? And but we didn't know that that was their main tool, and he talked about it openly. This is what he would do. If we went on strike. And again, a labor historian, president of Rutgers University like is, is what is essentially breaking, breaking a strike and breaking a union so that we knew this was coming. Really Interestingly, though, so we get close to the strike. And this is when the governor sort of shows it shows up because he's, Phil Murphy is a Democrat, in a blue state and supposedly a very, like labor friendly state. And he does not want the State University of New Jersey on strike on his watch. And so he kind of he won, he sort of tried to get get us to sort of put the brakes on things on strike wise. When he saw that wasn't going to happen. He he put pressure on Holloway, not to file the injunction. And he didn't. So we essentially had what we thought was at least a two day window. That was the way it was sort of presented like for the next couple of days or or or as long as there's progress happening. I won't file file an injunction. But after a few days, like strike went for five days, and after two or three days, it felt like pretty unlikely that he was going to file that until the very end when we had to kind of agreed to a framework to a deal that we felt like we had had we not agreed to that framework, I think then you might be talking about the injection happening. But that was their main tool. Much is also been made of the fact that Rutgers has hired anti labor law firms and consulting firms to kind of, and so that strategy is likely coming from those places as well. It's a kind of national strategy amongst management, and university presidents like whatever tools you have. But we had done so much organizing with amongst ourselves with students talking like an in that that gets through to parents as well, like this was not just, and that's the thing I learned in the last three years is like these things take a lot of time and work. It's exhausting to do this kind of work and be ready for that kind of thing. You can't just decide one day, you're gonna go on strike when you're going up against the behemoth of Rutgers University. Yeah, and

so, you know, it's, it's exhausting. It's really hard. It takes a long time. But bottom line, you won, which is amazing, right. So I wondered if you could just tell us about the nature of what you won, and how the union's feeling about the you know, the gains in the new contract.

The top line wins are, you know, 48%, raises for adjunct faculty 33% raises for graduate workers, those are over the course of the contract over the four years of the contract. So by the end of this contract, adjunct faculty been making something close to I think, $9,000 per course, which is like, potentially three times more than other schools in the region. By the end of the contract, graduate workers will be making $40,000 a year. And again, I do think it's crucial to see that as linked to the site to this the structure of our union, that the grad workers aren't in the same bargaining unit in the same contract as us. Beyond that, you're looking at, you know, the potential for adjunct faculty to have one and two year appointments, sometimes even more, depending on seniority. So like, right now, doesn't matter how long you've been teaching at Rutgers, and we have adjunct faculty who have been here for decades, who still reapply for their job every semester, those folks now have the possibility and depending based on how many semesters they've been at Rutgers to get things like a year or two year appointment, okay, you're gonna be here for two years, and you're gonna get X number of classes over those two years. That's never happened for our adjunct faculty. I mentioned earlier, non tenure track faculty have presumptively renewable contracts. And it's it's kind of really as close to 10 years you can get without getting it, we gained a number of other things that are like minor to others, but were massive wins for us based on like organizing efforts. So protections against caste discrimination in the contract, which was like a huge organizing effort. And what was up against kind of Hindu nationalist forces inside the state of New Jersey, that was not something that just happened easily that took years of organizing and members getting behind it. I think the job security winds were the sort of core Oh, I guess the one other thing I would say is, you know, there's a large number of graduates, graduate workers at Rutgers who are not TAs or GPAs. They're on like a fellowship, like an internal fellowship. And if they're on an internal fellowship, they're not in our contract. And the argument we made throughout was those people are essentially doing the same work, whether they're a fellow or a TA, the work doesn't actually change. The only thing that's changing is like their title, and the amount of money they're making, and what happens when they go into fellowship as they move off the good health insurance onto something less good. And but they're still doing the same work. And we made that argument over and over that they should be part of the bargaining unit. So we want to process to add those fellows to our union, which I think was a massive what was one of the really big things we bargained for when we were at the governor's office bargaining for a week the week of the strike the bargaining team, we were at Phil Murphy's office in like in a conference room, very small conference room working on things like that, that were really hang ups on and things that we couldn't get pushed through records in our contract has to kind of give us X number of course releases for the for union work right so if you're a president like as Camden chapter president, I get a course release. If you're president of the entire union, you get even more I think you maybe get two course releases I forget how that works. But for years they've given those courts releases they're negotiated in the contract this in this contract for the first time Rutgers is paying for a portion of that those credits essentially. So we get X number of like credits to spend for union leadership. Rutgers is now paying for part of that part of those, like another huge win,

and where was the money for those coming from before?

The unions paying usually like unions paying like the equivalent of like, an adjunct slot right, to take a full time faculty Each member sort of away from that. So, I mean, those are those are like minor things, but they are things you win one or things you went over time over years, this is another thing I've learned is like a contract builds to the next contract, you sort of poke away at something. And then in the next contract, you're able to, you've opened the door to something else. So a good example is in this contract. In the last contract I mentioned earlier, we want some equity, salary, equity provisions, essentially, like a process by which someone could apply to say, I do the same work as this person here. Here's my CV, here's their CV, their New Brunswick come in Camden, they make 30%, more than me, fix that. ministration fought that. I mean, they agreed to it in the last contract, they drag their feet on the process for years, we ended up having to sue them, and win a settlement in that lawsuit to make them live up to that agreement. But what happened was that law that what came out of that lawsuit agreement is now in our contract. So you had, so the building blocks are is really important to see those building blocks. One, when a salary equity process in a contract, they drag their feet and they don't enforce it, then you have to find a bunch of faculty members who are willing to sue the university, you sue them, right? Then you win that lawsuit, you get that language out of the lawsuit, then you take that language and you build it into your next contract. And you bargain that language, you say, let's make it even better. So we have they use like a algorithm to determine the salary equity numbers, and we couldn't get them to not use that algorithm. But we were able to get transparency on that algorithm. So we're able to say essentially, okay, you use this regression equation to determine how much money I should make in the salary process. I need to know exactly how that regression equation works. So we were able to win things like that. So, you know, that's what's what we fought a year for, on top of like, little changes to the grievance processes and like, what kinds of grievances you could file for based on what kinds of things were happening, those are all like, really like mind numbing details, but like there's a ton of those wins in there as well.

Yeah, it's amazing stuff. And I appreciate you even going over some of the things that sound more obscure minor, because like, as you brought up the last one about algorithmic transparency about that, the algorithm that they use to determine salaries, I think that gets at where I wanted to take us next, which is thinking about the broader significance of this. So one of the things you mentioned, you referenced History Professor Donna Murch, she's been giving a lot of great interviews and having conversations about the broader significance of this strike. And these victories. One of the things that she has talked about is, you know, what we could call in a slightly highfalutin terminology, the neoliberal academy or the neoliberal University. And we've talked about neoliberalism on a number of episodes of this show before, I think that something like, you know, an arcane salary determination algorithm. That's a really interesting example of like, you know, the neoliberal academy or neoliberal institutions. And I think, particularly in a state like New Jersey, a public I mean, the fact that a public university has all of these neoliberal aspects, I think, really crystallizes the problem of neoliberal academic structures. And I also think about things like the ways that the university invests in you know, incredibly harmful capitalist investments, the ways that universities like wreckers and you know, a ton of other public universities throughout the US, contribute to gentrification, and contribute to housing crises, not only for their own workers and students, but for people in the broader communities that they're part of. So where do you see this in terms of framing the problem that your strike was reacting to, or the set of related interrelated problems that your strike was reacting to? Where do you see a neoliberal neoliberalism as part of that,

I mean, in so many ways, like too many ways to possibly, like wrap our heads around, but I'll just say a couple like the last thing you mentioned about like housing inequities and injustice. You know, one of the other things we pushed for in this contract was a series of proposals or that fall under the heading bargaining for the common good, which is a sort of national move to use the contract table like the bargaining table to push things that management would say are outside the purview of the contract. So we have been organizing with community members in New Brunswick Newark and Camden for for essentially at this point years to get to a point where we could come to the table and say, Look, record your though, especially in New Brunswick, like you're the largest landlord, if you froze rent for X number of years. Here is the sort of impact you'd have on the surrounding community like because Every one would have to essentially follow your your lead and pricing would follow, right? Not to mention the fact that like, you know, you, as a university, exploit those people in all these different ways. So like you, you owe these people this, we pushed for a under that same banner of bargaining for the common good a fund that would help sort of be sort of negotiated between the union community groups and the university that would help help fund those in the community who didn't get the benefit of all of those COVID relief programs. So those are all things that they don't want to bargain because they want to keep everything sort of very narrowly focused on dollars and cents bottom lines, they want to keep everything compartmentalized if I had to say one strategy that you're up against, in combating the neoliberal University, right, it is compartmentalization and silo isolation, right? Bargaining Units, separate groups of people separate, break solidarity by separating people and essentially playing them against one another. The reason the coalition of brokers unions is important is that in the past, what records would do is find the weakest union, pick them off, bargain a contract with X percentages and years one through four, and then say to all the other unions, this is the precedent that we have now set with this union, this is what you get, here are your percentages each year. And that pattern has to be broken, which is why a bunch of other unions waited, we're waiting, like looking to us, the union with the most power to essentially set that precedent, what are those? What are those annual numbers in those four years, that then we can go say, Hey, you pa ft got these numbers, that's where we expect to start. So that kind of cross union collaboration and solidarity is crucial. And it's again up against a structure that does not want it to happen. So that sort of compartmentalization. And I should say like, I've been thinking about this a lot. This sort of federated structure is something I've been writing about and researching now for for a little while. And I have watched it being part of these bargaining sessions, being part of this union, organizing the last few years has really changed the way I think about Federation, and federated structures all together, and how how capitalism looks to break federated structures that in every way possible, looks to kind of create at not just atomized individuals, but atomized groups, right. So because an atomized group is identifiable, you can box it in this happens in labor, organizing in really infuriating ways. So like the structure that kind of keeps unions separate by saying, for instance, there's no such thing as a solidarity strike in the US if if you work alongside another if your union, if you're in union A and you work alongside another set of workers who are in union B and union B goes on strike union A is legally not allowed to strike with that with Union V. Right? So it's legally, the law is set up to not allow you to work together, right? That's a kind of legal restriction against Federation. And that's just one example of the kinds of things that happen that make you then as a union hyper, it sort of trains you to be hyper focus on what your you need, what your members want, what your members need. That's sort of antithetical to solidarity, right? That's that what I just described earlier, where the full time faculty said, we're in a separate unit from the adjuncts, however, this is what we need adjuncts to get for this to be a successful contract for all of us. That's a tricky thing to do in a world where US labor law, and the neoliberal institutions such as the neoliberal University, don't want that to happen and have the law on their side, have everything on their side. So organizing against that is requires so much more work to break those structures. I think that's the sort of, if there's a key, one big takeaway is that compartmentalization, those forces of mentalization, that then you have to figure out ways around and through with really kind of savvy strategy and tactics.

Yeah. And I did want to give you a chance to talk about what some of those strategies were internally for forging solidarity across such a complex set of workforces, because you had people at these many different levels. I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the one of the strategies used was to flip it, where basically, you know, the workforce that has the most privilege is taking the most of the heat and is kind of like setting the precedent for the rest of the workforces. But were there any other ways that you found effective to like, bring all of these different kinds of workers together and avoid infighting?

Yeah, I mean, the key is, you know, when leadership of the full time unit meets, there are often members of the part time of the adjunct faculty union there as well. So and organizing teams are always cross job category sort of mixed. So big organizing teams are grad workers full time, tenure track, non tenure track adjunct, we also represent a group of elf counselors that are part of our union to a small group, but still part of our union like these. And we've I've only mentioned briefly the medical faculty, but like folding them into our union was like a massive win, but also created all sorts of issues because their contract is completely different from ours, the way they're compensated is completely different that they're sort of compensated based on, you know, how productive they are in terms of like, how many patients they see, and those sorts of things, right. They're there. Their compensation article in their contract is like, really complicated and completely different from what we see. So having to beat but being in sessions, where I was starting to learn about some of those complexities being so I'm on the bargaining team, which means I'm in those sessions, hearing the concerns of medical faculty, whether it's members, members of staff, people on the bargaining team, people just coming into sessions to share stories, and learning about the working conditions of those folks, is core to like building that solidarity. So that's one thing is just sort of mixing members as much as possible. And organizing efforts in meetings, frankly, and something that's been nearly impossible for the last three years in social settings is like crucial, something we have missed out on in like important ways. But, you know, there's, it's really difficult to organize people when you can't get together physically. And so I would say some of the fractures in the union that have have emerged, even in the in the wake of these winds, and there are, there are fractures like there are, you know, Donna Murcia, we mentioned earlier is actually like working on writing a piece about this that I talked to her about, but like, everybody on the outside sees this as like this huge win and this like, group of like, elated people, but on the inside, it doesn't feel that way. On the inside, it feels like we're all sort of recovering from like, battle. And those battles are not only external, some of them are internal. So it's really, really hard to articulate the complexities of how solidarity works. A book that I will recommend is a book that I like cite in this thing I told you I'm writing his by scholars last name is Doug Ford, d u f. O rd solidarity and conflict is the name of the book. And it's about how solidarity organizations operate and like how they manage that those dynamics or fail to two really, really, really great explanation of those forces. But I will say one other thing, which is like, it just, it takes so much time. So the reason four years ago, there wasn't very good organizing between the full time and the adjunct faculty. And by the way, like four years ago, the story on on like the story that came out of the contract four years ago was that the the adjunct faculty felt like they were basically abandoned by the full time faculty, the deeper story there is actually that and they adjunct faculty, faculty, who now are in leadership will tell you that this is the case. They weren't organized as as well as the full time unit was. And so there wasn't an alignment, there wasn't good conversation happening like that we weren't organizing together, all of that changed in this contract. Like for the last four years, we've been organizing together when we organize actions or events, it's with that union. So when we're at the table, we're not like, we're everyone's on the same page. Everyone's been put putting these proposals together, together. And understanding like we're not, this is a one big negotiation. And I should say, the biggest win in the contract is that we negotiate it together. Medical Faculty, adjuncts, elf counselors, grad workers full time, part time, like non tenure track tenure track, all at the same bargaining table. Management hated it, hated it. They hated it so much. When the when the mediators came in, the first thing they would say is like, look, how can this the reason this is taking so long as the inefficiency of this big mess of an of a negotiation with all these people at the table, and our response was, like, we turn their proposals around in hours, they bring us something, we give them a counter and hours, they take days. So the inefficiency is not on our side, the inefficiency is clearly on, they have some inefficiencies. They're running everything through a single office that wants things to be slow. So that's the biggest win. And it's not the sexiest when it doesn't like it's not the thing that everyone thinks about. There's big numbers 48% 33% super proud of those numbers are amazing, I think. But they're like structurally what was what was achieved here was like, much bigger than that.

And the precedent is much bigger. So obviously building that kind of solidarity across job categories, you know, across campuses, all of this stuff. This is a really complex and an I think, theoretically interesting, rhetorical task. And so I wanted to give you a chance to just talk about how your training and rhetoric how your teaching relates to this side of the work, because I think that people might be inclined to totally separate those that like, rhetoric is something that's what you love. That's something you do. And then, you know, in this labor stuff is something you feel like you have to do, you know, for your for your own material well being for the well being of people you're working with, but how do you see them as interlinked?

Yeah, two thoughts on that. One is how my training and rhetoric informed what happened at the bargaining table and in the strike, and then the other is, in the other direction, how the being involved in labor has transformed the kinds of research questions I am now asking. So the first one is, I would be continually amazed at how the bargaining team and by that I mean, like our lawyers, the people who study labor relations, and our and lead our union, so like, those people are at the table. And they are and they also study this stuff. So but you know, there's me the English professor, like, learning from them, like, is this normal? Is this how this stuff normally goes? But I would be continually amazed at how much they relied on persuasion, to, to sort of transmit proposals to management. What I mean by that is like logic, argumentation, like, Here are the numbers here are what our peer institutions do. Here's why you're not living up to like your responsibility to the community, like, like, and I'm sitting there thinking, like, why are they doing this, like, these people are not persuadable, like this is not a persuasive situation. This is not a situation of persuasion it is at I kept thinking, like, I was just continually shocked in the kind of faith in logic and argumentation that people would have. So that's but But then, what I realized was when you have no power, and I think that our union and unions in general are so accustomed to not having power, all you have is persuasion, right? Because you don't have force because you don't have if you don't have a credible strike threat, all you can try to do is persuade. But once you have power, it things shift a little bit, you continue to make those arguments you have to, and you have to make them the as competently as possible. And you have to draw on evidence. But what wins at the table, what wins is not what happens at the table. What wins is what happens in the street is people singing Hey, Holloway right.

People like shutting down a university is empty parking lots of no classes. That's what was happening. And I was amazed both at myself, at my lack of faith in rhetoric, in those moments, like what are we doing here? Why are we trying to persuade these people that are gonna be persuaded? So and the people who I was working with their faith in like argumentation and rhetoric, so I want to say that first and but I do still think I mean, at the rhetorician who listen to this aren't gonna love hearing this, but I do do not think that arguments won this contract. I just don't, unless I mean, not arguments in the way that we think of them, right? Material arguments, like embodied argument, like being in the way we could talk about that as rhetoric, of course. But logical argumentation did not win the day Forsworn that day. So that's the first thing I want to say. The other thing I want to say is like, I've been interested in things like federated social media for a number of years, things like Mastodon and other sorts of places where people are organizing online and different structures, not incorporate social media spaces, organizing as groups first and then figuring out how those groups connect to other groups. Whereas typically, when we get online and we, and we think we're organizing with a group we organize as individuals, right? We figure out on on our own, who to follow, or who to link up with or who to friend and federated social media changes that equation in a lot of ways. And so I've always been interested in federated social media and I had been writing something for years about it and couldn't figure out figure my way into it. But labor organizing changed everything about that because now I understand Federation in a completely different way. And How how Federation happens how it needs to be constantly practiced and achieved. It's not something that you just sort of set up, you have to kind of work at it, how boundaries between communities have to be constantly negotiated. And, and how our confusion about something like federated social media online is actually directly linked to the the breakage of unions over the last decades in the in the US that like, we don't understand solidarity and Federation, not just because of the way our like digital networks are built, but because we have lost. We've we have atrophied organizing muscles, like we do not understand solidarity and Federation because neoliberal liberalism and capitalism have have actively broken those practices. And so that's the way it worked back the other way is like, seeing all this up close and personal has changed the way I think about Federation. And that's part of the kind of project I'm working on now. So it's it did work in both directions. In terms of my own training, as a rhetorician, I will say, like I was, it was Slightly depressing, because I kept looking around thinking like, I'm the person who's supposed to believe in rhetoric, but these people believe in it way more than I do.

Right. Yeah. And I mean, that, you know, that that's the kind of agonistic rhetoric we could talk about all kinds of, I'm sure there was a ton of internal epideictic rhetoric going on, kind of like maintaining the solidarity and values of, of your union, right. And so maybe there was there was internal rhetorical discourse as well. But this is all super helpful and awesome to learn about, Jim, anything that you want to add, as we close out here, or anything you want to plug anything or to our listeners can support?

Well, I would say one thing, you know, we would love support for the beloved community fund that we're helping to build with those community groups I mentioned. And I can share information about how people can can contribute to that, you know, that was something that we we thought we want at the table was like the president of the university had put money on the table to support that fun, like a matching fund with a union that came off the table when Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, proposed his own way of solving that problem, which we have said is frankly, ridiculous record should not have like pulled its own money off the table just because Governor Murphy put his money out there. So I can share ways for people to contribute to that. But that's a way for that the union is trying to build connections with local organizations. I don't have anything to plug. I've spent too much time labor organizing to publish anything. But you know, I like I said, the, the Donner merch piece that's going to be coming out it's going to be I think it's going to be called Winning as hard. And actually, that is the thing I would say that people should take away, like, be inspired by Ruckers. But recognize that it was a it continues to be difficult. Right?

Well, I wanted to ask you about the new MLB rules, but we'll have to save that for another time when we can do a separate episode on the rhetoric of baseball episode. Yeah, ethical programs and baseball but but thank you so much, Jim Brown. This is super awesome to catch up with you and keep up the good work. I hope that you find some space and time to do that writing the summer.

Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

All right, man. Talk to you soon. Our show today was produced and edited by Calvin Pollak and Alex Helberg. re:verb's co producers are Sophie wad Zach Ben Williams and Olivia Burnett. You can subscribe to reverb and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Android, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts, check out our website at WWW dot reverb cast.com. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook at at reverb cast. That's our R E V E R B underscore C A S T. If you enjoyed this episode, write a review. Share it with a colleague or a friend. We appreciate all of your support