Edit: I have added Tom Hintze's respoonse (he is an OSWP member who is on the executive board and is a Davis grad student) and my response to Tom below the text of the complaint.
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Hello E-Board,
I would like to file a formal complaint with you regarding the actions of both a paid organizer and an E-Board member. I’m requesting that the E-Board look into and address the fact that a number of people (e.g. myself, Ellie White, Connor Gorman, Amara Miller, Duane Wright, Nathen Menard) were intentionally excluded from our new Davis activist listserv (and thus an organizing committee meeting which happened Wed. 9/26) by Gerard Ramm and Thomas Hintze. This removal was without notification or consent by the people excluded and indicates an effort to silence dissent in the union.
This complaint falls under two main areas. Concerning Gerard's conduct, this falls under Article 11 ("Meeting Standards and Progressive Discipline") of their CBA. In regards to Thomas Hintze, this falls under Article 19 of our bylaws.
In addition to these, this kind of behavior violates a number of other bylaws.
- Article 5, Section 1 states, "The membership is the highest authority of this Local Union and shall be empowered to take or direct any action not inconsistent with the Constitution of the International Union, UAW or Local Union Bylaws." This action explicitly acts against the interest of members who have dissented and excludes them from the decision-making processes of the union.
- Article 8, Section 13 states, "Campus Units shall have the right to communicate directly with unit members, without going either through the Executive Board or the President. Each campus unit shall decide at a monthly membership meeting their process for sending out emails. All communication must clearly state that it originates from the Campus Unit, and not the Local as a whole. This means that Campus Unit elected leadership shall have direct access to email lists and phone lists for their campus membership." This article, in conjunction with Article 5, Section 1 suggests that emails concerning things like organizing committee meetings and other key union gatherings should be available to all members, to ensure that membership remains the highest authority within the union.
- Article 11, Section 3 states, "Committee meeting times and locations will be posted at least seven (7) days prior to the meeting time on the Local Union website. Except for the Bylaws Committee whose members are elected, the Joint Council shall appoint members to other committees. All Committee members are expected to attend meetings." Since OC meetings are often subsets of, and related to, larger statewide OC structures, it would seem that excluding people from these key organizing meetings is a violation of this bylaw as well.
The union frames itself as a democratic, member-driven organization, but this is directly contradicted by the actions of these individuals. They have made unilateral decisions to exclude certain members for political reasons. This is unacceptable, unconscionable and must be addressed. I would suggest the removal or replacement of these people in order to ensure these blatantly undemocratic actions don't happen again.
I'd like to also request that this complaint is met with a more substantive response than the last time someone was intentionally excluded from union organizing spaces - as Amara Miller's complaint has been met with startlingly little action.
Blu Buchanan
(they/them/theirs)
Rank-And-File
Davis Unit
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On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 9:33 PM Thomas Hintze <thintze1@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,First, I want to start by giving folks on the activist list who may not have been involved in organizing since the ratification vote an update about our organizing successes these past few weeks. During the first orientation session, we signed up 230 new union members, or about 10% of the incoming graduate students at Davis, in one day. This is the best single day of organizing across the state this year, and we followed it up by signing up another 160 members over two days during TA orientations last week. This work is a vital part of our statewide membership organizing plan, which we approved at our Joint Council meeting in July.In the absence of organizing committee meetings before orientations, a number of people who were interested in organizing, including Ashlyn, Savannah, and I, began meeting student-workers who checked the box on our membership cards indicating that they were interested in getting involved with our union. We set up a couple of ad hoc meetings to talk about our strategy for orientations, and then we went out and talked with workers. No new OC listserv was created, and the last time that I checked, it should be our goal as organizers to reach out to workers who want to organize and get them involved in working with our union.Now, to address the alarming accusation of "crushing dissent." BB and Ellie, I believe that we have different philosophies of organizing, and I think that's ok. I believe that workers in our union have a right to organize themselves within different organizing structures, and that this in no way is "crushing dissent." In fact, I believe that in order for us to succeed in our mission of organizing every student-worker on our campus, we are going to need many different organizing strategies and many different organizing committees, all operating at once.Some might say that different organizing committees would result in the consolidation of power. But what is the real outcome of workers organizing themselves in different committees across campus? I think this would bring about a decentralization of power, the likes of which we have not been able to achieve under our current organizing structure or with our current organizing strategies.Imagine how power would be dispersed across our unit if instead of a handful of organizers we had a network of stewards, one in each department, who met in organizing committees that were anchored in different sectors of campus. Those workers would have the best idea of the real existing conditions that workers in their departments were experiencing. Then we would truly be able to diagnose the problems in our workplace, and to effectively have each other’s backs. Such a system would also allow a plurality of perspectives on organizing to exist simultaneously, and I believe it would resolve the problem that has been at the heart of our disagreements about organizing since at least winter of last year: whether to spend our energy organizing around campaigns or to focus on organizing workers. The answer is, undoubtedly, both.And this is already happening. Since the beginning of this year, there have been multiple ad hoc committees meeting on campus, each with different people on their email lists. The meetings I have been attending are filled with new leaders, mostly from the STEM fields on our campus. These leaders are excited about the contract, and they want to organize their coworkers to enforce the contract and to fight for their dignity and better working conditions.There is another organizing committee whose meetings I have not been invited to attend, and from what I have heard, the topics of conversation have largely been about whether or not to pursue decertification of our union as a response to disagreements about the contract ratification vote.Now, what would it mean to decertify our union? According to the Labor Relations Institute, an ultra-conservative union-busting organization, decertification"refers to the process where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employees to call for a special election to get rid of the union as their 'exclusive representative.'"The article goes on to describe the consequences of decertification campaigns.“The objective of a decertification election is to terminate the union’s right to represent you and your fellow employees. This procedure provides you with full relief by taking away the union’s authority to act as your bargaining representative. If you are a part of the employee union that is covered under a collective bargaining agreement (whether you are a union member or not) you can still sign a petition and participate in the vote for decertification. Once the union is removed as your legal bargaining representative you no longer have to join the union or pay dues or fees to it.”Now, it's true, I'm now sure of what the motive could possibly be for wanting to decertify our union. There might be some benevolent intent lurking behind the desire to destroy an organization that has taken the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of thousands of workers to build over the past twenty years. But as we know, it's not the intent that matters, it is the effect of such an action, and of even having such conversations in the first place.Within the labor movement, there is the possibility for manifold kinds of redress, many of which we have seen attempted or enacted over the course of the past year. Currently, there is an appeal of the ratification vote that has been sent to the Eboard. As I have said elsewhere, the Eboard is considering the claims that the appellants have made, and our Bylaws outline a robust appeals process that is internal to our union, and through the UAW constitution,can later can go to PERB and beyond. However, there is a bright line that marks off what is and is not acceptable behavior for a unionist. Publicly calling for the decertification of our union and for the destruction of our power as workers, as some members of our unit are currently doing, is partaking in management's dream of crushing our union, and the right's dream of crushing all unions. And at least one of the people who has called for decertification (Ellie) is the signatory on this email about "crushing dissent," and the another (Connor) the last respondent.Certainly, there are models for people who disagree about the outcome of the ratification vote to continue working together to build our union. There are, no doubt, real grievances that people have with the process, and there are channels to resolve those disagreements. As I have said before, I am happy to meet with anyone at any time to share my perspective on the ratification vote and to hear yours. What I am not interested in doing is participating in any restorative justice project around this decision. The workers at our unit and across the state have voted, and their vote was decisive. I also want to make it clear that in my role as an Eboard member, I reached out to Amara personally on August 29 offering to continue discussing her formal complaint. She never took me up on my offer.Another way for us to work together is around addressing workers’ grievances in the workplace. I am thrilled to be meeting with Emily F and Ashlyn this week with a host of student-workers to discuss the problems facing international students because of Trump's new immigration enforcement policies. We urgently need to find ways to come together for the best of our unit, and I am interested in discussing this with whomever I can.But let me be clear: there are currently at least two committees on our campus. One group is building worker power by organizing hundreds of workers every week. I am not certain how many workers the other committee has brought into our union, but by my calculations, it would be antithetical for them to bring any new worker into a union that they are actively organizing to decertify. Right now is not the time to worry about crushing dissent. We should worry about those who would have the workers crushed instead.In Solidarity,Tom
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10:28 PM (11 minutes ago)
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Tom,
At the MMM we were told by Savannah, Ashlyn, and Michael, that there was AN organizing committee meeting. OCs used to meet weekly. We were forwarded an email for a meeting of THE organizing committee. Here is a copy and paste of that: (more written after the copy and paste)
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gerard Ramm <gerardramm90@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: Union Organizing Committee Meeting Today @ 5 - Voorhies 396Hi all,Our location for today's 5 pm organizing committee meeting is Voorhies Hall, room 396. Can't wait to see you all there! If you're having trouble finding it, you can shoot me a text at (860) 575 7296.Best,Gerard
Sent from my iPhoneHi All,Hope everyone's plans for the start of the quarter are falling easily into place by now. I wanted to send out the official announcement for our next Organizing Committee Meeting on Wednesday, September 26th from 5-7:30 pm (Location TBD). We'll be meeting to discuss our progress on start of the quarter organizing, a bit about our unit's upcoming elections, scheduling a Know Your Rights Training, and our plans for organizing within our grad groups and departments this quarter. Emily and I will be co-facilitating so it should be a great time and I'll look forward to seeing you all there!Also: in preparation for our tabling at the New TA Orientations on Monday and Tuesday, as well as our department orientations all next week, we'll be hosting a Get Lunch and Get Trained event this Sunday the 23rd at 2 pm in Voorhies Hall. Lunch will most likely be from chickpeas and the training will cover how to talk about unions and our union specifically with your coworkers. Reply-1 to this email to let me know if you can make it!Look out for an email with more details on meeting locations and I'll see you all next Wednesday!Best,
Gerard
Are you now claiming that there was no formal OC meeting as there was all last year, and that this meeting that people were invited to last wednesday didn't exist? That in substitution there were just a bunch of ad hoc meetings?
Are you calling Savannah, Ashlyn, and Michael liars? Is the above email a forgery?
Your use of the term committee when you say there are two committees doing work on campus, is WRONG. There are two caucuses - political parties basically. There is an official OC that was organized by the formal union structure and its paid staff, that is the OFFICIAL committee. Political caucuses are not committees, and their existence is not an excuse to DELIBERATELY cut off all communication to every single dissenter at Davis. (An example: during the BDS vote there was a BDS caucus and a Zionist caucus. Any official union resources that went to meetings were open and announced to all. We scheduled a debate on the issue - zionists didn't show but it was scheduled. Don't conflate caucuses and committees!)
It is PAST PRACTICE to communicate all happenings, meetings, and discussions through this Davis officers and activists listserve. You all have been violating that. You started off your email by talking about all that has been done this year, but none of those events and none of the discussion about those events went through this campus listserve.
You are a union officer, and Gerrard is paid staff. Those meetings are official meetings. If rank and file members get together to discuss problems with union leadership that isn't a second committee. You are an English PhD student, you aren't too naive to not know the difference, so clearly you are trying to deflect here by obfuscating the differences between official union events like OCs and the self organization of rank and file dissenters in a political caucus.
By deflecting this way what you are trying to do is whitewash your efforts to marginalize all active dissenters while setting up parallel institutions - whether that is an actual listseve with a google email or just a list of people that are CC:ed or BCC:ed that you invite to all official events, the end result is the same.
Then you pivot from distortions to fear-mongering. Some folks, not all, have been discussing decertifying in the context of SWITCHING unions. This is NOT NEW. AWDU used to talk about dropping the UAW int he middle of Joint Council meetings in front of Mike Miller all the time. The UAW is fucking hierarchical, totalitarian, and corrupt as fuck. The entire history of the reform movement here has proven that. Their overturning of our democratic BDS vote proves that. Talking about certification has always taken place int he context of switching unions. There was never an agreement on which strategy would be better, switching or just working with other reformers in the UAW. We connected with the autoworkers caravan and we spread AWDU to every other UAW grad student local in the country. The discussion has always been "What is the best way to go about building a labor movement?" and whether that meant using the institution we have an reforming it, or getting a new institution has always been a discussion at the UC, so before you try to jump in and purposefully mischaracterize the discussions that you say you haven't even been to maybe try not putting words in other people's mouths.So to cite right wingers is totally disingenuous and again merely a rhetorical move to throw mud at dissenters, not an honest discussion.
Duane
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