The 5 Stages of Recognizing a Union
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual.”
- Ayn Rand
Fundamentally, I agree with Lady Rand. But I would make one simple change: the smallest minority on earth is the university administrator.
We are living in the era of a witch hunt where we as administrators have to watch what we say and apparently also mean what we say. My grandfather would be appalled at the new world order.
This pamphlet is meant to help other administrators through a difficult time of transition where graduate workers are attempting to form a union. It has not been easy to come to terms with this situation, so I wanted to offer a spiritual guidebook to help you along this tumultuous journey. Below are the 5 stages that I’ve experienced when coming to recognize a graduate worker union.
1. Denial
I recognized the stirrings of a graduate worker organization early on after they made several, possibly many attempts to meet with me. It was easy to ignore them at first, like ignoring a fly in my mansion – as if there are flies in my mansion – but, if the fly doesn’t leave, and invites more flies to the table, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. Unlike flies, graduate workers are undeterred from any closed doors and, instead, are insistent on yanking them open.
Your first instinct will be to deny their existence. This worked for me for several years: such time-tested lines as “You’re not workers! You’re students!” and “What meeting? We already met with the official student organizations!” Or, my personal favorite, “We have several listening sessions scheduled where we promise you can do the majority of the talking!” But eventually, the lines stop working and, instead, turn into lines of grad workers at your office doors demanding union recognition.
As administrators, we pride ourselves on our forethought—but let me assure you, you cannot predict the day when you look in the mirror and see a desperate man; sunken eyes, an even more permanent frown. I no longer felt the joy of cutting a meeting short by insisting that I have another meeting to go to. Those days are over. The first step of recognizing a grad workers union is letting your illusions fall away.
2. Anger
Ultimately, you can’t deny the inevitable. Eventually graduate workers begin to take matters into their own hands – they become adamant on union recognition, demand bargaining rights, and insist that they deserve an equal seat at the table. And they’ll do just about anything to make you recognize them. They even start preparing to strike.
The anger comes. And it comes hard. You end up making threats to graduate workers, things you’ve always thought but couldn’t ever imagine saying out loud.
When you’re cornered in a listening session, you may suggest that students living on less than $15,000 a year can start paying tuition if they don’t already appreciate all we already do for them.
You may find yourself threatening the visa status of international students on shaky – possibly non-existent – ground. You may threaten to expel students for striking, without checking that it’s actually legal for Indiana University employees to strike.
Writing this, I can feel the heat rising in my body again. I’ll note that journaling during this process may be helpful and may even lower your blood pressure. It doesn’t even need to be in an embarrassing little notebook—you can make an anonymous blog online. To share what this stage of recognition looks like, a close associate gave me permission to share one of their blog posts:
“You thankless, lousy, underappreciative, know-it-alls think you can just come in here and tell us how to run our university? We were here when you were born and we’ll be here when you die! You mean nothing to this institution and you wouldn’t even be here if we didn’t increase our acceptance rates. Oh, our healthcare doesn’t cover your dependents? Then what makes you think you should be in grad school? You think you can have a career and have children? Think again, dummy! No one is going to jeopardize my early retirement to the Hamptons and my $500,000 retirement top off, but I’m definitely not angry, just disappointed. YOU’RE the sensitive ones. Signed, AttackedAdministr@tor69”
My $600-an-hour therapist says that journaling is a clinically proven method of self-soothing, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that it is a fleeting palliative. The pages of your journal are weak prayers against the titan of a well-organized strike.
3. Acceptance
Let me clarify—we administrators are men – and women – of steel. We aren’t afraid of a little fight. But when your voicemail box crashes with all the undergrads’ parents asking why their children’s instructors don’t make a living wage; when you can’t hear The Fray’s How To Save A Life over the songs on the picket line when you’re walking to your office every day; when your plutonic ideal of a parking spot is blockaded by these pesky students, it’s time to start putting things in perspective.
You are just a man, against a sea of strangely passionate students. And there is some honor in recognizing when you’ve lost. Maybe grad workers are also employees. Maybe this university couldn’t run without their research, lab work, teaching and office work. Maybe, just MAYBE, graduate instructors of record teach 40% of undergraduate courses. —and that’s not a number that works in your favor. We can’t just CALL IN THE NATIONAL GUARD to teach our classes. (Can we do that? We can’t? Fuck).
At the end of the day, it’s your job to call a stop to it all.
4. Depression
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: you will sink into a depression. Your salary, your seniority, your permanent chest-puffing; they don’t mean what they used to mean. The streets will be flooded with joyful cheering, but it won’t have anything to do with these wonderfully lucrative IU sports. They’ll be cheering for your spiritual demise.
The only solace I’ve found has been going through old Smiths albums and dry heaving in my private, golden bathroom. May I recommend the Counting Crows’ live in Berlin cover of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out? It really hits the spot.
(Is this the ‘self care’ all the kids are always whining about? Cause it isn’t working very well!!!)
5. Bargaining
I’m under obligation to be here. I know I am under contract to bargain with the graduate workers over their own working conditions, but let me tell you I am bargaining with myself and God and fate everyday in this living nightmare of a world where workers have an equal say as administrators. And you know the scariest thing of all? I don’t think any of us are waking up from it.
Written by Annalise Cain and Cole Nelson