WEAPONS OF CLASS INSTRUCTION III: The Pay Equity Speakout

About sixty graduate students and about twenty undergraduates spoke out today for pay equity, for a Yale which valorizes teaching rather than devaluing it by paying experienced TAs less than inexperienced ones, bouncing people out of a job halfway through the semester, not paying people for weeks, and otherwise cynically manipulating job descriptions and classifications in anticipation of a probable unfavorable NLRB ruling on the impounded election at Columbia, Brown, and Penn, which would allow the administration to fallaciously claim once again that graduate teaching assistants are not workers and thus do not have the right to organize. It was richard Levin, who, immediately following the NYU decision, urged that university not to respect the ruling, and urged other campuses to appeal any NLRB elections among graduate teachers and researchers to the board, it was Levin who was George W Bush's first overnight guest at his White House, (Bush later slept at Levin's during the 2001 commencement exercises) and Bush reciprocated by appointing an extremely right wing national labor relations board (the latest of which was a recess appointment and thus not even subject to congressional approval.) The administration's inequitable pay structure is not only a devaluing of our education, it's an attempt to destroy the right to organize.

Today, Tasha eloquently and powerfully explained why undergrads are going to fight the administration on this issue and fight alongside GESO and the rest of the federation to stop the casualization of work at Yale and make real our vision of a better university.

Brenda Carter, as always, laid things out incredibly powerfully. Evan Cobb took notes:

3. Brenda Carter, for her concluding remarks before the march to the Dean's office:

I can tell you what will happen over the next ten years. This academy will become even more white, even more male, and even wealthier, and that's not an academy I'm excited about being a part of.

I think Phillip's comments about the history department, Elisa's comments, Jen's comments, and the woman from poli sci who i didn't know (Gemma?)'s comments were really powerful as well.

I'm excited about comin back in two weeks with a couple hundred undergrads and taking our education back into the streets. Evan's concluding remarks after we delivered the letter to Salovey are a call to arms:

come back with anyone and everyone who is adversely effected by this ridiculous pay structure in which the more experience you have, the less you're paid. It is wrong and we will fix it.  ¶ 6:02 PM