I’m mega disappointed in our union. Not only did they fail to provide any help when the administration tried to close our department, they are now spreading rumors that we have, indeed, been closed. They even published it in their newsletter and are refusing to retract. Many people ended up believing it and stopped inviting us to events.
They also refused to help when the university messed up my paycheck. And they are refusing to help faculty members whose vacation isn’t accruing correctly.
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s not a union, then. What are they doing with the dues they collect?
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Paying the salary of the woman who said that her dream is to see significantly fewer white people on campus.
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Well, if they’re not going to protect your job or advocate for you in any way… why not just stop paying them? Is it auto-deducted from your paycheck?
-ethyl
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Yes, it’s auto-deducted. It’s NEA, and I absolutely shouldn’t have expected anything good from them.
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Wow, either they’ve gone catastrophically downhill the last ten years, or their activity at the uni level is very different from their activity at the grade-school level.
-ethyl
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Or is it one of those horrors like the NEA where your insurance is through the union?
My mother hated the NEA passionately for all 40 of her teaching years, and had to be a member anyway, because that’s the only way to have insurance. And they *would* actually go to bat for you if you were fired without reason, got teachers pensions, raises, etc. Did the union things… in addition to all the psychotic partisan politics.
-ethyl
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” disappointed in our union”
Aren’t unions a nation-state kind of thing? One of the earlier tasks of the neoliberal consensus was to wreck unions (flight controllers in the US, coal miners in the UK).
I halfway assume the unconscious goal of the union is to destroy the basis of the union….
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Yes, and that’s why I’ve always been pro-union. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Everything they’ve suggested made things worse. It’s totally like they are doing this on purpose, and I don’t want to go the route if conspiracy thinking but there’s been a lot of this disappointing stuff.
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