Systematic Labor Unrest

So March—just about a year ago—things get stranger.  The boss says she will retire, and I am starting to feel overwhelmed, what with WB’s death, and Joan’s health, and the need to sell the house.  Really overwhelmed.  So I figured I needed to cut back some though there is not much to cut back on, but there is one thing.

So I let my colleagues on the Executive Board of AFT Local 2141 know that I will not be able to serve as the President of the local anymore and that they will have to get somebody else.  I had been President for three years I guess, and it hadn’t been that much work.  But I had to call meetings and get people together and I had to go to meetings over in the Administration building to talk about Lecturer workload and I had to fly up to Oakland to testify, I guess it was, at some sort of hearing.  I forget what that was about; but they had lawyers there and that made me nervous.  And I kept insisting that we turn out our local newsletter that we had been doing since the union began way back in 1985, I think it was.

Well I did a bit I guess, but really there wasn’t that much to do.  But still there was stuff to do, and I just didn’t feel I could do it anymore and feel I was doing it responsibly. So I quit being President of the Local; I thought I would keep going to meetings but stuff would come up about the time of the meeting and I even stopped going to those.  That was a bit strange because I had been going to meetings for about 8 years maybe.  Before that I had taken a few years off, and before that I had been at it about 5 years, having been one of two people to get the Local started at UCSB clear back in 1985.

Looking back, I think dropping out of the union like that—when it had been part of my almost daily work for years—was a pretty big thing to do and a sign of just had worn down I was getting to be about that time.

 I put up the sign in that picture when the we lecturers engaged in a couple of days of systematic labor unrest when our negotiations with the UC Administration completely stalled.