Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Look for the Union Label (on your midterms).

Did you know that Fosco is a member of the United Automobile Workers? Indeed! All UC teaching assistants are members of UAW Local 2865.

And good news! Yesterday, the UAW and UC reached an agreement on a new contract for teaching assistants, eliminating the need for a (very intellectual and extremely weird) strike by graduate students. Even better: the new contract includes the pleasant surprise of a 5% pay raise! That's one more nice dinner a month for Fosco and his boyfriend Oz. Or, more likely, four more books a month for Fosco.

On the other hand, Fosco is a little disappointed not to strike. He had already spent so much effort creating a sign concept:
See, it says "Fuck UC"! Isn't that cool? I've already had it silk-screened on 300 t-shirts.

And I had been working on some protest songs, including a version of Tesla's "Signs" that substitutes the name of UC President Dynes for the word "signs." It goes something like "Dynes, Dynes, President Dynes..." Well, that's as far as I got. But it was going to be killer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

do you really not like ucsc whole heartedly? Im a prospective student, would you reccomend the place?

FOSCO said...

Honestly, I do like UCSC quite a bit.

In terms of grad student life, many universities treat their grad students as badly or worse. On the other hand, some universities are better to their grad students. I would say it depends on where else you are considering, odog. In general, private universities are going to pay their grad students better than state universities. Take that into account.

But yes, if you don't get into anywhere that pays better, there are lots of appealing aspects to life here.