University celebrates labor leader but fights against labor unions
By JAMES ESPINOSA / Special to The Collegian
Last week, we celebrated Cesar Chavez and recognized his labor struggles.
Fresno State honors Cesar Chavez with a day off. There is also a statue
of Chavez, cast in bronze, between the library and the Health and Human
Services building.
Graduate students like myself walk past the statue daily as they walk
to teach their classes. There are quite a few of us graduate student workers,
from graders to tutors to teaching assistants.
When I first was admitted to Fresno State and learned I was going to be
a TA, I was very pleased.
Friends of mine, who had gone to other graduate schools, had told me
about the perks of programs like teaching assistantships: tuition waivers,
health benefits; some even received reduced-cost housing.
But not at Fresno State. Compared to the UC schools, our wages are pitiful.
And there are no tuition waivers, nor health benefits. But we do get to
pay the university $55 or so for our yellow parking permits.
So now, graduate student workers have formed a labor union, modeled after
one already in place in the UC system, and have been fighting for months
to establish their first labor contract. It is close to the end of the
school year, and the California State University system is not working
with us — uncooperative like the grape producers in the late 1960s
and early 1970s that Chavez and the United Farm Workers had to deal with.
It is more troubling than money, though. I think about our TA inservice
meeting that took place at the beginning of the semester. I remember looking
around and wondering where the African American graduate teaching assistants
were.
In the English composition program, at least, there is not one. Of course,
I cannot blame this solely on our low wages and lack of benefits, but
I can almost guarantee that our employment conditions are not fruitful
to the cause of diversity.
Fresno State cares about diversity, though. And they care about labor
issues. After all, that is why have a holiday for Chavez, isn’t
it? That is why Chavez is immortalized in that statue in the middle of
the Fresno State campus, right?
—James Espinosa is a graduate student in Fresno
State’s master of fine arts nonfiction program and a
teaching assistant for the English department
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