Administration Update 9: Paul Moist Has No Ideas

Addressing members of CUPE Local 3903 on January 26, 2010, Paul Moist found himself confronted by a sparse, reproving audience.  But of course chill was in the air inside Osgoode Hall’s Moot Court.  Local 3903 is deep under Administration by CUPE National — with no real end in anyone’s sight.  And since Paul Moist is President of CUPE National — who can be more to blame for 3903′s prostration?  Paul Moist’s 3903 reception could be nothing but chill.  Under our circumstances, why would local 3903s turn out receptive?

Regardless how chill the reception, though — Paul Moist never seemed fazed.  Not one bit.  He spoke with calm, with dignity, with respect and sympathy for us, his unreceptive audience.

Brother Moist’s message to local 3903s was simple.  As an autonomous Local, we 3903s are mostly free to do whatever we want.  But why would we want to do what we did?  Why would anyone, ever, want to do what we local 3903s did?

Why, rather than take advantage of National’s tremendous resources to help us during the strike, would we want to freeze CUPE National out?  Why would we want to negotiate in manner so counter-productive, perhaps even illegal to any possibility of reaching consensus at the bargaining table?  Why would we want to harass members of our own executives so badly that they later break down in conversations with Brother Moist?  Why was the sole positive, personal comment Brother Moist received when attending during our strike have to be whispered by a member of our bargaining team?  Why would we want to terrorize members of our own bargaining teams against openly expressing even innocuous comment?

Why would we 3903s want to go shooting our own feet that way?  Why would anyone ever want to be so self-destructive?

The message to us 3903s was probably not meant sarcastically.  There was no probable cause for Brother Moist to get profoundly rhetorical.  He was delivering what from him was simple, clear, constructive and sincere criticism.  Like, of course we 3903s couldn’t have intended to be so self-destructive.  We 3903s have just been making some terrible mistakes.  That’s all.  Because however terrible our mistakes?  They could never have been intentional.  No way are 3903s that crazy self-destructive.  From Brother Moist’s perspective, our mistakes must have been honest.  Honestly innocent.

Oh.  Brother.

We 3903s are not naive, mistaken, innocent fools.  What we are is out of control ideologues.  Similarly, we are not particularly self-destructive.  What we are is generally and utterly destructive of everything we imagine as the neoliberal status-quo.  None of this should be news.  It has been spelled out too often to remain the least bit news-worthy.  But just in case.  On whatever vanishing chance it might help Brother Moist understand.  Let’s repeat once again.

One need not have purchased the t-shirts or personally unfurled banners demanding the impossible.  One need not personally been present at general meetings when we railed and rallied against neoliberalism.  No need to have been there and done all that.  Our record is clear.  The record how proudly we hailed striking out against the neoliberal enemy.  The record why our demands had to be so impossible.

Eric Newstadt for one example, in the very first paragraph of “The Neoliberal University: Looking at the York Strike”, wrote:

.. the tenor of the action was and remains pitched firmly at rolling back the “neoliberal university”…

Only much later did Tyler Shipley — who most officially spoke for us local 3903s — so vehemently object to Tyler McCreary even suggesting our “leading members gleamed with revolutionary ardour.” Yet Shipley, in “Demanding the Impossible: Struggles for the Future of Post-Secondary Education”, went on to declaim how YorkU “has embodied the troubling neoliberal shift,” how “the neoliberal university replicates itself in ever more nefarious forms” and how we must all become “more militant” challenging “the neoliberal status quo.”

And how are we more militant 3903s supposed to challenge the entire “neoliberal“ status quo?  Shipley doesn’t leave us hanging in the dark.  He can’t.  Because Shipley doesn’t just gleam revolutionary ardour.  He blazes the whole-hogging militant trail for us:

.. ‘demand the impossible’ and leave university administrators no choice but to demand, in turn, adequate funding from the province…  Demanding more than what is currently ‘possible’ is simply insisting that the state alter the circumstances that define that ‘possibility’…

Thus, Tyler Shipley makes the record how we struck out not just clear — but indelible.  We were never out there to better membership working conditions — which we believed were best in our sector anyway.  Contrary to our strike mandate, contrary to any principle of democratic governance, we were out to force YorkU’s hand to in turn force the hands of government.  How?  Obviously.  By bringing about an intransigent hostage situation.  By exploiting 50,000 York students as hostage pawns.  We struck for an unelected coup to force the hands of governance — and it worked.  We totally forced all hands.  Against us.

Our ideologues’ broadest strategy, as 3903s knew and mostly approved, was to prolong deadlock until the academic year was nearly or entirely lost.  Until YorkU either capitulated or got busted.  Nothing was to be resolved by negotiation.  Our bargaining team was either explicitly forbidden to bargain — or, in any event, was to have no real authority when it did.  And we 3903s knew all about it.  We mostly approved it.  We enforced and reenforced it.  But we couldn’t admit to it.  Not only because, for our deathlock to work — we had to deny it existed.  Not only that.  It wasn’t just tactical or strategic, us professing the utmost best-faith on our part — and how YorkU was acting in faith worse than death.  It was more than that.  It was ideological.  It was emotional.  We were the good guys.

If it hadn’t been so tragic?  It would have been hilarious.  Us so earnestly pretending to negotiate at the table — while doing our utmost to kneecap YorkU under the table.  While YorkU and third-party mediators got so nauseated — they refused even seating the same table with us any more.  So that each time Shipley, our media bro, repeated how anti-bargaining YorkU was?  In a manner of inspired hypocrisy, it sounded almost true.  And it surely prolonged our deathlock, with time crossing more firmly to our side each passing day.  Until those final moments when all our time instantly ran out.

Now.  To answer those questions Brother Moist implied.

Why did we have to freeze out CUPE National?  Because CUPE National’s help was nothing but a hindrance.  Because CUPE National is a bureaucracy stuck in long past, outmoded thinking that striking is to win better small-time deals for memberships.  Because CUPE National was striving to help reach some squalid, paltry consensus at the bargaining table.  Whereas we 3903s struck out to destroy the neoliberal status-quo.  Which meant consensus at the bargaining table could never be allowed.  Our death-lock siege had to remain in force until YorkU was capitulated — so that the hands of government would accordingly be forced to serving our impossible demands.

Why would we negotiate so counter-productively to any possibility of reaching consensus?  Because we 3903s struck out to destroy the neoliberal status-quo.  Which meant consensus at the bargaining table could not be allowed.  That’s why our demands had to remain impossible.  And if ever our own bargaining teams appeared to approach any sort of consensus with the enemy?  Then our own bargaining teams had either to be forbidden to bargain — or sufficiently undermined so they effectively could not.

Why would we harass members of our executives so badly they break down?  Well, we have our dissident voices.  3903s who don’t share our local ideology.  Our local sub-culture.  Our revolutionary anti-democratic fervour.  Not a problem — we know how to silence dissident voices.  But when dissidents get elected to executive positions?  They can become dangerously counter-revolutionary.  Collaborators with the enemy.  They need to be specifically neutralized.  That’s when regular crowd-control methods must give way to more targeted, more personal, more intimate harassment.

Why would we terrorize members of our own bargaining teams against openly expressing even innocuous comment?  Well, heck.  All 3903s must experience some fear when expressing dissent.  More particularly, though?  Bargaining team members are more prone to becoming confused.  More prone to start thinking theirs are heroic individual struggles against impossible odds from all sides.  In reality?  Their only real task last year was to help preserve illusions that we bargained in good faith while the enemy did not.  To preserve our death-lock.  But it is nearly inevitable.  Bargaining team members forget what they are to not do.  Repeatedly often last year they wound up trying to bargain in good faith.  Thereby raising spectres of negotiated settlemens — jeopardizing our death-lock to capitulate the enemy.

Bargaining teams could not be allowed to jeopardize our death-lock by effectively bargaining in good faith.  Sometimes this required ensuring that bargaining team members could do nothing effectively.  Failing which?  They became replaceable at the spur of any moment.

Brother Moist?  Please understand that local 3903s are not foolish, naive or error-prone.  We are just ideological.  Ideologically out of control.  Have you got any intent or ideas to fix our “dysfunctional“ local?