UNAC and UA reach impasse, seek external mediator )
University of Alaska (UA) President Pat Pitney has announced that the faculty union (UNAC) and UA have reached an impasse in their contract negotiations.
Read her announcement with a few things in mind:
Just like in capitalist society as a whole, the University bosses have sole control over the internal “press.” Pitney’s propaganda email went out to all UA employees. UNAC couldn’t make a similarly wide response. Instead, they have to rely on their own channels. The same is true of any other group in the University. (For instance, we would love to have a way of emailing every UA worker and student.)
Pitney depicts UNAC’s demands for raises bigger than 2.75%, 3%, and 3% as unrealistic and irresponsible. This omits the fact that from 2017 to now faculty have got raises totaling around only 9%, even as the cost of living increased by at least 21%. What’s more, “Alaskans’ average pay rose by 5.2% in 2023”. That’s way more than the Pitney clique is willing to offer UA faculty (and in turn other employees).
If you accept that the University really is financially constrained, ask yourself why. Why has the University leadership continually failed to get funding for things as basic as building maintenance or cost of living increases? Why is Pitney making $385,000 dollars a year when her workers are losing purchasing power and fighting tooth and nail for raises half the state average?
Unions exist in the legal framework of the capitalist state. Mediation is meant to force exploiter and exploited into a compromise that eliminates the chance of any explosive outbreak of class struggle. This is in perfect accordance with the marxist conception of the state. The state is not a bludgeon wielded exclusively in the short-term interests of the exploiters, but “an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ legalizing and perpetuating this oppression by moderating the clashes among the classes” (Lenin, State and Revolution).