Communication Workers of America Local 1104, also called GSEU on SUNY campuses, is the government-sponsored union for Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants throughout the SUNY system. Although the majority of Local 1104 members are Teaching or Graduate Assistants, it also represents a variety of unrelated occupations across the state, including telecommunication technicians, telephone operators, nurses, and accountants. GSEU is a flawed organization. It is corrupt, authoritarian, led by bigots, practices election fraud, achieves little for its members, and signed a secret deal with SUNY management selling out its members. Among the problems with GSEU/CWA 1104:
Corruption
- GSEU pays $40,000/year to a non-union company, Crimson Technologies, for “computer system maintenance.” Maria Connelly, the wife of Local 1104 Secretary-Treasurer Ed Connelly, is an executive in Crimson Technologies.
- President George Bloom pays himself $150,000/year and the Secretary-Treasurer pays himself $146,000/year. Neither has ever been a graduate student.
- Dues Checkoff: The GSEU collects dues by having SUNY deduct dues from our paycheck whether or not we consent to it. Relying on employers to collect dues creates a conflict of interest for the union leadership, making it more likely to sign secret sweetheart deals, while reducing contact between union leaders and the membership. If there were no dues checkoff union leaders would have to interact more with union members, charge reasonable dues rates (instead of the current exorbitant 2%), and achieve real gains for the membership to convince large numbers of TA/GAs to pay dues.
Secret Sweetheart Deal
In 2005 the English department at SUNY-Binghamton unilaterally doubled the workload of most their TAs, requiring the majority to teach two full classes. According to the State’s own investigation, this requires more work than the 20 hours/week maximum specified in the contract between GSEU and SUNY. English TAs filed a grievance against the policy with the GSEU, but Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims signed a secret agreement allowing SUNY-Binghamton to increase the workload of any or all TAs as much as it wants. As late as early 2008 she was still denying she had signed any sort of agreement concerning the workload issue, but at the end of Spring Semester 2008 the state made the agreement public in order to diffuse renewed pressure to reverse the workload increases. Workload increases have since spread to other departments.
Election Fraud
- In 2005 Local 1104 refused to hold elections. Victor Rosado of SUNY-Stony Brook, who wanted to run against Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims, sued the GSEU and forced them to hold elections in 2008.
- In the 2008 elections the GSEU forbade first year graduate students from voting. Because graduate students are the largest section of the union, and the section most hostile to the current leadership, this allowed the incumbents to narrowly win reelection with the support of the minority of union members who are not graduate students.
Authoritarianism
- Almost all decision-making power is concentrated in the power of full time paid GSEU leaders. The rank and file have no real say in what the union does. Union leaders are not required to hold meetings with members and if they do hold meetings, they are not required to allow voting on any matter. If they do allow votes, they are not required to abide by the results of the vote. Traditionally, union leaders at SUNY-Binghamton have not allowed voting (although SUNY-Binghamton has a new union boss, and he may change this). When rank and file members pressured then-Business Agent for SUNY-Binghamton Utku Balaban to allow votes at meetings he told them “no, you cannot vote.”
- In 2000 then-President Monazir Khan forbade representatives from SUNY-Buffalo from serving on the negotiating committee because they would not vote the way Kahn wanted and were critical of his leadership.
- In 2009 Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims fabricated allegations that SUNY-Binghamton Business Agent Utku Balaban, who had verbally criticized Sims, physically assaulted her. Although the charges were thrown out of court, the allegations were used as a pretext to take away his job and expel him from the union.
- National CWA leaders are not directly elected.
Poor Agreements
GSEU/CWA 1104 has agreed:
- TAs/GAs may be paid as little as $8,586 per year. Most departments voluntarily pay more because paying that little would harm recruitment of new grad students.
- SUNY may choose not to give a tuition waiver to as many TA/GAs as it wants, and may require TA/GAs without tuition waivers to take 9 credits of courses even if they’re course complete or ABD.
- TA/GAs may be paid up to two weeks late (meaning new TA/GAs normally aren’t paid until 1 month after starting work).
- SUNY may layoff as many people as they want, and may increase tuition as much as they want.
- GSEU also agreed to prevent any strike or work slowdown of TA/GAs, and that strikes against any government are not legitimate (if they did not agree to this, the state would refuse to deduct dues from our paychecks). The CWA puts no strike pledges in all their contracts.
Bigotry
- Local 1104 Secretary-Treasurer Ed Connelly sent an e-mail accusing all Muslims of raping “Scandinavian girls and women,” burning down Christian churches, being “aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-traders,” and calling for all Muslims to leave the United States.
- In the Spring 2010 issue of their newsletter a Local 1104 employee wrote, “you don’t engage a battalion of gooks with a squad of Marines, and expect to survive without ground, air and artillery support.”
- President Bloom denounced Verizon as an “unwed Mother.”
Another Union is Possible!
Join the IWW!
The Industrial Workers of the World is a global organization committed to workplace democracy and the dignity of all working people. The IWW uses collective direct action to build workers power and fight for economic justice in the workplace. All workers have common interests against their employers. The IWW is a way to build solidarity among workers across regardless of occupation or whether or not they belong to another union. The IWW is also a tool to directly fight management without being hamstrung by the GSEU or other union bureaucrats, and can potentially also act to curb the worst abuses of the GSEU. Membership in the I.W.W. does not preclude membership in any other union, or vice versa. TA/GAs should also join the GSEU/CWA 1104 because it will force you to pay dues to them even if you don’t join, and joining gives you the option of voting in their elections.
As long as we allow others to organize instead of us, we will always have unions that are unresponsive to our demands. This is not simply an issue of corruption or unresponsive “representation,” this is an issue of power within the union. We have seen the corruption into which such a representative hierarchy leads and we have to say “No More!” It is time that our union is actually Our Union and that it advocates our rights to the bureaucrats, not their rights to us! It is time to come together for a union whose leaders are not one of those bureaucrats themselves! It is time to take the conditions of our own labor into our own hands!
