weekend fun

Waking hungover but happy at noon on Sunday after much fun and revelry this weekend (tally since Friday: four house parties, two visits to Cafe Habana, two sightings of K&J, two sightings of Alice, two coffee dates at Amer's with colleagues, one slightly-drunken stroll through the Pinckney Kroger wearing fishnets and a cleavage-bearing black chiffon dress with freakishly long sleeves, one 3am dining adventure at the Fleetwood, one quiet walk in a Metropark, one baking event.)

A lovely lazy Saturday spent soaking up as much vitamin D as possible (oh, blessed sun!) , doing a little GSI work, and acquiring green vegetables (broccoli and spinach, yum!) and gas and strolling through the aisles of clothes, wine and liquor, and fancy, sexy computers at COSTCO. . .

. . . led into an evening of baking adventures and a couple nice house parties. A quiet, intimate group including some wonderful friends, with an outstanding spread of food, and woeful soulful music at Jenay's place . . . a stop-off at Cafe Habana to pick up Alice and some of her law school friends, and then over to Jonathan and Dan's place for one of their characteristically wild parties, peopled with drunken, maudlin boys, snarky and hilarious architects and artists, and lots of GEO folks, with astonishingly good fresh salsa verde thanks to their Mexican roommate. Alice took me out to the Fleetwood afterwards, then we parted ways at about 4 am.

I'm tired and my head hurts, but I feel cleansed from the experience of being with good friends. It had been a long week, with the GEO picketing and all. I never knew what hard work it would be to be out there.

Time now to wander around the house for the afternoon in my super-soft pink bathrobe and slippers and drink lots and lots of coffee. And maybe eat even more bacon. Mmm.

what lies beneath

self-portrait in ice

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRADUATE EMPLOYEES AUTHORIZE TWO DAY WORK STOPPAGE

Looks like we'll be striking . . .

The press release today said:


LABOR UNION OF GRADUATE INSTRUCTORS VOTE 727 TO 177 TO STOP WORK

Ann Arbor, MI – Members of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO, AFT local 3550), the labor union representing approximately 1,700 graduate student instructors and staff assistants at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, voted in support of a work stoppage on campus. The walkout is planned to take place on Tuesday, March 25th and Wednesday, March 26th.

The GEO has been in negotiations with university administration since November of 2007, both sides have yet to come to agreement on core issues, mostly economic. GEO has shown good faith throughout the bargaining process. Membership extended the contract twice past its March 1st expiration date, and agreed to additional bargaining sessions during the week of March 17th. However, the administration’s bargaining team failed to present new proposals at three of this week’s sessions. GEO’s contract will expire again at midnight on Monday, March 24th.

GEO’s contract campaign prioritizes bringing the graduate employee salary up to a living wage, meeting the cost of attendance published by the university’s Office of Financial Aid. Currently, the average graduate employee earns $781.00 less than this figure. The university’s administration has refused to raise wages to close this gap. To merely close this gap and account for a conservative estimation of inflation would require a 9% increase in wages in the first year of the contract.

GEO lead negotiator Colleen Woods said that the increase in the first year remains non-negotiable. “Our members have been consistently telling us that this is very important to them.” This average salary figure is no longer competitive with what U of M considers its peer institutions. Northwestern University has launched a program that provides 5 years and 4 summers of funding, and Yale, Harvard and Princeton now provide graduates with an average of $20,000 over 12 months. Beyond private schools, the average salary at the University of Iowa is $16,575 for graduate instructors; and at Rutgers it is $19,815.

With the university’s current pay scale, those working fewer hours a week make less in hourly wages, and do not receive health benefits or full tuition waivers. This places a disproportionate burden on those who are already at a disadvantage. GEO has proposed a wage parity scale to address this, but this has been continually rejected by the administration.

On Thursday, March 20, approximately 300 GEO members and allies rallied in support of the current contract campaign marching from the central Diag to the Regents’ Plaza. GEO President, Helen Ho, and Vice President, Kiara Vigil, delivered two letters that urged the Board of Regents to promote a swift and reasonable resolution to negotiations in order to prevent any work stoppage.

Goodbye Lenin

Eastern Europe night. I went to a union meeting and came home to eat pierogie with onion cooked in bacon grease and drink beer, while watching Goodbye Lenin. I'll finish an article on beer branding in post-socialist Georgia shortly.

Taking a two-minute break to watch mud wrestling from Ukraine.

Tilos az a

Macedonian bear convicted for theft of honey.

"For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music."


. . . In other news, a Czech scientist determines that beer drinking is negatively correlated with academic productivity and the likelihood that your article will be cited by your peers.

Those of you with institutional access (and therefore a vested interest in the results, of course!) can view the Grim news here.