Wednesday, November 27, 1996
PARODY:
SAGE’s actions only served to insult true blue-collar workers’
struggles, lessening value of future picketlinesBy Jason Caro
Watching TAs with signs "striking" on the corner of Westwood and
Le Conte must bring a smile. It is not just that such mass
political action is passé. (Just ask the air traffic
controllers’ union and workers at Hormel and Caterpillar). Nor is
the problem that these "workers" in league "with" the UAW are
actually the sons and daughters of America’s upper classes. The
problem is not that such strikers are an insult to those who can
claim peasant/blue-collar parentage and are thankful for any
opportunity to attend UCLA. Rather, it is the combination of all
this that made a strike by SAGE (pronounced sag-ee) impossible.
This "strike" is a repeat performance with a series of
choreographed responses: anxiety from the undergraduate
"consumers," concerns from the faculty "management," and
indignation by the graduate "workers" themselves. I even received a
letter from the Chancellor (the "ruling class") demanding an
account of my whereabouts for the week. Everybody plays his
expected role in the media, radio and on the pages of the Daily
Bruin. Yet nobody fits the part. It is Marxism with a toothless
grin; unionizing with the shakes.
The problem is that SAGE does not meet its own criteria for a
strike in the classic style of the union struggles of the 1920s,
and yet there has been, apparently, a strike. How can this be
explained?
The SAGE strike, despite its nostalgic feel, represents a new
kind of political act. It is a parody of a working-class struggle
and thereby cheapens and pushes the seriousness of such action
further into the oblivion where it belongs. The solemnity with
which a "union" like SAGE approaches its strike only accelerates
this destructive effect.
Do not get me wrong. SAGE has de facto power. But it squanders
it to achieve de jure power or legal recognition. Which is
precisely the problem. That SAGE, whatever it is, did not strike
for higher wages or better medical insurance only proves that it
was not a real struggle. It never happened. It must therefore be
something else that engenders something else: politics with a
smile. And perhaps that is enough.