Which Side Are You On, APA?

The American Philosophical Association recently held one of its annual divisional meetings in a hotel in San Francisco whose workers had voted for a strike, were on strike call, and had called for a public boycott of the hotel. Both the APA Board of Officers and the Executive Committee (EC) of the Pacific Division failed to inform APA members and conference participants about the hotel situation in the months before the meeting, when they had this information. At the last minute, when several dissident APA members succeeded in getting information out to APA members around the country, many program participants were faced with crossing a boycott and possibly a picket line (hotel workers did picket the hotel on the first day of the meetings) to attend their sessions and fulfill other professional obligations. Some conference participants switched their room reservations to unionized hotels not on the union's boycott or strike list, and some managed to move their sessions to other venues, with the assistance of Pacific SWIP and the University of San Francisco Philosophy Department. Some philosophers simply boycotted the meetings and San Francisco.

One philosopher who canceled his trip to San Francisco on hearing about the boycott told me that his grandmother would rise from her grave and strike him dead if he were to enter the conference hotel. His grandmother happened to be one of the founders of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. At the alternative meeting sites in San Francisco, some philosophers shared stories of their pre-academic careers as waitresses, bartenders, cashiers, and, yes, hotel workers. Some recalled parents' and grandparents' union activism. But unfortunately, the large majority of philosophers I encountered were naïve and ignorant about worker struggles and management efforts to undermine and break strikes.

Indeed, our own professional organization seemed to be collaborating with management by suppressing information about the boycott that union members were trying to get to philosophers, by supplying APA members with misinformation about the labor dispute, and by discouraging APA members behind the scenes from moving their sessions and meetings. In the week before the meetings, officers of the Pacific Division told anxious APA members they could honor the boycott by not spending money at the hotel, even though union representatives had told these officers, months before the meetings, that this would not help their cause. The hotels can easily absorb some loss of revenue during a contract dispute, but what does force management back to the bargaining table is when organizations and individuals stop doing business as usual with the hotel and stop legitimating management's actions with their presence in the hotel. One officer of the Pacific Division was also telling members that, if we canceled our rooms, hotel workers would lose work—implying that hotel workers really needed a weekend's wages more than the health care benefits they are fighting to maintain. This paternalistic concern was offered despite the fact that the workers whom this officer aimed to protect had voted to go out on strike and risk not only losing wages but their jobs. It was their representatives who asked the APA to honor the boycott by moving our meetings.

As philosophers, we like to think for ourselves and devise our own creative answers to critical problems. As Phil's comments show, philosophers can split hairs over the moral obligations posed by different kinds of union actions. Yet, while thinking independently is very valuable, sometimes we need to listen to others and act in union with them. Historically, collective bargaining and resistance are the primary tools workers have had for demanding humane treatment and working conditions. I believe that if philosophers had been given accurate information about this labor dispute and a chance to debate the issues, together we would have honored this boycott and made plans months before the meeting to move to another site, as the American Anthropological Association and Organization of American Historians did.

Philosophers, as university and college faculty members, are employees or workers, and we work under vastly different conditions. Some faculty members are permanent employees and receive health care benefits and pensions. Many...