Larisa Mann Justifies Sit-In to Ensure Fair Union Election

In These Times, May 3, 2011 by Mike Elk
http://bit.ly/iAt2UX

Yesterday, dozens of graduate student teaching assistants in Los Angeles and Berkeley began a sit-in at the Berkeley and Los Angeles offices of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865, the union that represents them. They allege that union officials were engaged in irregularities while counting ballots in a union officer election. “Well, we aren’t really occupying it. We are dues-paying members,” says Larisa Mann, a University of California Berkeley law school student. “It is our office technically.”