Joe, you are as ever a razor-sharp critic and if you lived in the 18th century you would need some sort of nom de plume like Le Stiletto. As you know I feel a little differently than you since I can imagine many of our colleagues judging in good faith that since furloughs and "voluntary" pay reductions are both forms of involuntary servitude--to take your phrase--that the latter option at least has the advantage of 1) naming a pay reduction as pay reduction and 2) enabling one to work as one must without worry of needing to fill out some form down the line that erases the labor one did on one's furlough day. One thing I consistently feel is that there is absolutely no downside to one's joining the Campus Faculty Association (as I hope you will do). As a faculty, we need to be able to speak up as a body so that shared governance of the university is more than just rhetoric. For what it's worth, I agree with you that the furlough/pay cuts were an elective decision. Indeed, they were an option chosen by our administration (and not imposed by the governor and state legislature as was the case in California, Maryland and elsewhere). There may perhaps be good reasons why the relatively small sum ($17 million) raised through the furlough program was a justifiable short-term policy; if so, I'm content to do my share since the bigger budget cuts (including likely impact on instructional and graduate student budgets) are what concerns me most as a member of this faculty. What's clear though--and where I join you--is that without a fully visible and transparent budget we can't share in recognizing the legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of that choice or any other. With shared governance we would actually help to make decisions; as it stands we are asked to accept the impact of decisions that have been made without our being consulted and given access to the full financial picture. I hope that this becomes a constructive moment for this university at a critical time and I believe that it can. The more faculty are deprived of meaningful roles in the process of governance, the more they are likely to feel like fleeced sheep. (LG)

I toyed with the "voluntary pay reduction," since I'd prefer to call a pay reduction a "pay reduction" and not a "furlough" (which until recently usually meant either a paid vacation in the military or a temporary release from prison). Alas, I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork and it appeared there might be some downsides to it. Also, it lied by calling the reduction "voluntary," which was, of course, the heart of the problem. My dad was an airline pilot in both the boom and the bust days of that industry—they took pay cuts to keep the company afloat, but they were voluntary. Management had to up front with the financial situation and had to ask the employee's permission. Why such a difference? They were unionized and had collective bargaining.

However, I fail to see how "accepting" a furlough and "accepting" a "voluntary" pay cut are morally much different, let alone equivalent to acting as a scab: both "offers" from the administration are predicated on bad faith and obfuscating language, and both are entirely out of our control. Many—I suspect most—faculty are taking their furloughs in ways that do not aim to cause problems for the university, but most have thought the issue through. Some, no doubt, think they are being "good citizens," but others have different motivations. I agree with Joe that the most politically effective thing to do as an act of resistance would be to take four furlough days on the most destructive, disruptive and high profile teaching days possible. Unfortunately, I am teaching my favorite class this semester, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose four days of personal enjoyment to make a point that—let's be honest—will be ignored by all and sundry, including my undergraduates (although if you really want to make some heat, explain that they will still be responsible for the missed material on the final exam). I strongly suspect that a majority of the faculty in a union, however, would be much more effective at preventing further furloughs.

I salute Prof. Valente's resistance to the bogus "choice" the administration has forced upon the faculty. I especially admire his canceling class with a “class furloughed” on his syllabus as one more way to register his unwillingness to play ball. Students do pay attention to things like that--at least, politically aware students do--and they remember.

I say the latter in reply to Prof. Rushing's concern that people would ignore such a gesture of principled refusal. Undoubtedly, many undergraduates would ignore it (or, more likely, shout "Whoo-hoo!" and stampede to Kam's). But others--the ones who joined their TAs on the picket lines during the GEO strike, in the drizzliest of Novembers--those students would not ignore it. Graduate employees would not ignore it. And most importantly, other faculty would not ignore it. I imagine that many faculty would instead admire such a gesture, and consider the costs of offering such resistance themselves.

Because it does cost. Rushing makes a fair point that canceling a class one loves to teach makes the furlough an even more bitter pill to swallow. "Not only do I have to take a pay cut," thinks an instructor, "but I don't even get to do my lecture on X! They always love my lecture on X!" I sympathize with Rushing and anyone else in this position, because last fall, I, like every other member of the GEO, had to commit to canceling my classes. And not for just one day, but indefinitely.

I hated the thought of abandoning my students, and I dreaded how long the strike could drag on. But when managers decide they want to cut your pay and gut your benefits, they'll use your own sense of professional commitment against you, and they'll do it without flinching. Withholding labor is the _ultima ratio_ of workers against this kind of marauding. I applaud Valente's commitment to becoming, effectively, a one-person strike.

I love teaching my own classes, even though UIUC labels me a "teaching assistant." That label is part of my apprenticeship in a trade I hope to ply for the rest of my life. But in one important respect, the masters in this trade have it worse than their apprentices: the masters don't have a union.

How about it, masters?

Wow, Ezra I really appreciate your post and hope that others come forward to answer it. For myself I think the important thing that you, Rob, Joe, and I share is a sense of how important it is to make the impact of budget cutting devices (including furloughs) visible. This semester I don't have the option of canceling a class but I can't help but think back to last fall when, during the GEO strike, the same students whom I joined on the picket line asked me _not_ to cancel my grad seminar(though we met in my living room to avoid crossing a picket line). Likewise I was advised _not_ to cancel a Unit event at the Levis Center on the grounds that the Unit's commitment to critical theory and its contexts aligned with the broader goals of the strike. We agreed instead that brief remarks by a GEO member would be a better way of making the strike fully visible to those gathered for the event in question. This by way of saying that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I completely respect those professors who decide to cancel their classes with a loud furlough message like that Joe persuasively urges. But I also respect everyone--class-canceling or not--including students and fellow union members on campus, who takes part in the common furlough/action days. Effective though individual acts like class cancellation might be there is no substitute, to my mind, for taking part in these highly visible enactments of solidarity (LG).

Thanks to Joe Valente for such clarity. I would underline that cancelling class does not necessarily have to be (and, indeed, shouldn't be) thought of as an "individual act." One of the best ways to make the value of our labor visible is to observe our furlough days *collectively* on: March 4, April 6, April 21. If those dates fall on a classroom teaching day for you, by all means cancel your class! Announce it ahead of time, mark it in your syllabus, explain why you're doing it, and invite your students to join in the events planned by CFA, GEO, UGA, the Campus Labor Coalition, and other groups on campus on those days.

If the collective furlough day doesn't fall on a classroom teaching day for you, make your labor visible in other ways: post an "On Furlough Today" sign on your office door, cancel office hours, put an automatic "on furlough" message on your e-mail. If we don't make the value of our labor visible (by withdrawing it when we are not paid), why should anyone else recognize and value it?

Many of my undergraduate and graduate students are just as angry as faculty and staff are -- and, in fact, many are taking the lead on this campus in ways that we all have much to learn from. I've found that students are much less likely to romanticize what happens in the classroom than faculty are, and, as a result, they can usually see the political and ethical reasons for collective action. I cancelled my classes in solidarity during the GEO strike and it woke my undergraduates up that they had a stake in the outcome. Taking collective furloughs can have the same effect. What other leverage do we have?

Anonymous, your comments are very cool! I hope I know you and feel that I do: in spirit if not in flesh. I think we probably already understand one another but I want to be certain. To be clear, I'm not arguing against canceling classes or suggesting that canceling classes can't or shouldn't be part of a collective furlough/action day. And I entirely agree that taking collective furloughs is crucial. I only want to make clear that class-canceling needn't be the bar for collective action (just as class-canceling in the absence of joining the CFA and participating in the collective furlough day individualizes what should be a collective act--in my view). Fortunately our leverage includes the simple act of joining an existing faculty union. If more than half of us do that we will have collective bargaining. You're right that faculty romanticize the classroom more than students do. But it's also quite possible that some activists romanticize the efficacy of canceling classes. In the current situation our goals as a faculty seem to me to be 1) to render visible the impact of budget cutting (including furloughs) and 2) to grow a faculty union and 3) to do both of the latter in solidarity with students and other non-faculty campus workers. I think that the CFA's 2/15 teach-in was a great first step towards achieving that end. Some may have canceled classes in order to attend and take part and if so I salute them. But I also salute the people who took part who didn't cancel a class, or who attended while having signed up for a voluntary pay reduction. After all, we are building a union movement; not conducting a strike. Naturally if the Illinois faculty ever went on strike--and my hope is that the growing of a fully-fledged faculty union would obviate the need for strike as it has done recently at University of Florida--the matter of canceling classes will be much more central. None of this is to diminish the force of Joe's post which is a very welcome contribution to the Unit's "15 Ways" series (LG).