. . . I hope to find something other than University labor politics to blog about. Honest. For now, however, here’s yet another letter. This one to the Minnesota Daily in response to an interview with Bob Bruininks published in today’s edition of the paper.

I would like to say that I’m surprised by President Bruininks’ comments about the AFSCME strike in today’s Daily. That, however, would imply that I expected him to say something that demonstrated honorable leadership — and that, as a result, I was caught off guard by his failure to do so. Given the administration’s generally hamfisted handling of the strike, however, I wasn’t at all surprised to find Bruininks dishing out more platitudes and propaganda. Disappointed, yes. But not at all surprised.

Bruininks claims that his childhood in a union household taught him that “no one, absolutely no one, wins when you have a strike.” But if he’d really learned that lesson, he’d have given AFSCME the same deal he gave the Teamsters. Not “something close” or “essentially a comparable proposal,” but the very same deal. It’s what AFSCME was asking for, it amounted to a ridiculously tiny sliver of the University’s overall budget, and it would have prevented the strike from ever happening. Presumably, Bruininks chose to offer AFSCME less than the Teamsters — and then to hold firm to that offer, even after the strike was called — because he thought that a strike wouldn’t hurt his administration badly enough to make it worth his while to avert it.

Bruininks’ description of the administration’s offer to AFSCME “essentially a comparable proposal” to the Teamsters deal is a fine display of propagandistic “weasel words.” It sounds well and good to say these are “comparable” offers, but all that really means is that it’s possible to put them side by side and consider their similarities: not that they’re actually equivalent to one another — much less that such a comparison would demonstrate a rough equivalence between them. By the same token, it’s possible for me to compare “President Bruininks” to “a weasel,” but the mere fact that I can do so doesn’t actually mean that Bruininks is a devious, thieving vermin — much less that such a comparison is fair to the weasel.

Bruininks also speaks compassionately about “reach[ing] out to our employees to see if we can heal whatever wounds are out there.” But he wasn’t interested in showing any such compassion or generosity when AFSCME workers asked for a living wage: he offered them a substandard deal and then refused to budge. He wasn’t interested in healing any wounds when faculty, students, and staff told him — over and over again — that his failure to settle the strike was hurting the University: he simply sent a few form letters to a tiny fraction of the University community who expressed such concerns, and then dismissed the rest of those dissenting voices as “noise.” And his definition of “reaching out” appears to be limited to “asking for money,” since the only outreach from the administration I’ve heard of has involved calls from the Alumni Association asking recent graduates — who also happen to be AFSCME workers, freshly back in the office after the end of the strike — if they’d chip in to help pay for the new football stadium.

Bruininks can put all the PR spin he wants to on the strike and its aftermath, but it’s going to take more than spin to “heal whatever wounds are out there.” If Bruininks really wants to do that, he needs to start by actually giving AFSCME the contract they asked for. Having failed to do that in the first place, however, now he will also have to work overtime to rebuild the good will — throughout the University community — that he’s so carelessly tossed away. He thinks that there “might be” some “lingering negativity” about the strike. The fact that he’s unsure about that shows that he simply hasn’t been paying very close attention. I’m sure there are people who weren’t bothered at all by the strike — and even people who would applaud the administration’s actions — but there are a lot of us who are still seething about the whole thing. I think most of us would be delighted to see Bruininks make a genuine and sincere effort to repair the damage he’s done to the community. But he’s certainly got his work cut out for him.