Our union for graduate student teaching assistants might be going on strike. I'm not a member of the union so they had a union representative ask me whether I wanted to join and if I would cancel class next week if they decided to go ahead with the strike. I said no and no but she was too pushy to take no for an answer so I just said sorry and hung up on her. Unions try to guilt trip you because you'd benefit from higher wages but you're not participating in the process that would help get them. But I really don't care about the $50 per month that my salary might go up. I care a lot about doing a good job of teaching and the whole thing just doesn't seem fair to the students who are paying a lot of money to go to school here.

I don't think public employees like teachers and police officers should go on strike in the first place because it hurts the public. Strikes by private employees are fine with me because the only one being hurt is the company. For example, if I worked in a factory, I wouldn't break a strike.

Does anyone think there's anything wrong with me going to class and ignoring the union? I feel like 30 years ago people used to look down on strike-breakers a lot and call them names like "fink" but not so much anymore. But I've never been involved with this type of situations before so maybe I'm out of touch. Anyone else have any stories about going on strike from a job?