In the midst of juggling tons of really important work projects (including a hiring process and last minute logistics for an annual meeting of a professional group), one of our campus's unions is striking tomorrow, which means that the other unions are encouraging sympathy actions of various sorts. Union activity is supposed to get the attention of management, and that's all fine. Wages are not what they need to be--no raises in several years. Problem is, I belong to one union and yet am "management" in relation to another. In my management role I have no power to improve the conditions they want improved (wages), but I am the voice of management. This means that I can't answer certain questions, even if they are asked of me. The amazing thing is that I have staff asking what they should do tomorrow, staff who want to do the "right" thing. Many staff are not savvy to the whole union/management relationship, I think that's part of it. But there's also a communication problem around all of this, because union spokespeople are saying one thing, and then management is not (and cannot) be very clear about saying other things.
I can't say how much time has been spent today on answering the questions that I
can answer, giving the information that I can give (mostly about consequences of certain actions, without endorsing any particular ones). Management on this level is disrupted enough, don't know if the end goal of salary increases will be met. A lot depends on our contract with a certain Austrian on hiatus from filmmaking.
