Intrpeid Yale graduate student teaching assistant and GESO organizer Evan Matthew Cobb delivers a telling, scathing retort to those who refuse to see his job as work:

That I better myself through the work that I do does not change the fact that it is work someone else would have to be paid for if I didn’t show up. It would be a better world if all jobs were clearly spaces of self-improvement, but to argue that only workers whose work doesn’t help them grow are permitted to collectively protect their interests is fantastically cynical and woefully disempowering to workers of all stripes. As the child of two public school teachers, I know that every year when the budget comes up, many in our town expect my parents to voluntarily forgo a raise because they happen to love teaching and love the students. I love teaching and I love my students, but the fact that I enjoy what I do shouldn’t hold my dignity hostage nor should it exclude me from the rights of an employee. If enjoying your work really is an excuse to make you do it for cheap, then maybe we should be seizing the inflated paychecks of professional athletes and redistributing them to all the self-loathing investment bankers who gave up on more creative dreams.

Yes, I will likely need an “impressive list of student recommendations” to go far in my profession. I’ve got them, though, and when I look at the evaluations from last semester, the first one to come up says: “Evan is a very good instructor and he should be paid more.” Looks like I’m learning from my students after all.

Some perspective for those panicked about Bush’s bounce:

Bush’s bounce is the smallest an incumbent president has received.

I say this week is the highest Bush’s polls will get – it’s all downhill for him from here.

For Labor Day, the AFL-CIO offers some opportunities to take action – and some music and animation too.

Look who hates us for our freedoms:

A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor. Several dozen of those detained said that they had not taken part in protests. Police apparently swept up the CEO of a puppet theater as he and a friend walked out of the subway to celebrate his birthday. Two middle-age women who had been shopping at the Gap were handcuffed, and a young woman was arrested as she returned from her job at a New York publishing house. Hours before President Bush made his speech to the Republican National Convention, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John Cataldo held city officials in contempt of court for failing to release more than 500 detained demonstrators by 5 p.m. The judge said that the detentions violated state law, and he threatened to impose a fine of $1,000 per day for each person kept in custody longer than 24 hours without being arraigned. As of Thursday evening, about 168 people still in detention had been held for more than 24 hours.

Ariel Sharon provokes a stern warning from his own Attorney General:

“If they are shelling us, we should shell them,” he burst out at one point during the discussion yesterday. But Attorney General Menachem Mazuz intervened. “That would be a war crime, on the part of both the state and you personally,” he said, to which Sharon shot back: “It’s only when Jews are killed that it’s not a crime, and the whole world is silent? Killing Jews is permissible?” “I’m not saying we shouldn’t respond, but deliberately firing on civilians is a war crime,” Mazuz responded.

So much for closing the deal:

The reactions of undecided voters in three battleground states who agreed to watch Bush’s convention speech with Washington Post reporters suggest that Bush still has work to do to win their allegiance. Some expressed skepticism about portions of the speech, and others found themselves nodding in agreement with some of the president’s comments. But none said that the president had overcome their doubts in his nationally televised address.

The Times reports on the undiscussed costs of stress on the job:

Sixty-two percent say their workload has increased over the last six months; 53 percent say work leaves them ‘overtired and overwhelmed.’ Even at home, in the soccer bleachers or at the Labor Day picnic, workers are never really off the clock, bound to BlackBerries, cellphones and laptops. Add iffy job security, rising health care costs, ailing pension plans and the fear that a financial setback could put mortgage payments out of reach, and the office has become, for many, an echo chamber of angst. It is enough to make workers sick – and it does. Decades of research have linked stress to everything from heart attacks and stroke to diabetes and a weakened immune system. Now, however, researchers are connecting the dots, finding that the growing stress and uncertainty of the office have a measurable impact on workers’ health and, by extension, on companies’ bottom lines.

The Russian hostage standoff ends in death:

At least 200 hostages were believed dead and over 700 injured as Russian troops today stormed the school seized by militants two days ago. 95 victims had been identified but health officials told the official Russian Interfax news agency that more than 200 people had been killed by fire from militants or died from their wounds as the hostage crisis in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, southern Russia moved towards a chaotic, bloody end. Russian officials said they had not planned to storm the building, but had gone in after an explosion was heard. One unconfirmed report suggested that a female militant wearing a suicide bomb belt had accidentally blown herself up, prompting the raid.

Thirteen of the 17 male and female militants earlier shot their way out of the school, where they had held hundreds of children and adults hostage since Wednesday. Troops, backed by tanks, were pursuing them. Officials said tonight that the fighting was over, but that four militants remained at large. They had been assumed to be Chechen, but the agency also reported that a Russian presidential aide said nine of the militants killed were “Arab mercenaries”.

GESO scores another win as the Yale administration, continuing its pattern of trying to stall organizing through partial concessions to demands, raises stipends:

The raise, which brings teaching assistant salaries to as much as $7,760 per semester, will not affect graduate students in their first five years, when teaching assistant pay is included in a fixed annual stipend of $17,000. The increase shrinks the gap between students in the first five years and students in their sixth year or beyond who this year will earn University pay ranging from $1,940 to $7,760 per semester by working as teaching assistants. Last year, graduate teaching assistants earned between $1,790 and $7,160 per semester. “It actually slightly closes the gap for students who are no longer on stipend,” Butler said. “Let’s put it this way: in a stagnant economy, we raised teaching fellow rates 8.4 percent.”

Many graduate students applauded the administration’s efforts to increase teaching assistant pay, but said it is likely to remain difficult to manage on the stipend alone. “Obviously it wasn’t a living wage and cost of living is ever-increasing,” said Ariel Watson GRD ’08, a teaching assistant in the English Department. “Obviously, everybody is pleased with getting a raise.” Jeff Glover GRD ’08, another English Department teaching assistant, said he welcomes the raise, but worries about making ends meet once he enters his sixth year and no longer qualifies for the automatic $17,000 stipend. “I am concerned about the sixth year, especially given the fact that at that point people have families and people have children,” Glover said.

The other top story in tomorrow’s Yale Daily News assesses the impact of President Levin’s lobbying on visa reform for international students – lobbying which itself is a victory of lobbying by GESO.