Grad student-workers fight for union rights
By
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Published Apr 20, 2005 4:40 PM
Graduate student-workers and their allies at
three of the biggest universities in the Northeast are engaging in massive,
spirited work actions.
Graduate students and unionists march during walkout at Columbia U.
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On Monday, April 18, the Graduate Student
Employees United-UAW 2110 at Columbia University and the UNITE-HERE-affiliated
Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale began a joint week-long
strike for union recognition.
“By asserting this as one voice,
we’re identifying what we have in common: that we should be recognized as
legal workers and be respected and given bargaining rights,” said Dehlia
Hannah, a philosophy graduate student at Columbia.
The graduate
student-workers taking part are not teaching classes, grading papers or hosting
review sessions this week. Their demands include health care for family members
and a grievance process that would allow student teachers to raise concerns with
the universities.
These strikes are the first by “Ivy League”
graduate students since the National Labor Relations Board ruled in July 2004
that graduate students at private colleges are students, not workers, and cannot
form unions. This reversed a 2000 NLRB ruling in which graduate students had won
the right to organize as workers. So now at private universities the
administration must agree to voluntary recognition. The administrations at both
Columbia and Yale staunchly refuse to recognize graduate student
unions.
Walkout at UMass
Graduate student-workers at public
universities, like the University of Massa chusetts-Amherst, are governed under
different federal and state laws through labor boards such as the Massachusetts
Labor Relations Commission.
On April 21 members of the Graduate Employee
Organization-UAW Local 2322 at the UMass-Amherst are walking out for that day in
protest of the administration’s bad-faith, union-busting bargaining
tactics. The day will include pickets at various campus buildings, a rally and
cultural events.
The UMass administration, bargaining for over a year with
GEO, continues to propose real wage and health-care cuts, an end to health
benefits for currently covered same-sex couples, and drastic increases in
child-care costs. GEO came into existence in 1993 after a 10-day strike and
years of struggle for recognition.
The Take Back UMass coalition is
helping coordinate undergraduates boycotting classes in solidarity. The faculty
union, the Massachusetts Society of Professionals-NEA, will be leading teach-ins
outside of campus buildings on April 21. Over 175 faculty members signed a
solidarity statement in support of students, which was published as an ad in the
undergraduate student newspaper, The Daily Collegian.
Support is national
and global for all three struggles, including multiple forms of assistance from
the AFL-CIO, UNITE-HERE, the UAW and scores of unions as well as progressive
campus and community organizations.
“This act isn’t a
rejection of our faculty, whom we greatly respect. It’s a rejection of an
administration who won’t prioritize STUDENTS, TEACHERS & BOOKS. By
going to class, we pretend that the assault on student and employee rights
isn’t happening, we continue to act normally and do what’s expected
of us. By not going to class, we resist and say we won’t fulfill
UMass’s expectation until they start to fulfill our expectations for a
fair labor contract, for student autonomy and for support for diversity,”
declares a leaflet on the walkout.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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