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Grad student-workers fight for union rights

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.

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.