NYU graduate workers win union rights
By Shelley
Ettinger
New York
On March 1, in a sharp turnaround from public vows to
never acknowledge the rights of teaching assistants, the
administration at New York University agreed to recognize the
union representing graduate employees.
Graduate workers had been set to take a strike vote that
evening.
Instead, when hundreds of them gathered at the Judson
Memorial Church, it turned into a victory celebration. United
Auto Workers officials announced that, in the face of the
strike threat, NYU had agreed to begin contract
negotiations.
"We won!" exulted Kimberly Johnson, a graduate employee in
the American Studies department and one of the leaders in the
struggle. "Finally, we have our union, and a chance to
negotiate over our ideas about how we can make life better
for graduate assistants."
University officials signed a letter agreeing to abide by
National Labor Relations Board rulings establishing the UAW
as the bargaining agent for graduate employees, and to
commence collective bargaining.
The next day, L. Jay Oliva announced that he would resign
as president of NYU. Oliva's 10-year stewardship has been
marked by an anti-labor stance that mar red the university's
public-relations efforts as it tried to position itself as an
academically prestigious school while constantly raising
tuition.
Oliva's union busting repeatedly flopped in the face of
increasing worker and student organizing. Within the last
year, students forced the university bookstore to stop
selling merchandise manufactured in sweatshops, the clerical
workers' union won agency-shop status after a 20-year fight,
and adjunct instructors initiated union organizing
drives.
Now that some 1,500 additional workers have won union
rights, labor is in an even stronger position at NYU. But
this victory has significance beyond the Greenwich Village
campus.
NYU is the biggest private university in the country. It
had been battling graduate-employee organizing on behalf of
schools nationwide.
At Yale, for example, graduate employees have been
fighting for union rights for years. Yale officials had been
consulting with NYU and helping to pay legal costs in its
anti-union drive.
Now graduate workers at Yale and elsewhere will be in a
stronger position as they fight for their rights.
It's no wonder graduate workers want unions. Their wages,
hours and working conditions are awful.
At NYU, for example, they typically work 30 to 40 hours a
week teaching, grading papers, administering exams, writing
and copying material, meeting with students, and so on. Yet
annual pay is as low as $7,000. They have to buy health
insurance, and family coverage costs more than one-third of
what they're paid.
Now all that is up for negotiation. NYU bosses may have
more stonewalling up their sleeves. But NYU workers are
united in their determination to improve conditions for
graduate workers.
Next up: bringing a union to adjunct instructors.
The same graduate employees who fought so hard for a union
know that for many of them, all the future holds is adjunct
status. Adjuncts are basically permanent temps.
They may have doctoral degrees, but they also have the
same low pay and no benefits that characterize temporary
employment in every industry.
Fifty-seven percent of all NYU faculty are adjuncts.
Although many of them teach every semester, NYU refuses to
hire them as regular employees. So they're organizing.
Ettinger is a member of AFT Local 3882, the clerical
workers' union
at NYU.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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