NYU grad student workers vote to strike

Graduate employees at New York University have voted to authorize a strike. The walkout is set to begin Nov. 9.

The NYU administration can save the fall semester and avert a strike by agreeing to negotiate with the graduate workers’ union, UAW Local 2110. This is unlikely to happen. NYU President John Sexton appears intent on doing whatever it takes to crush the union.

But it is even less likely that Sexton will succeed in his union-busting quest.

In a week-long strike-authorization vote in late October, graduate workers voted by an overwhelming 85 percent to authorize the walkout. They are strong. They are united.

And so it’s class war at NYU.

On one side are Sexton and his team of administrators and deans, operating on behalf of the all-millionaire board of trustees. On the other: 1,100 graduate, teaching and research assistants—backed by the vast majority of faculty, undergraduate students, and all the other campus unions, representing clerical, technical, maintenance, service and other workers.

Strike organizers report that hundreds of faculty members have moved their classes off campus and pledged not to do the graduate employees’ work during a strike. Students and teachers have signed petitions demanding that NYU negotiate with Local 2110, also called the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC).

Many undergraduate students’ parents are speaking up, too. They’re demanding that NYU use a portion of the exorbitant tuition dollars they pay not for union busting, but to fund a fair deal for the graduate students who do most of the undergraduate teaching.

National significance

The struggle at NYU is being watched closely by the national labor movement. A GSOC strike and its results would have repercussions for graduate student organizing at every private university in the country.

The university was ordered to recognize GSOC/Local 2110 in 2000, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the NYU graduate students are workers with full rights to collective bargaining. It took an ongoing mobilization to drag the administration to the bargaining table. After that it took a long, hard negotiation to win an agreement.

A contract was finally settled and signed in 2002. It established, for the first time, a range of rights for graduate employees. And it provided much-improved health benefits and pay.

Meanwhile, however, NYU continued to press for a reversal of the pro-GSOC ruling made in 2000. In July 2004, Sexton and company got what they wanted. The Labor Board, now packed with a reactionary majority, issued a new decision finding that graduate employees are not workers and have no right to union representation.

The administration moved quickly. Sexton announced he would refuse to negotiate for a second GSOC contract.

The contract expired this Aug. 31. On that day, protesters gathered in front of Bobst Library, site of the NYU administration offices. Several dozen people, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, were arrested for sitting down in front of the doors.

Now the showdown arrives. GSOC has called on all supporters to join its members in a massive show of strength to kick off the strike with a giant picket line at Bobst Library at 8 a.m. on Nov. 9.

The writer is a member of AFT Local 3882, the NYU clerical workers’ union.