UMass students vow ‘No contract? No peace!’
By
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Amherst, Mass.
Published Apr 6, 2005 4:46 PM
Facing
multi-faceted assaults by the administration and its class allies, and aware of
the historic importance and national implications of this struggle, students and
progressive campus community members at the University of Massa chu
setts-Amherst responded March 31 with one of the biggest mass actions in
years.
March 31 rally at University of Massachusetts.
|
More than 600 graduate and undergraduate students, union allies and
campus community members answered the call of the Graduate Employee Organi
zation, UAW Local 2322, for a “march for fair wages, health care, benefits
and childcare.” The march came in response to the administration’s
refusal to bargain in good faith.
“We’re talking about sums
that represent less than 1/1000th of the university’s budget. There will
be no peace until we get a contract,” said Meghan E. McDonough, GEO family
issues advocate, speaking on the steps of the Student Union while holding her
infant.
GEO, with a membership of 2,400, has been working without a
contract since
July 1, and has been bargaining with the administration for
over a year. Other campus unions are in similar circumstances. The
administration 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 extended a hand of unity to undergraduate students
by inviting their newly elected Student Government Association President Pavel
Payano to speak at the rally. There are about 18,000 undergraduates and 6,000
graduate students on campus.
The increasing attacks on all students and
campus workers is a focal point of the undergraduate student struggle led by the
Take Back UMass coalition, which works with GEO.
(www.takebackumass.com)
“What we see happening at UMass is part of a
national, racist, right-wing-led, neo liberal agenda,” said Cassandra
Enge man, GEO member and a Labor Studies graduate student. “UMass wants to
depict us as students, not workers, so they can outsource faculty positions to
graduate stu dents to save money. This isn’t only happening at UMass; it
is happening to public universities throughout the country.”
No
contract, no peace!
Students made use of whistles and of make-shift
drums of pots, pans and five-gallon empty water containers as they took over the
campus at lunch hour with a blocks-long march from the Student Union—a
building won as a result of campus rebellions in the late 1960s—to the
Whitmore administration building.
“Whose school? Our school!”
they chanted.
Drivers along the campus’s main street honked their
car horns in support.
A sea of blue placards reading “No contract?
No peace!” and with other slogans such as “Students and workers
unite” and “Undergraduates support graduate students” could be
seen for blocks.
At the administration building, march ers, all the while
filmed by campus police and undercover agents, proceeded to the offices of
Chancellor John Lombardi and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Michael Gargano
to deliver petitions supporting GEO and undergraduate
students.
Participants included members of AFS CME, the Massachusetts
Nurses Asso cia tion, the Massachusetts Society of Pro fessors, members of Local
2322’s executive staff including President Ron Pate naude and Vice
President John McGrath, the Million Worker Movement, the Nation al Writers
Union, Pioneer Valley Labor Council President Ron Brown, Service Employees, Food
and Commercial Workers, the University Staff Association and U.S. Labor Against
the War.
The March 31 action was part of an ongoing GEO contract campaign
that uses “grade-ins,” roving pickets, rank-and-file attendance at
bargaining sessions, media strategies and building support in the undergraduate
and larger campus community. If the administration continues its bad-faith
bargaining, GEO plans on civil disobedience actions for April 21 and 22 and
other actions.
Most unionized graduate students make on average about $15
dollars an hour, but this is only for 10- or 20-hour appointments. International
students are restric ted to 20 hours of work a week by Depart ment of Homeland
Security regulations, and graduate students do not receive grants.
These
student-workers who teach, grade and conduct research are either barely
surviving, going into debt, restricting their studies or ending their education.
Having a union is what keeps many of these student-workers in school, especially
the working-class and poor students of color.
According to GEO’s
website (www. geouaw.org), if the administration’s current contract
proposals were implemented, a typical graduate student’s family could be
paying $5,000 more next year for the same child-care services. Health-care costs
would quadruple over the next three years from $0 to a projected $508. The
administration could also change the benefits at any time without
negotiations.
The unity and solidarity displayed on March 31 are
what’s needed to win a good contract, defeat the administration’s
student organization restructuring plans and continue building a progressive
united front at UMass and nationally, stressed Engeman.
Pfeifer is a
Labor Studies graduate student and GEO member at UMass-Amherst.
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