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Union Solidarity 101: A Real-Life Course for NYU Grad Students |
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Graduate assistants at New York University (NYU) are teaching their own history lesson by refusing to allow school officials to take away their basic right to form a union. Yesterday they wrote another chapter in the struggle by meeting, marching, rallying and staging a sit-down protest to make the point that they will fight until they win recognition of their union.
During a convention of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC)/UAW Local 2110 April 27, members demanded the university open negotiations for a second contract to replace a pact that lapsed last August.
The NYU graduate workers, who have been on strike since November, voted to join together in a union in 2000 and negotiated a four-year contract with the university. But in 2004, the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a Clinton-administration ruling and abolished federal labor law protections for graduate employees. Nothing in the NLRB ruling prevents NYU and other universities from voluntarily recognizing the union. Last week, the union reported the American Arbitration Association had certified that a majority of the bargaining unit had signed a petition reaffirming their commitment to the union.
“This is yet another example where the Bush administration took the right of thousands of workers to have a collective bargaining agreement,” says Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110. “We can’t let the university take away this basic right. Graduate assistants all over the country have been adversely affected by the Bush NLRB decision.”
After the convention some 1,500 students and supporters marched out into Washington Square Park near the university, where 57 people staged a sit-in and were arrested. Among those arrested were two leaders of the American Association of University Professors—President Jane Buck and President-Elect Cary Nelson.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who was arrested during an August 2005 demonstration at NYU, says the university “embarrasses itself and the academic community when it treats its graduate employees with such callous disrespect. The work that graduate employees do at NYU—teaching classes, running laboratories and performing research—deserves the kind of respect due to any other worker in this country.”
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger emphasized GSOC’s “Until We Win” campaign, saying:
The continued majority support for union recognition by these workers, through such a long conflict is a testament to their desire for a voice at work, job security, and fair wages, benefits, and working conditions.
NYU must understand that this union will not go away. We stand behind our members in their continued demand that they be recognized for their work at NYU, and we join them in calling on the NYU administration to resolve this conflict by negotiating a second contract.
The workers also picked up support from New York’s two senators. In an April 27 letter, Democrats Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton backed the resumption of “discussions that conclude with a mutually beneficial contract.”
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