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NYU Strikers Take Summer Recess—But Pledge to Come Back in Fall |
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May 11 was graduation day at New York University (NYU), and hundreds of striking graduate assistants and their supporters in the faculty and community rallied for the last time this school year. However, they promised to return next semester and again and again until the university recognizes their desire for a union.
“Graduate employees should take great pride in the students who are receiving their diplomas today, because you taught them most everything they learned here,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the strikers. “It is a shame we can no longer take that same kind of pride in New York University, because when it comes to fairness and equality, the bosses at NYU have forgotten everything they learned.”
NYU graduate workers, who have been on strike since November, voted to join Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC)/UAW Local 2110 in 2000 and negotiated a four-year contract with the university. That contract expired last August, and the university refused to negotiate a new one and ceased recognizing the union.
The May 11 rally followed a convention and demonstration by the group April 27 at which 57 students were arrested during a sit-in.
The university’s actions came after the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2004 reversed an NLRB ruling made during the Clinton administration and abolished federal labor law protections for graduate employees. Nothing in the latest NLRB ruling prevents NYU or any other university from voluntarily recognizing a graduate assistants union.
Last month, the union reported the American Arbitration Association had certified that a majority of the graduate assistants in the bargaining unit had signed a petition reaffirming their commitment to the union.
“[NYU President] John Sexton has taken a page straight out of the anti-union corporate greed handbook by blocking your efforts to recognize a union at NYU,” Brian McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, told the crowd May 11. “It is an offense to basic fairness and workers’ dignity when John Sexton resists unionization of all his employees. It is just plain undemocratic!”
Other speakers who called on the school to recognize the union included UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn; Transport Workers Local 100 President Roger Toussaint; UFT/AFT President Randi Weingarten; John Wilhelm, president of the Hospitality Industry of the unaffiliated UNITE-HERE; and author Barbara Ehrenreich.
The workers also have picked up support from New York’s two U.S. 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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