Student Week of Action to Shine Light on Workers’ Freedom to Join Unions

by James Parks, Mar 31, 2007

This year, thousands of students will not spend their spring breaks on the Florida beaches. Instead, students at more than 300 universities will be standing outside McDonald’s restaurants, university buildings and other unlikely spots–rallying and marching in support of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain with their employers for better lives.

The March 28–April 4 week of action sponsored by the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) takes place between the anniversaries of Cesar Chavez’s birth and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

During the week, students from New York City to Los Angeles will draw attention to schools and corporations that value the bottom line more than people. Through films, rallies and other demonstrations of solidarity, students hope to help workers win concrete victories in their efforts to form and join unions.

All over the nation, working people are struggling to make ends meet, says SLAP’s National Coordinator Carlos Jiminez:

The rising cost of tuition and financial aid cuts are making it harder for people to attend college. Many young people are burdened with mountains of student loan debt. Students and workers of all ages are falling behind as the gap between the rich and the poor widens. Although the best opportunity for working people to get ahead economically is by uniting with co-workers to bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits, our schools and corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions.  If we can hold our schools accountable, we can succeed in maintaining good jobs and thus a better education.

Last year, the week of action featured the first-ever McDonald’s Truth Tour. Led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the Truth Tour joined a caravan of farm workers traveling from Immokalee, Fla., to Chicago—home of McDonald’s—to educate consumers about labor conditions in McDonald’s tomato supply chain and to demand real rights for farm workers. Check out the video from last year’s exciting street protest.

On April 1 in Chicago, students will join with CIW members, community and faith leaders and union members to rally in front of a local McDonald’s for fair food and fair wages.

Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn., students, workers, community members and faith leaders will call on Vanderbilt University to step up and pay a living wage.

Vanderbilt, the second-largest employer in Tennessee, historically has resisted adopting a living wage due to supposed budget and economic restraints. Yet Vanderbilt’s chancellor, Gordon Gee, is the third-highest paid university chief in the United States, earning an annual salary close to $1.4 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Tuition exceeds $40,000 per year for full-time undergraduate students, and the university endowment is more than $2 billion, according to the Vanderbilt Register.

In other week of action activities:

• Boston-area students, civil rights and community leaders, clergy and union members will urge three of the city’s largest and best known food sellers–McDonalds, Starbucks and the Harris Teeter supermarket—to take responsibility for human rights abuses in their supply chains and in their stores.
• In Philadelphia, students, labor, community and faith leaders will unite April 4 for a Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez Memorial Prayer Vigil and Rally at the University of Pennsylvania in support of security officers who are fighting for family-sustaining wages, affordable health care, paid sick days and pensions for those who keep the university safe.
• In Long Island, N.Y., members of the Graduate Students Employees Union at Stony Brook rallied this past Wednesday for higher wages. Grad students, teaching assistants and graduate assistant workers earn some of the lowest stipends in the country, even though the cost of living is at least 56 percent higher than at other State University of New York research campuses.

For a full list of actions, click here.

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