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Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) Connects College Campuses to Union Movement
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AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita joins Chris Hicks, Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) coordinator, to discuss the parallels between campus and community organizing.
Founded in 1999 as a joint initiative between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) engages student activists with economic justice campaigns in their communities and campuses.
Across the country, students in local SLAP chapters meet to organize around issues that affect both students and workers. Currently, campuses are working together to campaign against dramatic state budget cuts that threaten the layoffs of thousands of workers and increase fee tuitions, which leave students with astronomical amounts of debt.
As coordinator, Chris Hicks helps student activists build relationships with local unions and community and faith-based groups and Jobs with Justice coalitions. Hicks said:
SLAP supports the growing student movement for economic justice by making links between campus and community organizing, providing skills training to build lasting student organizations, and developing campaigns that win concrete victories for working families while breaking the poverty cycle by fighting for access to higher education and full and fair employment.
Every year from March 28 to April 4, SLAP organizes more than 150 campuses during the National Student Labor Week of Action. Across the country, students hold hundreds of events to celebrate the lives of César Chávez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and build solidarity between students and workers.
Before joining SLAP, Hicks, a recent college grad from Wichita State University, worked as a union organizer for SEIU. His first memory of the union movement came from his mother’s attempt to organize her workplace. The experience helped to expose Hicks to the collective power of working people.
For Hicks, the student and union movements have always gone hand in hand.
Students graduate [and] want the best workplace conditions possible. The interest of the union movement is the interest of the student movement, and that goes both ways. Students should care [about unions] because as soon as they graduate, the labor movement is where they will be. If they don’t fight as students to protect jobs, to stop corporate greed and to stand with workers, then they will be worse off for it. If they do those things, though, and understand that what directly affects workers, indirectly affects them, they will be much better off.
Learn more about the Student Labor Week of Action at www.studentlabor.org. For individuals or groups interested in getting involved with SLAP, please contact slap@jwj.org.
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4 Comments
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STUDENTS ACROSS AMERICA SHOULD BE LOOKING AT THE SENIOR POLITICIANS IN CONGRESS AND THE U S SENATE , IN ALL THE COMMITTEES AND OF ALL THE LAWS AND BILLS THAT THEY HAD PASSED AND WHO KNOWS REALLY IF THEY KNEW WHAT WERE IN THEM AT THE TIME THEY WERE TAKING ALL THE LOBBYIST MONEY FROM SPECIAL INTEREST ? IF THEY EVEN READ THEM ? THEY HAD MADE BIG DONATIONS $$$$$$$$ TO GET RE-ELECTED AND WHO KNOWS WHAT KIND OF INSIDE STOCK DEALS THEY MADE ? BACK ROOM DEALS , LOOK SOME OF THEM ARE WORTH 100 OF MILLIONS , THEY WENT BROKE WHEN THEY GOT INTO OFFICE ! ARE THEY THERE FOR US OR THEM SELFS AND BULL CRAP US ALL ! THEY DID THIS ALL ON THE BACKS OF THE FUTURE OF THE YOUTH OF AMERICA , NOW LOOK WHAT YOU GOT FROM THEM , WELFARE FOR 30 MILLION ILLEGALS AND ITS YOUR FUTURE THERE SPENDING , INSTEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AMERICANS , OTHER NATIONS SPEND BILLIONS ON THERE YOUTH ! LOBBYIST SELLING THE YOUTHS FUTURE OF AMERICA DOWN THE DRAIN ! TAKE A STAND AND VOTE IN 2012 AND VOTE THERE CORRUPT BUTTS OUT OF OFFICE ! SCHOOL SHOULD BE FOR EDUCATION OF THE MINDS OF THE YOUTH AND FUTURE GENERATIONS OF AMERICA ! WE NEED TO FOCUS AND GET THE FACTS TO ISSUSES , YOUR FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS ALONE AND NO ONES ELES !
TELL THE UNIONS SUPPORTING THEM AND GIVING MONEY MILLIONS TO THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCARTS , THERE SUPPORTING AND VOTING FOR AND ARE SENDING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN JOBS , YOUR JOBS OVER SEAS , YOUR JOBS AND FUTURE ! THE UNIONS NEED TO STAND BACK AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THERE SUPPORTING IN ONE HAND AND WHAT THERE LOSING IN THE OTHER , ONE FAR OUT WEIGHS THE OTHER AND THATS WHY THE UNIONS ARE LOSING THE FIGHT FOR LABOR , YOU CANT HAVE BOTH , IT HAS NEVER WORKED THAT WAY , ASK THEM TO SUPPORT YOU IN YOUR LOST YOUR JOBS ! YOUR LOST JOBS FROM SOME OF THERE POLITICIANS THERE SUPPORTING ! STANDING FOR YOUR LOST JOBS !
When I was a student activist, SLAP was more often confusing than helpful. There used to be way too many politics with the Student Labor Week of Action, and SLAP duplicated roles played by other national student groups, mostly the Student Alliance with Farmworkers/SAF and United Students against Sweatshops/USAS. Considering how few actual SLAP groups there are, why is the student labor movement still divided after 10 years?
Danielle, Wash U Student Worker Alliance/SWA
I wouldn’t be involved in the labor movement today if it weren’t for the presence of SLAP on our campus. It’s an on the ground grassroots direct plug-in for students with a uniquely specific mission statement. Other groups stand for great causes, but without SLAP you’re leaving a serious gap in this movement. SLAP means students, faculty and workers mobilized in defense of higher education. SLAP means local unions [and their employers] knowing who will be there if fair working conditions are threatened. SLAP is the glue linking students with their surrounding community. SLAP is necessary.
S/FA and USAS have specific causes to support, both of which are very important. Farm workers here in the USA and garment workers are deeply exploited in ways students can fight directly, and S/FA and USAS provide spaces to work out student responses to the exploitation and abuse of farm workers and garment workers.
What about American workers who aren’t necessarily farmworkers of garment workers? What about college students with parents who are nurses, autoworkers, postal workers? What about students who, while generally progressive and opposed to exploitation overseas and in the fields, but who require an introduction to how bosses mess with people like their own families? What about those who come to college with class consciousness and who’re aware of how their parents are mistreated at their workplaces, and who’re looking for a space to “act locally” as well as globally? SLAP provides that space.
I’m a Califoria undergrad who organizes with SLAP and the United States Student Association. My campus has a lot of anti-sweatshop and pro-farm worker sentiment, making it a great place for USAS and S/FA to come in and build (and I’d love to see them here.) But I’m also the son of a nurse and a postal worker, the student of unionized lecturers and grad students, and the friend of service workers, and I want to organize in coalition with and in support of them. S/FA and USAS aren’t structured to support that; SLAP is.
Ideally, campuses should have a number of pro-worker, progressive groups, with different strategies and different targets. Ideally, my own campus would have S/FA folks to do solidarity work with CA and FL farmworkers, a USAS chapter to spearhead an anti-sweatshop campaign at our student store, a USSA affiliate to advocate for affordability and accessibility for working-class students and students of color, and a SLAP chapter to organize students to support strong unions and decent wages for campus workers.
As for division, it happens. Look at the national progressive movement, or even just the national labor movement. Some of the division is natural, even necessary – unions organize different jobs, different regions. Some is ideological or methodological – there are differences in how organizing and advocacy should be done. Some are, admittedly, personal – infighting leads to splits. So with students and labor; sometimes it’s based on turf, sometimes it’s based on ideas, and sometimes it’s based on conflict.
In this case, USAS, SFA, and SLAP are divided, ideally, based on methodology; we’re all pro-worker social justice student groups with different emphases. Hopefully, we can move into the future working together; garment workers, farmworkers, union workers, and students all face trouble from a pro-business, anti-worker Congress.