About efforts of Graduate Students at Columbia to unionize

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda () panix com>
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 08:16:57 -0400 (EDT)
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Ronda Hauben <ronda () panix com>
Subject: About efforts of Graduate Students at Columbia to unionize


Hi Dave, Graduate students at Columbia and elsewhere are continuing to
try to unionize - here is an article from the Columbia Spectator about
this that I thought IP folks would find of interest:

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University Unions Meeting Focuses on Solidarity, GSEU
By Andrew Tolve
Spectator Staff Writer

April 06, 2005

Columbia University union leaders, employees, and students gathered a
week ago today in Lerner Hall for a forum on workers. rights and union
solidarity within the university community.

The event, which was organized by the Student-Labor Action Project,
featured representatives from three of the 14 labor unions on campus,
as well as a delegate for the Graduate Students Employees United. The
speakers reviewed Columbia.s turbulent past relationships with unions
and addressed a variety of current labor concerns, including the
graduate students. ongoing efforts to gain union representation. No
representatives from the University administration attended.

.This University has two faces.the one they show the public, the
prestigious institution, and the other one they show their workers,.
Maida Rosenstein, president of local clerical workers union UAW 2110,
said to the roughly 50 people in attendance. She characterized the
latter face as a .reign of terror. that has routinely included pay
discrimination and worker maltreatment for over 25 years.

Victor Rivera, president of SEIU SSA 693, a lab technicians union,
noted a similar duplicity on the University.s part. When he was first
hired to work for a .prestigious institution. like Columbia, he said,
he was honored. But he was soon appalled by the routine exploitation
of workers he found around him.

"This is shameful to the institution," added Thania Sanchez, the
delegate for GSEU, referring both to Columbia's treatment of its
workers and the administration's refusal to acknowledge a unionized
body of graduate students. "We need to send the message to the
University that their behavior is appalling."

Against these charges of employer malfeasance, Rosenstein, Rivera, and
Donald Murphy, the delegate for SEIU 1199, a library services
union, celebrated their unions' efforts to protect workers' rights on
campus and stressed the need for further unity among University
workers. As it stands now, most of the unions are physically isolated,
and their contracts with the University expire at different dates,
making large-scale, coordinated strikes more difficult.

"We need solidarity with our fellow brothers and sisters," Murphy
said.

And now would be a good time for increased coordination, they said.
GSEU is planning a strike for the week of April 18, and Trade Workers
Union 241, which covers facilities maintenance workers, is in the
midst of contract negotiations with Columbia. The GSEU strike will
come a year after its month-long strike for recognition last April, an
event that saw some expression of inter-union unity; UAW 2110 partook
in a day-long sympathy strike for the GSEU cause. But as David Wolach,
a GSEU organizer in the audience, put it, the more the .our cause is
your cause. philosophy is embraced, the more likely GSEU and other
unions will succeed.

"The reason this talk tonight was so important is because Columbia
University has been bargaining upon bad faith amongst the unions on
campus," Wolach said in an interview after the forum had concluded.
"Only by being together will we compel the University to do what's in
its best interest and to bargain with its employees."

Before the evening came to a close, several University employees in
attendance voiced their concern that unions, while glossy on the
surface, are not offering their workers much protection in the face of
"total dis-empowerment," to use the words of Ronda Hauben, a library
assistant in Lehman.

"We have no democratic rights going on," Hauben said. "What's going on
here is that people are scared and powerless."

Later, an undergraduate in the audience asked how Columbia students
could aid the unions. cause. Sanchez, the GSEU representative,
suggested standing on picket lines during the coming strike, wearing
buttons as an expression of support, or asking professors to move
classes off campus in respect for the picket lines.

"Anything to help," Sanchez said. "We're not giving up. We're going to
fight until we get recognized.'



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