With Bargaining Resuming, Reformed Student-Worker Union Opens New Strike Authorization Vote

Upper West Side NY

16 September, 2021

11:22 AM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY TALIA ABRAHAMSON SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 In a gamble to win contract concessions, the graduate and undergraduate members of Student Workers of Columbia are holding a vote from Sept. 15 to Sept. 27 to determine whether or not to withhold their labor. The strike authorization vote sets up what would be the union's fifth strike during a two-decades-long campaign for its first labor contract. Most recently, last spring, SWC, then called the Graduate Workers of Columbia, launched an unsuccessful strike and rejected a tentative contract from the University for not delivering on enough demands. But, with the combination of a summer of internal reform, inflammatory University policies for the return to campus, and pro-labor national developments, the Bargaining Committee thinks this time will be different. "We have the best conditions that any union at Columbia ever had in terms of negotiation," Tristan du Puy, a Bargaining Committee member and third-year doctoral student in sustainable development said. If there is two-thirds majority support for the authorization vote after the voting period, then SWC's Bargaining Committee can use the invocation of a strike as leverage during bargaining discussions. A successful strike authorization vote does not immediately trigger a strike and, according to the union's bylaws, SWC members can determine when and whether or not to begin or end a strike. The unit voted overwhelmingly to authorize last spring's strike. Of 1,910 card-carrying members who cast ballots, 96 percent voted yes. Although the strike authorization vote was in March 2020, the unit did not initiate the strike until one year later. Now that classes have resumed on campus for the 2021-2022 academic year, a strike has the potential to be even more disruptive. Even so, the Bargaining Committee reports that it has received even greater support from professors and students due to the University's scramble during the pandemic to find qualified teaching assistants, most of whom are graduate and undergraduate student workers. Becca Roskill, SEAS '22 is an undergraduate teaching assistant in the computer science department and a Bargaining Committee member. Due to the University's cost-saving measure to block a new fall cohort of doctoral students for most humanities and social sciences departments, the effects of this labor shortage will be felt even more strongly in the coming years. "Students, TAs, preceptors, professors––everyone is being extremely adversely affected by these labor shortages, and it's obvious to students," Roskill said. "It's a big stress on everyone, but often a disproportionate share of that burden is falling on the TAs. We're the ones who are grading assignments and accommodating more students in office hours and recitations, and so on, and many people are realizing this." Roskill is a new Bargaining Committee member, and Du Puy is one of two members who were elected to continue their roles from last year. Following months of internal tension last year, all 10 Bargaining Committee members resigned in May. SWC engaged in sweeping reforms and created unit bylaws, with the intention of adding more transparency to the bargaining and decision-making process. SWC developed working groups to better distribute workloads, one of which is the strike working group, which worked all summer. At the same time, no bargaining sessions took place before the academic year began. A stalemate over bargaining session accessibility––with the University breaking from its precedent to attempt a cap on the number of spectators and SWC pointing to its new referendum that mandates completely open sessions––hindered attempts at negotiations. For that reason, a special August bargaining session on changes to pay schedules was canceled. On July 26, Vice President of Human Resources Daniel Driscoll, who is also a member of the University's bargaining committee, announced that at the start of classes, some students on nine-month appointments would receive a lump sum worth $8,000 less than usual. This money would instead be dispersed on a semi-monthly schedule, in order to standardize the way money is distributed to student workers. While the University said the change was anticipating the union's need for uniformity, student workers denounced the policy and their notification of it on such short notice. The Bargaining Committee views the timing as an anti-union tactic to diminish members' savings and therefore financial longevity in the possible event of a strike. A group of student workers delivered a petition to Driscoll with over 1,100 signatures, demanding open bargaining on the topic and a reversal of the policy. The University gave the SWC Bargaining Committee just a day's notice about its willingness to participate in an open bargaining session, which took place on Sept. 14. Despite that, 100 student workers showed up for the session, which, according to Roskill, is a sign of encouragement for the union. "This is what's going to build our power at the table," Roskill said. "This is what's going to affect what we can get in this contract. It bodes really well in terms of having a strong and energized strike so that we can hopefully win these things as soon as possible." During the bargaining meeting, the sides discussed COVID-19 workplace protections for student workers and the University's reason for not giving student workers raises. No formal plans or proposals were presented. The priority of proposals still to be debated include union recognition; neutral, third-party arbitration; wages and compensation; and healthcare. The union has been negotiating the contract for more than two years, but SWC is encouraged by current external trends in the labor movement. After announcing a strike authorization vote of its own, the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers won a form of third-party arbitration during negotiations, an unreached demand that was central to the downfall of SWC's spring tentative agreement. The Biden administration is instituting a pro-labor National Labor Relations Board, as opposed to former president Donald Trump's board, which discouraged graduate student union activity. "We're fighting for a Columbia where resources are actually going toward teaching and toward research and toward learning," Roskill said. "That's a really transformative vision from the way that Columbia is currently acting. It's going to require a real force of nature to get Columbia to change the way that it behaves as an institution. Workers' collective action is one of the best tools that we actually have to achieve this." Deputy news editor Talia Abrahamson can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter at @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.