Local 2110 Union Support Staff Rally For Fairer Contract

Upper West Side NY

14 April, 2022

4:22 PM

Description

By Emily Forgash, Columbia Daily Spectator • April 14, 2022, 4:53 PM Members of the Local 2110 Technical, Office, and Professional Workers Union gathered Wednesday on College Walk to picket for a fair contract. Local 2110 covers 3,000 workers in offices around New York City, including secretarial office workers throughout Columbia, who won their first contract with the University in 1985. The most recent contract expired Jan. 31, prompting negotiations between the union and Columbia over a new contract. The past year has seen multiple strikes from different unions pushing to achieve contracts with the University. The strike of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers, which is a separate union than Local 2110, lasted for 10 weeks before the union came to a contractual agreement with Columbia at the end of January. As a result of the strike, some classes taught by graduate students were canceled, while other professors moved instruction online in solidarity. More recently, Union Theological Seminary security guards unionized in March to advocate for better wages and benefits. The protections achieved by the SWC-UAW at the beginning of this year, such as neutral third-party arbitration, were unprecedented in comparison to contracts at Universities around the country. Inspired by the SWC-UAW's success, student worker unions across the United States have also begun striking for more fair contracts. [Read more: Spurred on by SWC-UAW contract, student workers nationwide pursue greater workplace protections] The support staff's previous contract set wage rate increases at 3 percent. Maida Rosenstein, the president of Local 2110, said the University is currently offering a contract that contains cutbacks on health care coverage and a 2.5 percent wage rate increase, which is lower than the current rate of inflation. "This administration just wants to cut back, cut back, cut back at a time when it's harder and harder for workers to make ends meet," Rosenstein said. In a statement, Irina M. Gorman, the University's executive director of labor and employee relations, said that the University has been in ongoing discussions with Local 2110 since January and "remains eager to resume bargaining to reach a fair and reasonable agreement." "In the interim, the current contract has been extended while bargaining continues," Gorman wrote. Shewanna House, a senior student services representative for Columbia's Student Financial Services, said support staff workers are seeking a fair contract in the context of rising inflation rates and the need for accessible health care during the pandemic. "We're not asking to be rich. All we want is to live above water," House said. House said a contract that offers workers a fair wage rate in relation to current inflation rates and access to healthcare without out-of-pocket costs would give House and her colleagues the ability to "survive." "I would be able to take care of my children. My co-workers would be able to go to the doctor," House said. Rosenstein said there is "no excuse" for Columbia's unwillingness to raise wages and provide better healthcare, citing the exponential increase in the University's wealth during the pandemic. The University's endowment soared 32.3 percent in 2021 to $14.35 billion, though this increase lags behind that of many peer institutions. During past negotiations, the University has maintained that endowment size is not directly related to the amount it can pay its employees. "This administration has been callous when it comes to workers," Rosenstein said. House, who has worked at Columbia for 25 years, said the current contract is unfair considering how hard she and her colleagues work to support the University, even during the pandemic. "It's Columbia being a bully to us," House said. Rene Casiano, a Local 2110 Union chairperson who has worked as an office assistant at the Business School for 22 years, said that tensions between the union and the University have peaked during these recent negotiations. "This is my third time being on the negotiating committee and it has never been this acrimonious," Casiano said. Casiano notes that the primary motivation for the rally lies in the contradiction between the massive growth of the University's endowment and the fact that the proposed contract reduces health care benefits and real wages. "It doesn't go to the ethos of the University, which is community," Casiano said. "That's not how you treat the people in your community." Staff Writer Emily Forgash can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @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.