Call to Support Yale/Columbia Graduate Student Strike
April 4, 2005
The National Tertiary Education Union has been contacted to provide support for strike action being taken by the Graduate Employees and Students Organisation (GESO) at Yale University and Graduate Student Employees United (GSEU) at Columbia University.
Background
On July 13, 2004, George W. Bush’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) continued its assault on workers’ rights by ruling 3-2, along party lines, that graduate teachers’ right to form a union is not protected under US labor law. The two Democrats on the Board objected strenuously, calling this ruling, “woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality.” This decision reversed a 4-year-old unanimous NLRB decision that gave graduate teachers the right to bargain collectively.
Graduate teachers at Yale together with graduate teachers at Columbia University are fighting back against this ruling. Refusing to cede their internationally recognized human right to form unions, these graduate teachers are demanding that their universities voluntarily recognize them outside of US labor law, which has become more anti-worker under the Bush administration. Teaching assistants from Yale and Columbia will stage the first ever joint strike in the Ivy League from April 18-22 2005.
Each day of the strike will focus on a different theme. Day 1, Yale and Columbia TA’s strike for recognition. Day 2, Local Solidarity Day—in which other unions at Yale and Columbia join the strikers for solidarity actions. Day 3, Ivy League Strike March in NYC—attended by UNITE HERE International Presidents Bruce Raynor, John Wilhelm and union members from across the Northeast. Day 4, Labor on Campus Day—solidarity actions at unionized campuses across the country. Day 5, International Solidarity Day—global solidarity actions.
GESO has been organizing for 15 years with the organizing coming to a head this year. We have demonstrated strong (*gt;60% membership) among our bargaining unit. We have forged an alliance with the GSEU (UAW), the union for graduate teachers at Columbia, and GET-UP (AFT), the union for TA’s at the University of Pennsylvania. To coordinate the Labor on Campus day of the strike, we have been building a coalition with other graduate teacher unions that are affiliated with the UAW, AFT, UE, AAUP, and CWA. In February, we published a report on gender and racial diversity in the Ivy League which shows that the faculty is stratified by race and gender with women and people of color being stuck in lower-paid jobs. This is going to be a major theme in the strike. Almost all student unions in foreign countries have anti-racism campaigns.
In last few years, Yale’s administration has begun reaching out to other countries in order to create a “global university.” They have especially focused on China, India, S. Korea and Latin America. Yale has, in the past, been a training ground for future US heads of state, like George Bush. The emphasis on globalizing Yale means that they are trying to position themselves to train not only US leaders, but international ones as well.
Graduate Student Union Issues Primer
GESO, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, and GSEU, Graduate Student Employees United, are primarily focused on insuring that higher education is accessible to as many people as possible. The issues for which we fight affect all of us, but they disproportionately affect international scholars, people of color and women.
Concretely, this means:
- Fighting for a living wage for our members. Without a living wage, many lower income students cannot afford to attend graduate school. This is especially critical for married international students, who, because of US labor law, are the sole source of financial support for their families.
- Fighting for affordable healthcare for ourselves and our families.
- Fighting for Visa Reform to enable international students to travel to and from their home countries more easily.
- Fighting against racism, sexism and discrimination of all sorts. See our most recent report on women and minority hiring in Ivy League Universities (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and etc.) http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/reports/Ivy.pdf.
In October 2003, GESO endorsed its first platform http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/reports/GESO-Platform.pdf.
For further information contact:
Mark Probst on (03) 9254 1910 or at mprobst@nteu.org.au
Alex Schlotzer on (03) 9254 1910 or at aschlotzer@nteu.org.au
Visit GESO online at http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/
Visit GSEU online at http://www.2110uaw.org/gseu/