NYU Graduate Student Organizing Committee strikes

Ariel Schwartz Assistant News Editor

New York University’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee started to strike on Wednesday, Nov. 9. This graduate student union is part of a local branch of the United Auto Workers, which includes university, museum, and publishing employees.

According to CBS News, close to 500 graduate assistants assembled on Wednesday morning in front of NYU’s Bobst Library at Washington Square. Picketing will continue five days a week. From Mondays to Thursdays, students plan to picket from 8 a.m. until 5:15 p.m., and picket lines will be held on Fridays until lunch so that the organization can hold meetings in the afternoon.

The strike is campus-wide, and includes buildings that do not have picketers. If NYU docks strikers’ pay, the union will provide strike benefits of $200 per week.

The union was created in 2001 in order to benefit graduate student teachers, and was the first recognized graduate employee union at a private university. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that a graduate student union was lawful in 2000, which overruled years of precedent. As a result of the union contract, graduate assistants received benefits including fully paid tuition and fees, paid sick leave, paid holidays, and paid training.

However, NYU administrators stated this year that they would no longer recognize the union due to changes in the National Labor Relations Board, which no longer guarantees graduate assistants the right to unionize.

This past August, NYU offered to continue negotiations for benefits and stipends with the union, but without the protection of a third-party grievances procedure. Also, NYU administrators said that participation in the union for graduate students had to be voluntary. The union rejected this offer.
In an all-campus e-mail sent to NYU on Aug. 5, Executive Vice President Jacob Lew and Provost David McLaughlin wrote, “Circumstances have placed our University, uniquely among private universities, at the forefront of those facing the efforts of organized labor to unionize graduate assistants, thereby obliging us to reconsider the traditional definitions of the words ‘student’ and ‘employee,’ and to recast the relationship between the University and it graduate students.”

This e-mail was sent at the end of the last summer session of classes at NYU, during which there was a demonstration for the graduate student union outside the Kimmel Center for University Life at NYU.
Lew and McLaughlin continued, “After extensive conversation and study throughout our community and focused consideration of the balance of principles involved in this issue, we are announcing today that the University will not negotiate a new contract with the [union] and that we will implement the financial aid benefits and other proposals described in our June 16 memorandum to the NYU community, including some additions and revisions based upon comments.”

Now, hundreds of professors in favor of the strike are requesting off-campus space in which to hold their classes. The relocation sites will possibly include other local universities, movie theaters, and union halls. Many smaller classes will be relocated to professors’ apartments. Professors not observing the strike will hold classes in their normal locations.

Not all professors support the strike. “Graduate students are not career employees, but rather are apprentices who are developing skills…If a prospective student does not like the compensation package NYU offers, he or she is completely free to enroll at another university,” wrote NYU Professor of Economics Mark Gertler on the NYU Office of the Provost website.

While NYU is no longer legally bound to recognize the union, many students believe that the University has a moral obligation to do so. Graduate Assistant Sarah Kaufman wrote on NYUnews.com, “The issue is not whether I want a ‘better deal.’ I want the right that most workers in the United States have—to unionize and have rights as a laborer to negotiate.”

Additional reporting by Anita Varma, Senior Editor