BY JOHN K. WILSON
In a major victory for graduate student employees, Columbia University has agreed to a framework to recognize the Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW (GWC-UAW) and the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW (CPW-UAW) and begin good-faith contract negotiations with the UAW.
The Framework states that an agreement “must not infringe upon the integrity of Columbia’s academic decision-making or Columbia’s exclusive right to manage the institution consistent with its educational and research mission.” Another part of the agreement states that “elected student councils, associations and societies (such as the Postdoctoral Society) will continue to serve as representatives of their constituencies on academic and governance issues.”
Of course, graduate student employees are both students and employees, and it’s good to see an administration finally understand the incredibly obvious concept of dual identity. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that Columbia understands the concept of a strike threat and the bad PR that results from it. Like the West Virginia teachers, Columbia’s graduate students faced a political climate under the Trump Administration’s NLRB that is irredeemably hostile to the right to organize. But like those teachers, they recognized that the power to organize and the power to strike can prevail over powerful institutions.
The whole “framework” is complete nonsense. So the management, before agreeing to negotiate, is demanding that the union won’t take over their job of managing the academic corporation. While the idea of having a union replace the administration sounds like a fascinating proposal now that you mention it, nobody really considered that a realistic negotiating point. Of course, Columbia already had a foolproof way to avoid giving up their management powers, which is by not agreeing to do anything that does that. But apparently the “framework” is the academic fig leaf Columbia’s administration needed to do what they should have done a long time ago, and that’s recognizing the rights of academic workers to form a union, even if those workers also happen to be students.
Let’s hope that other universities that claim to be the supreme defenders of rights (we’re looking at you, University of Chicago) will now finally recognize the rights of their students to organize, even if they need a silly framework as an excuse to do what’s morally right.
The framework is a lousy deal for Graduate Workers. We cannot give up our right to strike. We have never been stronger with a strike pending and we should call Columbia’s bluff that this is a ‘final offer’. Once they realise we’re serious about still going on strike, they will come back with a better offer without a no-strike clause.
The other lesson in this is to never let union bureaucrats negotiate on your behalf. Graduate workers must speak for ourselves.
As a former graduate worker of Columbia from an era before the Graduate Workers of Columbia-Local 2110 UAW formed, and an academic worker close to this struggle (I am the founding member of the Barnard Contingent Faculty-Local 2110 UAW who was fired alongside several colleagues in the wake of the first contract and whose arbitration has been dragged out so that it is still ongoing a year and a half later), I would point readers to two OpEds in the Columbia Spectator which clarify problems with the Columbia-UAW framework:
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/main/2018/11/22/after-uaws-betrayal-graduate-workers-must-vote-no/
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2018/11/22/the-cu-uaw-framework-is-a-victory-for-bollinger-2/
To these critiques—which focus on higher-ups in the UAW having held off-the-record negotiations with the Columbia administration without the memberships’ or even bargaining committees’ knowledge, and a year and a half “no strike” clause—I would add that one of the strategies here is to leverage the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers, whose bargaining committee quickly agreed to the framework, to pressure the GWC to agree:
“The framework is only valid through Nov. 28. If the union accepts it, Columbia must promptly withdraw its request for review in the postdoctoral case pending before the NLRB and recognize both units.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/20/columbia-says-its-open-collective-bargaining-its-graduate-student-union-some-caveats?
Divide and conquer, as well as lump and conquer, anti-labor tactics are alive and well; never have we been more in need of unions built on engaged and transparent democratic processes and solidarity.
I support those GWC who elect to resist, by voting no on, a framework crafted by management of the university and management of the union, rather than by the union membership and its democratically elected bargaining committee.