NEWS & LETTERS, December 2009
Graduate student workers win strike
Champaign-Urbana, Ill.--My partner is a member of the G.E.O. (Graduate Employees' Organization, IFT-AFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO) and we walked the picket line today (Monday, Nov. 16) on the first day of their unprecedented strike. Graduate student Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Graduate Assistants (GAs) went on strike after months of dead-end shady bargaining by the university administration.
Over half a year of attempts at negotiation and more than three months of grad students working without a contract came to a head last weekend when the university failed to include tuition waiver protection language in the contract-to-be. The G.E.O. had already conceded a lot of ground by agreeing to far less than a living wage for all TAs and GAs, which was their original demand. The university in turn would not even include vague language that protects tuition waivers, which are the lifeline of most TAs and GAs.
Tuition waivers are seen by a large majority of the membership to be the most important issue facing graduate student workers. It is common practice at public universities in the U.S. to waive tuition in return for teaching undergraduates or other essential labor while a student is in a graduate program. But with lowered state funding and the corporatization of higher education, administrators are always looking for new streams of revenue. Charging grad students with tuition would cannibalize whole departments, and would result in higher education being available only to the privileged. The university bargaining team knows that if the G.E.O. wins explicit language defending tuition waivers in their contract, it would be harder to take their rights away piecemeal.
During this strike, the university should see very clearly that graduate students are essential to running the campus. Withholding labor will hopefully be disruptive enough and threatening enough to make the university realize that they can't pick on any graduate students without a response from all.
UPDATE: The G.E.O. won! On the second day of the strike, the university conceded to our last demand: tuition waiver protection. This strike and the gains from it set a precedent in labor struggles in higher education. It lets administrations know that if they try to erode access to higher education, there will be a fight. In addition the G.E.O. secured protection from furloughs and six weeks parental leave. Both wins have implications for other unions on campus that will be fighting for the same rights in their upcoming negotiations. But perhaps the most important lesson for grad students, administrators, and undergraduates is that organized labor works. After a day and a half of 1,000 TAs and GAs picketing in the rain, grad students saw their hard work pay off in the form of real benefits in their contract that could only have been won through the efforts of determined, united workers!
--Graduate student and supporter
Cal. students' strike
Over 1,500 University of California at Berkeley students, teachers and employees gathered on Sproul Plaza Nov. 19 to kick off a three-day strike in response to lay-offs, furloughs and a 32% tuition fee hike. Many workers are former U.C. students who fear their children will be priced out of a U.C. education. The following day demonstrators brought bags filled with campus trash to dump at the main entrance of Califonia Hall where Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's office is located. Between chants of "Trash outside, trash inside," protesters asked who would pick up the trash when all the custodians are laid off. On Nov. 20 students occupied Wheeler Hall as part of the ongoing actions.
--David M'Oto
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