Union

Barnard College was found guilty of violating its collective bargaining committee when it failed to consider assigning, in good faith, a long-term faculty member an additional section of classes, thereby slashing their compensation by thousands and disqualifying them of healthcare, an independent arbitrator ruled last Tuesday.

The Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers isn’t just a union for graduate students: Undergraduate course assistants, teaching assistants, and graders are also welcome in the bargaining unit. In order to better represent themselves, organizers have recently pushed to get undergrads more involved in the union through town hall organization and direct outreach. Two of my undergrad coworkers were even ready to pledge support and join the organizing committee.

With union elections approaching at the end of the month, the Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers are faced with a pressing debate: Barnard undergraduate teaching assistants—many of whom teach courses within Columbia departments—still cannot participate in or vote on union decisions.

Barnard violated its collective bargaining contract with the Barnard Contingent Faculty Union when it did not pay unionized adjunct faculty stipends for teaching First Year Seminar courses, an independent arbitrator ruled. Barnard will have to reimburse all First-Year Seminar stipends—$2,000 per section to nearly a dozen adjuncts—from 2017 through 2019 within the next thirty days.

On Feb. 6 and 7, members of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers came together at the ballot box. We elected new members of our Bargaining Committee and voted overwhelmingly in support of two provisions to ensure open and transparent bargaining between our union and the Columbia management. The referenda were a precedent-setting victory for our union members. We sought to learn from previous negative experiences in other academic unions, when key aspects of negotiations with employers took place over the summer while large numbers of workers were not on campus. The practice was especially problematic in the case of the University of California’s graduate workers, whose most recent contract—by most indications a losing and regressive one—was negotiated and voted on during the summer of 2018.

Last month, teaching and research assistants across campus accomplished what few thought we could: Our union began collective bargaining with Columbia University. Like most first contract negotiations, it’s been a slow process. Our Bargaining Committee articulated our goals—which were ratified by our membership with 91 percent of the vote—in our first bargaining session with the University on Feb. 25. Both parties agreed to meet again on March 6, only to have Columbia cancel at the last minute.

Provost John Coatsworth will be stepping down from his position as Columbia’s chief academic officer in June after eight years in the role, University President Lee Bollinger announced Thursday morning.

With negotiations between Graduate Workers of Columbia and the administration set to begin by the end of the month, a new wave of bargaining committee members is looking to disrupt the traditional bargaining process, intending to leverage the union’s seat at the table to throw support behind issues such as climate change, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and anti-gentrification campaigns.

For two years, the self-appointed graduate student union has struggled to gain recognition at Columbia University, while the bulk of the graduate student body is content to await the results of the University's appeal to the National Labor Relations Board and the ultimate ballot count.

As the weather begins to warm, students flocking to bask on the sunny steps should recall that this time last year, the quad was filled with the rallying cries of many of Columbia's graduate students. This year, however, the silence is deafening. The decision by Graduate Student Employees United not to strike is troubling and indicates that the Columbia administration's anti-union tactics are indeed working.