TA's at Columbia U. Stage 1-Day Walkout

By Scott Smallwood

Chronicle of Higher Education

April 30, 2002

 

Teaching and research assistants at Columbia University walked off the job Monday, hoping to pressure the administration to drop its legal challenge to their unionization effort.

At the strike's peak, about 400 to 500 picketers demonstrated in front of the university gates. Meanwhile, members of Columbia's clerical union held a sympathy strike in support of the Graduate Student Employees United, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers.

Virgil Renzulli, a university spokesman, said that the strike hadn't caused any disruptions and that he wasn't sure how many of the 800 clerical workers in the union had stayed home.

Columbia graduate assistants voted in March on whether to unionize, but the ballots have been sealed because the university has appealed a decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board to the full board, in Washington. Legal briefs in that case, as well as a similar one involving Brown University, are due May 20.

The union wants Columbia to drop the appeal and allow the votes to be counted. "The appeal is really an attempt to break our union and to put a stop to the movement," said Kimberly Phillips-Fein, a union leader and history Ph.D. student.

In a statement last week, Jonathan R. Cole, Columbia's provost, said the walkout "should finally lay to rest UAW Local 2110's claims ... that the union would only use strikes as a weapon of last resort and that the unionization of graduate students would not adversely affect the academic environment of the university."

Ms. Phillips-Fein responded, "What really threatens education at Columbia is having classes taught by teaching assistants who aren't paid a living wage."