State Senate Minority Leader David Patterson certified last Friday that a majority of Columbia University's teaching and research assistants support forming a union.

Following on the heels of last week's vote by members of Columbia's clerical workers' union, part of Local 2110 UAW--which authorized a strike by nearly 85 percent--the latest union activity represents a new tactic in the graduate students' long fight for unionization.

In 2001, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate students at Columbia University had the right to unionize. The University appealed this decision, and after two years of waiting for a ruling, the Graduate Student Union decided to take a different course of action.

GSEU spent last semester and the beginning of this semester going to graduate students individually, explaining their new tactic of appealing directly to the University and asking students if they wanted to fill out union authorization cards. On Friday morning, they gathered to oversee Bill Batson, Patterson's chief of staff, count the cards, finding that a majority of graduate students support a union, according to the GSEU.

David Carpio, an alumnus of the biology department, explained that by collecting these cards, the graduate students plan to "demonstrate publicly that the majority of TAs support the union." The GSEU plans to ask the administration for voluntary recognition of their right to unionize.

Today, Patterson will present University President Lee Bollinger with a letter indicating that he found there to be a majority of students in support of a union, and that because of this majority he believes the students should be able to unionize.

"The onus will be on the University to respect the voice of the majority; it's hard to ignore a majority," Carpio said.

Dermot Ryan, a TA in the English Department who teaches Contemporary Civilization, explained that it is important for the GSEU to show the University that there is still majority support for unionization, because many of the students who initially supported unionization when GSEU asked the NLRB for union status are no longer students at Columbia.

At noon on Friday, the Student Affairs Committee presented a resolution to the University Senate that asked for recognition of this new majority of pro-union graduate students. This resolution was not part of the executive board's agenda, and the Senate could not recognize the resolution without its going through the executive level first, said Henry Pinkham, Vice President of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Pinkham said that he was unaware of GSEU's plans to take this new approach of appealing directly to the University and first found out about it at the Senate meeting on Friday. "The graduate students didn't come to me. I wish they would have public discussion about this, but instead they [collected the cards] in complete secrecy," Pinkham said. "How did they get students to fill out the cards? They cornered them. We don't even know what information they told students about the union. This is not a democratic way of doing business. A secret ballot [is democratic; they should] not be pressuring people."

Carpio argued that by approaching students, the Graduate Student Union had the opportunity to explain the union process on an individual basis. Carpio explained that at this point students are trying to unionize to gain more control, rather than to receive higher stipends. Similarly, Pinkham said that the main reason the University is against unionization is because it would require the University to negotiate with a third party, making the University's relationship with TAs more inflexible.

Raising student stipends is only one of many reasons why students want to unionize, Carpio said, pointing out that, in fact, the University has recently raised stipends and provided more money for research.

Pinkham concurred, stating that he works diligently to increase stipends for graduate student teachers. He explained that Columbia received a 10-year grant to improve funding from the Mellon Foundation and over that time stipends for teaching assistants have increased. He said that over the past two years the stipends have increased eight percent and seven percent, respectively, and will increase 5.5 percent this year, whereas other employees and professors have only received about a four percent increase.

Pinkham emphasized that Ph.D students are the only University students that do not have to pay tuition and get a stipend from teaching classes. "More importantly, students only teach three of their five years. Yet, their first and last years, when they are not teaching, they still receive a stipend," Pinkham said.

A union, Carpio explained, is a "vehicle to address current and future concerns about housing, teaching loads, research labs, health coverage, and stipends."

Carpio cited the recent changes in graduate students' health policy, saying that although there were some positive changes made, the main problem was that it was negotiated without student input.

Pinkham believes that graduate students already have a vehicle through which to bargain with the University: the Graduate Student Advisory Council. Students "view GSAC as insufficient," Pinkham said, "yet they are refusing to participate in it--that's why it's insufficient."

The graduate students at the meeting on Friday morning seemed determined to form a union because they feel it is the only way they will be able to bargain effectively with the University. "After a certain time, if the University doesn't respond, we'll take it from there. But we will get a union here. We are ready for a union," Ryan said.

When asked why some teaching and research assistants do not support the effort to unionize, Ryan explained that usually people are not opposed, but are instead undecided. "Some students are afraid of the ramifications [of unionizing], particularly international students or those who work closely with their adviser. But, we are still tracking down students to get more support."

Sheng Weng, a Chinese student and a RA in the physics department, thinks that most international students maintain a different attitude towards unionizing. "In China," Weng explained, "students don't usually have this type of political freedom" to challenge an institution and are therefore more skeptical about unionizing.

Weng, one of the students who helped to collect unionization cards, said that he only recently became pro-union. Weng explained that he became pro-union because he thought it was wrong for the University not to recognize TAs and RAs as workers and because he believes that a union can better pressure the University to solve international students' problems with receiving visas. Weng believes that the "University can actually do something about the visa problems."

Pinkham, on the other hand, pointed out that the University accepts graduate students with the aim of educating them, not employing them. "Nowhere on the application does it ask students if they can teach. Graduate students are primarily students and they are TAs and RAs basically to give training for their degree. Student teaching started as a mechanism to bring financial support to graduate students, like work study for undergraduates," he said.

On the issue of student visas, Pinkham explained that "visas are not controlled by Columbia University or unions; it is a State Department issue." He described how Columbia lobbies individually for students and in his opinion, many students are grateful for Columbia's efforts and support.

Pinkham also pointed out that he does not want to seem like the one fighting against rights for students, and that the administration should not be portrayed in that way either. "I want our graduate students to be happy at Columbia-that is the only way we can compete with other graduate schools. I am fighting my hardest to get higher stipends and other improvements."

Pinkham was unable to predict how Bollinger will reach to the students' new tactics. He does believe, however, that Bollinger will explain to Patterson the University's side of the unionization issue.

Ryan said that the GSEU was optimistic that Bollinger would recognize a graduate student union when he arrived at Columbia since there had been one at the University of Michigan, where he previously served as president. "Bollinger worked successfully with the union at U. Mich. The TAs at the University of Michigan even wrote a letter to Bollinger when he came to Columbia urging him to change Columbia and create a union," said Ryan.

Pinkham thinks that the GSEU should wait to find out the Supreme Court verdict on the University's appeal. "We are in the middle of another process--let's finish this process," he said. Pinkham added that he feels bad that the court is taking so long to release a decision, but that he thinks students must recognize that the University has the legal right to appeal and that they should wait for the court's decision.

Ryan said that the graduate students would continue to fight for a union even if the current appeal to the University is unsuccessful.