GSEU to Vote on Possible Strike

GSEU to Vote on Possible Strike: CU Grad Students Vote Today, Tomorrow on Decision to Strike for Indefinite Time

by Rebecca Aronauer

Columbia Daily Spectator

April 14, 2004

The Graduate Student Employees United will vote today and tomorrow on a plan to strike against the University for an indefinite period of time.

The election comes less than three weeks after State Senate Majority Leader David A. Paterson confirmed that a majority of teaching and research assistants had filled out union authorization cards. Only teaching assistants and research assistants who are members of the GSEU are eligible to participate in the vote, which will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. in various locations on the Morningside and Health Science Campuses. If the GSEU receives a two-thirds majority in the vote, it will become the first Ivy League group to strike indefinitely.

"We're prepared to take this through all the way to the end of the semester," said David Carpio, a representative of the GSEU/United Auto Workers.

More than two years ago, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Columbia graduate students and a small group of undergraduates working on research projects were University employees and therefore entitled to union representation. Those student-employees voted on the unionization issue in March 2002, but the outcome of that vote is still unknown. Before those votes were counted, the University appealed the NLRB's ruling; the board has not yet revisited the GSEU case.

In addition to prompting this year's vote to strike, Columbia's appeal to the NLRB led to a strike in May 2002 and a rally last April.

"We're striking because it's been two years since a democratically held election in which the University hijacked the ballots and is refusing to allow them to be counted," Carpio said.

Carpio estimated that 75 percent of GSEU members will vote in favor of striking. If the GSEU gets that percentage and does strike, it will demand that the University drop the NLRB appeal and count the ballots from 2002, or sanction a neutral party to count official union authorization cards, as Paterson did last month.

The administration learned about the GSEU's vote from its Web site and from rumors. The GSEU last contacted the University in a March 30 letter from Paterson to University President Lee Bollinger in which Paterson wrote, "I propose that the parties agree to abide by the results of a card count to be conducted by a neutral party no later than April 2, 2004." But Bollinger never responded to that letter, GSEU members said.

Key administrative officials were unaware as of yesterday that the strike would be indefinite. However, no firm plans have yet been made. Grades from TAs will be given to professors, but as of right now, there is no talk of hiring graders.

"Of course, we're going to make very serious contingency plans now," said Henry Pinkham, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

University Provost Alan Brinkley said that Columbia will not rescind its appeal to the NLRB or allow a third party to count union authorization cards no matter how long the strike lasts.

"The NLRB has been very slow and we're just as unhappy about that as the students," Brinkley said.

But resistance to the graduate student union is not limited to administrators. Many graduate students oppose unionization themselves. Yet most anti-union graduate students are not eligible for this week's vote because they are not members of the GSEU, and the opposition organization, Graduate Students Against Unionization, has been much less active in fighting against unionization since 2002.

Not all graduate students are displeased with their relationship to Columbia. Some said that they did not think a union was necessary or indicated they believe unions result in faulty contracts. Neil Sarkar, a biology graduate student at the Health Science campus who objected to the GSEU's petition practices, said in an e-mail, "Frankly, people don't like being cornered in their labs late at night by people gesticulating about unionization."

Sarkar also questioned the benefits of unionization to students on the Health Science campus.

"Unionization, I fear, would create a gulf between the two campuses and result in isolating the folks up here at the Medical Campus," he wrote.

Like many administrators, graduate students who are not part of the GSEU have said that they feel alienated by the GSEU. Giovanni Ruffini, a history graduate student, is not a TA, RA, or a member of the GSEU. Disqualified from today and tomorrow's vote on two counts, Ruffini said, "It's actually more or less impossible for someone in my position to know [what] the GSEU is doing."

But Ruffini believes that the GSEU's isolation has given them a false sense of security. "The people who want to teach [during the strike] will be perfectly able to do so," he said.