Web Update
GSEU Announces "Strike Hiatus"
By Morgan Sellers
Spectator Staff Writer
May 16, 2004
Columbia Spectator

Graduate Student Employees United announced Sunday that it is calling off its strike for union recognition at Columbia University at the request of City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and New York State Senate Minority Leader David Paterson.

According to David Carpio, a former graduate student at Columbia and a GSEU spokesperson, the "strike hiatus" was prompted by a letter from Miller and Paterson last week that called upon representatives from GSEU and University President Lee Bollinger to sit down with them and discuss possible resolutions to the conflict. The letter also requested that GSEU refrain from disrupting this week's graduation ceremonies or holding a picket line as a "sign of good faith," Carpio said.

While a GSEU press release Sunday called the end of the strike a "hiatus," Carpio said that the strike had ended for the semester "with the understanding that if the university proves intransigent ... we might go on strike again sometime in the next academic year."

There has been no communication between the administration and GSEU since before the strike vote on April 14 and 15, and representatives from GSEU have not met with University administrators in at least two years.

Carpio said that GSEU has not yet heard a response from the administration to Paterson and Miller's request that they meet. "Hopefully President Bollinger will agree to sit down and meet with us," he added. Provost Alan Brinkley has previously stated that the university would be willing to talk with GSEU if approached.

After receiving the letter from Paterson and Miller last week, the request was put to a vote at a GSEU membership meeting last Friday afternoon. "We decided that this was a good opportunity to possibly develop a resolution to this issue," Carpio said. "It's always good to get big politicians ... on board with our issues."

While he declined to estimate the number of GSEU members present at the meeting, he said that the vote was unanimous in favor of ending the strike.

The strike began exactly four weeks ago in response to Columbia's refusal to withdraw its 2002 appeal of an NLRB ruling that would have granted teaching and research assistants the status of workers and the right to unionize, and was the first open-ended graduate student unionization strike in the Ivy League.