What the Strike Will Look Like

by Ady Barkan

Columbia Daily Spectator

April 14, 2004

As you read this, Columbia University graduate students are deciding whether or not they will strike. Today and tomorrow, members of the Graduate Student Employees Union will vote on a proposal that, starting Monday, could cancel classes until the University administration agrees to collective bargaining. Union leaders are highly optimistic that the proposal will pass.

"We are now taking this to the next level," said Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110, which represents clerical workers at Columbia and is organizing GSEU. Because the administration has chosen not to respond to the union's recent demonstration of majority support--through the collection of over 1000 union cards--GSEU says it has no choice but to force the issue.

Administrators have commented only tersely on the possibility of a strike. Presumably, they're hoping that graduate students will vote to keep working, and the whole storm will blow over. But that's not very likely. Rather, Friday morning will herald the beginning of a hectic and tense 72 hours for the administration. Should it acquiesce, sit down at the bargaining table with union leaders, and begin the process of contract negotiations? Or should it let the graduate students walk out and try to win the public relations battle that is sure to follow? The University may not be able to afford the negative national media attention that a strike would bring--but it would also be loathe to budget the increases in pay that unionized graduate students would demand.

What, exactly, would a graduate student strike look like? A large portion of Core classes--particularly University Writing, Art Hum, and Music Hum--along with most lecture sections would be cancelled indefinitely. Problem sets from dozens of lectures would go un-graded. Picketers would line the University gates. Some faculty, the union hopes, would move classes off-campus. And the press would have a field day.

Union leaders say they're willing to strike until the administration sits down to bargain. Could it last more than a week? Perhaps. As finals approach and seniors look toward graduation, pressure will increase on both sides to reach an agreement.

The graduate students, of course, want better pay. The minimum stipend is currently $17,044 a year, which is $4,000 less than teaching assistants at Harvard, but about the same as those at Princeton. The cost of living in NYC is, of course, significantly higher than in rural New Jersey. Secondly, they want better health coverage. But most important, I think, they want what generations of workers before them have wanted: representation and a voice.

The most important union leader in the country came on campus yesterday to urge the administration to allow the graduate students to unionize. "When it comes to workers' rights and social justice, Columbia University is saying to these [research and teaching assistants], 'not in my back yard, never in my back yard,'" said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. "This is no time for Columbia University to deploy situational values."

As with most political battles, the success or failure of a GSEU strike would depend largely on which side rallies more public support. The opinions of undergraduates and faculty will go a long way towards deciding whether graduate student demands are met. If College students support GSEU--by joining the picket lines, walking out of classes, writing e-mails and making phone calls to the administration--then the strike will be tenable. If undergrads view the graduate students as unappreciative (they pay no tuition) and denounce the cancellation of classes, the strike will be of an entirely different character.

Professors will play a vital role as well. Will they hold classes off campus (as some did in the 1997 clerical workers' strike) as an expression of solidarity? Will they exert behind-the-scene pressure on their students to return to work or on the administration to allow for a formal vote on unionization?

The union understands the importance of public support. "The message we want to get out there," said Felicity Palmer, a fourth-year graduate student in the English department and a member of the union organizing, "is that this is something the administration is responsible for, and that the administration could clear up at any point. We have a majority, we have the moral high ground at this point."

In its public statements and National Labor Relations Board appeals, the administration has argued that although graduate students provide an important service to the University, they are students, not workers. And many people to whom I've spoken--faculty and graduate students alike--share that sentiment. Moreover, many graduate students at Columbia believe they are treated well. They think they are here for training and know that they'll be well compensated in the near future. Of course, doctoral candidates in comparative literature have a less lucrative future than those in economics--and I presume that support for the strike will come mainly from humanities students and opposition to it from scientists.

If a graduate student strike cripples the campus, however, the administration will be hard-pressed to explain why these providers of an obviously essential service don't have a right to collective bargaining if they want it.

Henry Pinkham, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, has argued that a union would disrupt the relationship between faculty and students. But it's an argument that even President Bollinger doesn't subscribe to. He was president of the University of Michigan when graduate students formed a union there, and he has said that faculty-graduate student relations did not suffer as a result. A Chronicle of Higher Education study four years ago found that 90 percent of faculty at schools with graduate student unions "said collective bargaining does not inhibit their ability to advise their graduate students." That's pretty compelling evidence.

Furthermore, I think administrators will be handicapped by their own politics. President Bollinger is an outspoken progressive. Provost Alan Brinkley, who has written extensively on liberalism, is as familiar as anyone with the history of labor struggles in this country. Just after his appointment to provost was announced last year, Brinkley responded to my cheeky in-class question on the subject by saying "I would not oppose the unionization of graduate students." Bollinger and Brinkley may not be willing to play hardball. This week, Loretta Ucelli, who was director of President Clinton's White House communications, took office as Columbia's new executive vice president of public affairs. She, presumably, knows quite a bit about political hardball.

"If there is a strike, our primary concern will be to meet the needs of our students," Brinkley said in a statement today. "We will do everything we can to keep them informed of possible schedule or room changes, and to minimize disruption of their academic studies." Brinkley is putting on the right public face--but the administration better have a serious public relations strategy ready, because the coming week will be quite a roller coaster.