We made progress towards a new contract at the September 30th bargaining session with the University. We brought a counter to Non-Citizens and Benefits. The University brought counters to Noncitizens.
Copies of these articles can be found in the Bargaining Proposal Tracker.
Non-Citizens
At the table, we reiterated the need for better protections from federal agents including ICE and the importance of a hardship fund for non-citizen student employees who work on campus, which are things that Brown’s graduate student union, GLO, have recently won this past summer. In their counter, not only did Columbia refuse to provide a hardship fund, but instead of offering protections from ICE, they gave us a side-letter which simply directs us to Public Safety’s Policy for ICE. Columbia’s team continues to insist that the contract we signed under the Biden administration in 2021 worked well and is perfectly adequate to handle the unique challenges facing non-citizen workers in 2026. They refuse to acknowledge the change in immigration policies and enforcement, which peer institutions are taking into consideration and providing additional support.
Benefits
Most discussion on Benefits concerned our proposal for health insurance choice. We came towards the University by proposing a 50-50 cost sharing proposal on top of the tiered salary cost system for workers who opt in to plans other than the student health plan, no additional monthly costs for dependents, and that student employees have the choice of Choice Plus 80, 90, and 100 plans. [NOTE: these proposals do not impact the student health plan and unit members will still be able to access that plan if they choose, with the same terms as before under our new proposal].
The University raised concerns regarding the administrative feasibility of opting in and out of different insurances. We reiterated the difficulty of student employees living off-campus being required to obtain a referral from Columbia Student Health Services in order to visit their primary care physician. The University argued that the logistical difficulties imposed by the referral system—namely that student employees would have to go to campus for a referral during working hours—were a fact of life everyone faces. This is not true. We expect that discussion of this issue will continue in future sessions.
We also reasserted our proposal for a combined health fund for student workers and dependents, with a revised amount of $1,185,000, which would cover 100% of all reimbursements even if requests increased by 25%.
During the session, the University was also unable to provide an update on when reimbursements from the most recent round of the health fund will be paid. Despite these delays, the University still insists that our proposal to process all health fund reimbursements within 30 days is unnecessary.
Columbia has still not delivered us a written counter on compensation for this successor contract. The union has worked over the summer to move towards the University’s position in almost all of our articles, including progressing on articles the University said we needed to in order to get a compensation article from them. Our workers are tired, frustrated, and underpaid. We will continue to fight for this agreement and hope to see movement on the other side.