Strike Start GBM
Dear Student Workers,
RSVP for our GBM to decide a strike deadline!
We will have a virtual General Body Meeting this coming Wednesday, 10/20 at 6 PM EDT. This is a crucial moment for us. We will decide on a strike deadline as Columbia continues to refuse to negotiate. We encourage everyone to attend and participate! Come and invite your fellow student workers!
Hardship Fund #ColumbiaGivingDay
Please use the hashtag #ColumbiaGivingDay and ask alumni, parents, and the public at large to donate to the hardship fund linked here instead of Columbia.
Columbia Giving Day is a 24-hour, online fundraising event that allows alumni, parents, faculty, and students to contribute to various programs and initiatives for undergraduate and graduate students. This year's Giving Day is on Wednesday, October 20, 2021.
Columbia receives many millions of dollars on Giving Day and has raised enough money in the past 5 Giving Days alone, a 5-day work week, to fund the entire cost of our union's proposal to provide workers with a living wage and adequate healthcare for the next three years. Last year’s Giving Day Columbia received $24,161,991.
Bargaining Sessions
We are having a bargaining session Thursday at 1:15 PM. Stay tuned for a link to the session. Click here to attend the caucus at 12:45 PM.
Bargaining Updates From Last Week
The bargaining committee walked Columbia through the union’s own analysis of our proposal’s financial cost, in response to the University’s analysis the previous session.
Our analysis found the University’s analysis was inflating costs by nearly 150%. This session, the University delayed the actual bargaining process by fixating on conceptual differences instead of delivering a counterproposal that meets our needs.
Let’s examine the facts:
Columbia’s stipend, when adjusted for cost of living, is the lowest among peer institutions including Harvard, NYU, and Princeton.
The GSAS website even details a higher cost of living and fees than our stipends cover.
Columbia made an average of $273 million/year in net profit, on top of nearly ~$624 million annually in asset growth over the last 16 years, and can most certainly afford treating us with basic dignity.
Next, the University defended the improvements to the EOAA process in the TA and claimed that, despite “99% of union contracts having arbitration clauses” (per Bernie Plum), they remain resolute against including arbitration as a means of recourse for survivors. Their only defense was that in their view, arbitration is not an appropriate process for academic workers. Our team pointed to the arbitration clause in the contract with the postdoc union and countered that working conditions for some RAs are indistinguishable from that of postdocs. The University failed to explain how their position was coherent.
We also pushed back on their resistance to modifying Titles and Classifications, flatly refusing to allow Columbia to exclude workers from our unit by reclassifying their jobs as positions not within the bargaining unit - as we already saw them do before the Tentative Agreement was voted down.
Once again, we impressed upon them the need to come to the table with actual counter proposals and not just complaints. We will not compromise our proposals without movement from Columbia. To force that movement, it is clear that they need a reminder of whose labor makes this institution function.
Columbia’s message is clear. They will not give us the contract we deserve, without a strike.
In Solidarity,
Your Bargaining Committee