The Fight Begins

Dear Student Workers,

Our next Bargaining session will be this Monday at 11 AM (Link TBA), caucus will begin at 10:30 AM.

Over the two sessions of bargaining this past week, we got both promising news for the future of our movement and a stark reminder of the brutality of our fight.

This Tuesday, the session immediately following our setting of a strike deadline, Columbia finally presented long-awaited counter proposals. While the changes were unimpressive and insubstantial—a 50¢ increase in hourly raises, and a $25k increase in the proposed health care fund—they mark the University’s first step away from the rejected TA.

Deans Alonso (GSAS) and Kachani (SEAS) were in attendance for the first time this semester, and they opened the door to changes to non-discrimination and harassment protections, and indicated a willingness to improve upon the 3% baseline increase in compensation levels.

It is not a coincidence that these changes happened just days after our setting of a strike deadline. Columbia has only ever bargained with us under pressure. Importantly: the university’s lawyer Bernie Plum was not in attendance at this meeting. 

The following session on Thursday October 28th, Bernie Plum once again was able to join. We'd like to take the opportunity to highlight that Proskauer Rose has among the highest hourly rates in the country; our employer burns money on lawyers instead of fairly compensating their workers. 

Unsurprisingly, after a positive previous session, Bernie Plum resumed his strategy of hardball negotiations, stating that for them it was never a question of whether they could afford our demands, but simply whether they deemed them “appropriate."

Once again becoming the only voice for Columbia’s administration, serial union-buster Bernie Plum qualified Columbia’s recent $3.3 billion gains as irrelevant to bargaining, and qualified casual student workers’ status as too "transient" and "loosely connected" for the university to bother giving them protections and benefits.

Upholding its academic duties, Columbia teaches us—session after session—a valuable lesson: that they will show no regard for our conditions as workers unless we force them to, that they will not relinquish power willingly, and that new rights and protections will not be a gift, but a ransom.

In less than one week, we strike. We know it is within our reach to obtain not just a contract but a good contract. We also know we will need to stand united and hold the line until Columbia finally gives us what’s fair: arbitration for discrimination and harassment, a full unit, a living wage, and decent healthcare coverage.

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