Response to Provost Boyce
Dear Colleagues:
With the start of the fall term, I again want to thank you for your incredible efforts in ensuring the safe and smooth return to campus that is now unfolding. To see our students once again in our classrooms and labs is a moving experience, and we should all be proud of the hard work it took to arrive at this moment.
Provost Boyce fails to address the turmoil she has put student workers through by withholding nearly $8,000 from workers on 9-month appointments and failing to provide any accommodations for new parents and others with vulnerable family members who are expected to TA in person. Additionally, every worker received a 0% raise this year, shocking many first year students who were told to expect a higher salary than they will receive. While Columbia was withholding compensation increases, many students also had to face the 1.5% increase in University Housing rent, and a 3.7% inflation over the last year in New York City. Columbia even increased laundry prices in their housing units; it seems that graduate workers’ compensation is the only thing that remained frozen this semester.
I now want to update you on our student union negotiations. Our graduate students are central to the life of this institution. Negotiations, now in their second iteration, have highlighted the dual roles they hold on campus: as students and as workers. With the narrow defeat of the Tentative Agreement reached in April, we have recommenced bargaining with the Student Workers of Columbia-UAW, formerly the GWC-UAW. As we address the concerns of students in their role as workers, we welcome the opportunity to engage the newly constituted SWC-UAW bargaining committee.
"We welcome the opportunity to engage the newly constituted SWC-UAW bargaining committee" actually translates to: 1) refusing to bargain all summer, 2) cancelling the first session after they decided to close bargaining sessions to unit members out of nowhere, then giving less than 24 hours notice after they finally agreed to bargain openly as we have been doing for years now, and 3) showing up to the first session unprepared to engage with the safe reopening proposals the Union had sent weeks prior.
If Dr. Boyce's assertion, that "graduate students are central to the life of this institution," is to be taken seriously, the administration must stop acting as though we and our interests are merely peripheral.
Beyond the dual status of our student-workers, our two and a half years of bargaining has highlighted the overarching control of Columbia’s administration over us. This semester, Columbia will be our employer, our landlord, and now aims to be our creditor—the University is offering $2,000 loans to make up for them withholding almost $8,000 with no notice.
As we continue negotiations, it is imperative not to lose sight of the strong foundation that was created over the course of the two years of bargaining that have already transpired. The Tentative Agreement set forth detailed resolutions, fully ready for implementation, on the following subjects of collective bargaining: compensation, nondiscrimination, health/dental benefits, child care, international student employees, leaves of absence, vacation/holidays/personal days, appointments and discipline and discharge, union dues, and union activity and access. These provisions, described in detail on our student unionization website, would have greatly enhanced the graduate experience at Columbia. Some of these benefits, if enacted, would have become among the most generous in higher education.
It is clear that when discussing benefits that are "among the most generous in higher education," Dr. Boyce must be confusing the workers with the administration; while many of us pay upwards of 50% of our income back to our employer-landlord, Bollinger remains one of the best compensated presidents (>$4.6 million) in all of American academia and one of few in the Ivy League who did not take a pay cut in response to the financial crisis sparked by the pandemic. Very generous indeed.
Let’s take a closer look at the provisions of the Tentative Agreement that Boyce refers to:
Compensation: The “improvements'' in compensation? A 2% increase in pay with a 1% “bonus” ONLY for those working this year - conveniently saving Columbia millions since this 1% isn’t compounded in future years. This, when Columbia’s $11 billion endowment grew an average of 8% over the last four years, cannot in any way be qualified as generous. Needless to say, a 2% increase, in a year where inflation reached 5.3% in the country and 3.7% in the city, does not correspond to an improvement in living conditions. This same year, NYU offered a 30% increase to its hourly worker, and Brown gave a 4.59% minimum raise for all graduate workers.
Dr. Boyce may also be taking credit for improvements to compensation in the Schools of Social Work and Nursing—which were not based on the union negotiations at all. Columbia planned these compensation increases outside of negotiations and they were, in fact, implemented this year, even after our agreement was voted down. Why? Because students in social work were expected to live off of $23,000 a year. It is an embarrassment that these workers were paid this amount at all, and for Dr. Boyce to call this a momentous achievement is shameful.
Discrimination: The improvements to non-discrimination offered by the university remained sequestered into the black box that is Columbia-controlled dicrimination and harassment protections. Not a single one of the protections offered would give workers an outcome not directly controlled by the Provost and President of the University. They are still denying us the legal arbitration protections for discrimination and harassment that are standard in any other union, including NYU. Harvard, currently in negotiations, acceded to giving student-workers arbitration for discrimination just this month.
Dental: When Dr. Boyce refers to improvements in dental benefits, she refers to the utterly useless 25% discount they offered to use at one of the most expensive dental practices in NYC— Columbia Doctors Dentistry.
The Tentative Agreement won the support of 47 percent of eligible graduate students who voted. We believe, along with the 970 graduate students who favored the deal, that the terms were fair. But that view narrowly failed, and so we return to bargaining.
The rejection of the tentative agreement was historic. It is the first time in student-worker history that a union has turned down a contract. Union contracts are routinely approved by >95% of membership. Many workers were persuaded to vote yes to the tentative agreement thinking it would be the only way to improve the lives of people in the Schools of Social Work and Nursing who were making pennies at the time—not realizing the University had these increases planned long ago.
The University blackmailed workers into giving up core demands because they thought they were protecting their most vulnerable.
The Union knew better. We knew that signing a 3-year contract that didn’t meet the needs of our workers and signed away our rights to arbitration—a standard legal process for discrimination and harassment—would only have hurt our workers. A 2% increase in pay is an effective pay cut. Signing this on the heels of a pandemic that has had a negative financial impact on so many of our workers would have been a mistake.
Now the University—in explicit retaliation for not signing the contract—gave us a 0% raise, when previous years had always seen at least 3% increases. In breaking from this precedent in the midst of negotiations, our lawyer believes they have violated labor law, and we are seeking to litigate this.
The rejection of the tentative agreement is no small thing. It shows that our workers are angry, and we will not sign an agreement without major concessions.
There is currently NO established process to address the abuse of TAs and RAs by what could be called “equal opportunity abusers.” If your boss bullies you (power-based harassment) and it isn’t extremely clear that it is because you are part of a protected identity group (gender, race, sexuality, etc.), then you have neither recourse nor protections to ensure you can continue to study and work in a safe environment. This is unacceptable. A contract lacking such basic provisions cannot and will not be agreed to. Of course, this is on top of the university’s refusal to agree to the previously-mentioned standard neutral arbitration for cases of identity-based discrimination or harassment.
The union is currently conducting a strike authorization vote, and voting closes on September 27. An affirmative vote by the union membership does not initiate a strike; rather, it authorizes the bargaining committee to call a strike at any time if it decides to do so.
Dr. Boyce is correct here. A YES on a strike authorization vote does not force us to strike. The University could avert a strike at any time by giving us arbitration for discrimination and harassment cases, a living wage, dental insurance, recognizing undergraduate and hourly TAs and RAs as workers, and by improving the financial health of our student-worker parents.
The power is in their hands.
We acknowledge the union’s right to strike, though we believe that remaining differences can be resolved through good-faith bargaining and that a strike will not be needed. If there is a strike, our priority is meeting the educational needs of our students and maintaining the continuity of our academic programs. Our schools and departments are undertaking contingency planning to mitigate the impact of a potential strike and to ensure that our students are able to continue their coursework and academic progress if one occurs.
We are patiently waiting for the University to begin engaging in good faith bargaining, but we will not hold our breath. They have committed numerous Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) over the years, but with the anti-labor Trump appointees on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Union could not risk litigating them. With the Biden appointed NLRB, this all changes, and we have several ULPs (committed in just the past few months) ready to litigate.
Many undergraduates and faculty members also see how terribly their TAs and RAs are treated and how unfairly they are compensated and fully support the Union’s efforts. They understand that temporary interruptions in their teaching and learning are worth it if it means that their educators are allowed to live without financial precarity and with strong protections from all forms of harassment.
We reaffirm our desire to reach a fair contract. We have demonstrated our capacity for compromise and our commitment to reaching an agreement. Working together with SWC-UAW leaders, we believe we can bring this longstanding negotiation to a resolution that benefits both graduate student workers and the University.
While we too are eager to reach a fair contract, we cannot do so until the University actually exercises their capacity for compromise. Our demands are rooted in maintaining the dignity and health (physical, mental, and emotional) of student-workers—goals that ought to be shared on both sides of the table. As we struggle to ensure Columbia looks at considerations other than naked profit, we need your help.
Sincerely,
Mary
Mary C. Boyce
Provost
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Sincerely,
Student Workers of Columbia, Bargaining Committee
Colin Adams - Physics
Laura Benoit - Neurobiology and Behavior
Lilian Coie - Neurobiology and Behavior
Tristan DuPuy - SIPA
Ethan Jacobs - Philosophy
Ioanna Kourkoulou - Physics
Nadeem Mansour - MESAAS
Jackson Miller - Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
Becca Roskill - Computer Science, Undergraduate
Mandi Spishak-Thomas - Social Work
