The University Starts To Approach Our Solar System
Today—as our strike deadline of Wednesday, November 3 at 12:01 AM looms—the university once again neglected to adequately address our union's needs. However, the threat of an imminent strike did spur some small movement towards meeting our contract priorities.
The university's movement on key issues includes:
Transitional funding support for student workers who have faced abuse or intimidation. However, the Dean still has final say on whether to provide the support or not, whereas the MIT program we based our proposal off of would give no-questions-asked transition support.
Pay parity, including Social Work and Mailman to be brought up to compensation levels in departments like GSAS, SEAS, etc. Disappointingly, the university believes this change should be delayed another year and continues to exclude these departments from summer stipends, a critical piece to the pay parity puzzle.
Childcare funding for those with children under age 6; frustratingly, their funding remains stagnant at $4,000, which we do not believe adequately covers the true cost of childcare for parents in New York City.
After a prolonged caucus, the bargaining committee went through the points of insufficiency in the university’s counter proposal, highlighting in detail the absurdity of the delayed phase-in of pay parity and the potentiality of conflicting interests between student workers seeking to leave abusive advisors and deans acting on behalf of the university's financial interests. The university, in the meantime, gave the same tired spiel on our proposals' costs being far beyond anything they would consider; as they clarified at Thursday's session, it's not about whether they can afford it (over 3 years, it costs 0.5% of the surplus earning from just this year; they definitely can) but about whether our dear employer considers the price tag "appropriate" for our membership. Regardless of what Columbia considers appropriate, we know, from lived experience, the exorbitant cost (financial and psychological) of being a student worker at this institution. With the backing of our unit, the bargaining team will hold the line at the table for a contract that meets our fundamental needs.
We will hold out until the university meets our demands of neutral arbitration for cases of discrimination and harassment, full recognition of our bargaining unit, dental and vision insurance, protections against ICE/CBP and NYPD, and a real living wage for all students.
We have another bargaining session scheduled for noon tomorrow (Tuesday, November 2); we will be in touch soon with a zoom link.
Columbia has one last opportunity to avert a strike, but we need to see significant counters on the articles that remain outstanding and that we’ve been talking about for months. We’ve made it clear what our unit needs—it’s up to the university to deliver.
SWC-UAW Bargaining Committee