Labor History Archives

Undergrads, support strike by Aiden Amos and Mark Stulberg November 16, 2005 As undergraduates, we have a special relationship with the graduate workers who teach our recitations and many of our classes. The ability of our TAs to bargain collectively as a union has gained them benefits including full health coverage, increased stipends, job security and even mandatory teacher training; basic things that they didn't have before a union. Simply put, a union has meant that grad students have been able to spend more time teaching and less time working second jobs and worrying about how they are going to pay for health care. When it comes down to it, their working conditions really are our learning conditions. Now, with a graduate assistant strike underway, many students who support the union want to know what they can do to help end the strike quickly by getting the administration to the bargaining table. There are a number of simple and effective things that we, as undergrads, can do to support the Graduate Student Organizing Committee. First off, join the picket lines and march with your TAs and their other supporters. You can also join our organization, Graduate Undergraduate Solidarity; just e-mail gsoc@2110uaw.org to join. You and your parents can contact NYU President John Sexton at john.sexton@nyu.edu or 212.998.2345 to urge him to negotiate. And please tell everyone you know. including your TAs and professors. that you support the strike. Right now there are picket lines outside of NYU campus buildings. A picket line anywhere on campus means that the entire campus is being picketed, whether or not there are pickets in front of a specific building. As fellow undergrads, we strongly encourage you to avoid crossing these picket lines if at all possible. If you approach this issue strategically, you can have a major impact in support of GSOC. Find other students in your classes who feel the same way. Approach your professors and ask them to move their classes off campus. If they refuse or are unable to do so, ask them to have the classes recorded and posted on Blackboard so students can make up missed classes by watching or listening to them online. If they refuse this as well, no one but you can weigh the consequences and decide whether you can afford to miss class, and if so, for how long. But if you end up attending class on campus, find creative and visual ways to show your solidarity, like wearing a GSOC button, sticker or armband. Of course, if one of your classes or recitations is being taught by a replacement instructor, we strongly urge you not to attend and to contact your professors and departments to tell them that you don't support their decision to bring in scabs. If you absolutely must attend, please say something to your class about why the whole situation is wrong. Undergrads should never forget that we are the largest and most influential group on campus. If we stand in solidarity with our TAs and put our collective power as students to use supporting their democratic right to a union, justice will prevail. Aiden Amos and Mark Stuhlberg are writing on behalf of Graduate Undergraduate Solidarity. E-mail responses to opinion@nyunews.com.