GRADUATE WORKER UNIONIZATION: A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
DATE AND TIME: Thursday October 15th, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Jerome Greene Hall 103 (Columbia Law School, 435 W. 116th St.)
Over the past year and a half, graduate students at Columbia have been leaders in the graduate worker unionization movement that is rapidly spreading across the country. Although Columbia’s administration has refused to engage with the strong majority of graduate workers who declared their support for graduate unionization in our card drive last fall, we are currently petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for recognition, and stand to overturn a decade-long legal precedent that prevents private university graduate workers from unionizing.
On October 15th, over a dozen campuses across the country are holding coordinated events to publicly declare that We Are Workers. As part of this day of action, the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC-UAW) will be holding a roundtable to discuss why graduate worker unionization matters not only at Columbia but also for the labor movement more broadly and for the future of academic labor.
RSVP on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/924233964320077/
Speakers will include:
Geoffrey Aung (CC ‘08, PhD candidate, Anthropology and Graduate Workers of Columbia Organizer)
June Benjamin (Barnard Support Staff Union, Local 2110)
Corin Coetzee (CC ‘16, Student-Worker Solidarity)
Professor Suresh Naidu (Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs)
Professor Sonam Singh (Lecturer, Barnard Department of English and Barnard Contingent Faculty Union Organizer)
Plus workers from the Fight for $15 movement and local NYC politicians
Joining us this October 15th in “We are Workers!: National Graduate Worker Day of Action”:
Academic Student Employees-UAW, University of Washington
Academic Association of University Professors (AAUP), Committee on Graduate and Professional Students
Executive Board, Teaching Assistant Association-AFT, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cornell Graduate Students United-AFT, Cornell University
CUNY Adjunct Project, City University of New York-Graduate Center
Graduate Employee Organization-UAW, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Graduate Employee Organization-UAW, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Graduate Employee Union-UAW, University of Connecticut
Graduate Employees Organizing Committee-AFT, Wayne State University
Graduate Student Organizing Committee-UAW, New York University
Graduate Students United-AFT/AAUP, University of Chicago
Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW, Columbia University
Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW, Harvard University
Student Employees at The New School-UAW, The New School