Since our victory winning back union rights, we have experienced a huge outpouring of support, including massive media coverage of our historic campaign. Hundreds of us have already committed to vote “yes” for GWC-UAW in the upcoming unionization election.
As we are now at the forefront of a burgeoning national movement of RAs and TAs, Columbia – in coordination with academic administrators at many other private universities – has also predictably escalated its campaign against unionization. Up to this point, the administration quietly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting our union rights in the NLRB case, delaying our rights for two years.
However, in the wake of our victory, Provost John Coatsworth has now emailed all of us and posted an FAQ document on the Columbia website that, while appearing to sound moderate in tone, clearly aims to convince us to vote “no.” Since Coatsworth will likely disseminate more of these types of misleading communications to us, as well as to faculty in an effort to turn them against our union, we want to draw your attention to two new resources to help you evaluate the merits of collective bargaining versus the administration’s anti-union campaign.
The GWC-UAW Mail Bag: As we get questions about the Union and the election process, we will be logging them in the GWC-UAW Mail Bag on our website and providing answers. Check it out now for the questions we have gotten so far.
Our annotated version of Coatsworth’s FAQ: In order to provide information missing from Provost Coatsworth’s FAQ, we have set up a version that provides important information left out of his document. We hope you find it informative.
Finally, we expect to know more very soon about timing as we move toward the NLRB election. We will provide updated information once we know more.