Thursday’s picket has been moved to the Morningside campus. Please check in at the sun dial on College Walk.
Columbia has once again attempted to obstruct our democratic rights as workers. Earlier this evening, the University sent a communication to the Union threatening to pursue a court injunction over our scheduled action at the Hammer Building because they claim we did not follow a requirement to provide a ten-day notice to picket at a “health care institution.” We had selected the Hammer Building, which contains a library, labs, and classrooms, specifically to avoid activity at a healthcare institution or that would affect patient care services, and with the knowledge that UAW Local 2110 has picketed at the Columbia University Medical Center in the past with no challenges by the administration. This is clearly one more effort by Columbia’s administration to prevent graduate workers from exercising our rights as striking workers in our effort to win union recognition and bargain a fair contract.
Nevertheless, since we do not want to waste any more resources on unnecessary legal disputes with Columbia, we have decided it is advisable to move our action tomorrow to the Morningside campus. In addition, we will now be joined by Deborah Glick, Chair of the State Assembly Committee on Higher Education, and Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President, as we continue our picketing and expand our protest against Columbia’s efforts to quash our rights.
Picketing will start again at 11am and we will rally with Glick and Brewer at noon.
Let’s show Columbia that distractions like this will neither hold back our strong, enthusiastic picket lines, nor our resolve.
