Imagine you get a letter from your manager a week before you are set to teach classes, removing you from teaching duties but saying you’ll get paid anyway. This odd experience has happened to around 137 graduate students at Columbia University in New York City who teach core curriculum, language, and writing classes. They are members of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2710.
Getting paid to not teach might sound pretty good, but in fact the university is hiring adjuncts with no union contract to do the work of union members. “I spent all summer not knowing if I was going to teach or not, and then they finally were like, ‘No, your class is canceled,’” said a core curriculum teacher who asked not to be named. Rumors had been circulating, but the university didn’t tell their workers anything directly.
And the letters are still coming. “The goal is to terrify everybody,” said Grant Miner, president of the local.
The cuts to graduate instructor jobs seem to be part of a concerted strategy by Columbia to undermine its unions. The Ivy League university has offered an insulting 2 percent raise to three unions currently in negotiations, including SWC-UAW. That’s so low that when inflation is counted in, it amounts to a pay cut.
On Tuesday, workers in dining, medical, and library services, members of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, picketed at the university’s gate on Broadway in Manhattan, alongside support staff and clerical workers who are members of UAW Local 2110.
“Columbia uses a lot of the same kind of union-busting approach, so we are uniting our forces today,” said Olga Brudastova, president of Local 2110. Her local also received the 2 percent offer.
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Auteur: Jenny Brown
