The File is a publication by and for rank-and-file academic labor organizers. In response to the depoliticization of academic labor and the stale orthodoxy of business unionism, our mission is to support grassroots, member-driven organizing within the academy while linking it to struggles beyond the campus.
The university is a key node of wider systems of power. Academic systems hobble new generations with debt, reproduce violent racial caste systems, concoct weapons for the military industrial complex, and concentrate wealth in elite enclaves. Hence we underline the potential for bottom-up academic labor movements to escape the confines of the university and link with broader initiatives, such as those against austerity, structural racism, patriarchy, and the general violence of class society.
We welcome reports, (coherent) theoretical interventions on the changing nature of academic labor, and ideas for the steps needed to go on the offensive, win, and keep winning.
Editorial board: Jonny Bunning (Web Design). Danielle Carr, Alexander Kolokotronis (Social Media), Jarrod Shanahan, Sonam Singh (Print Design).
Founding member of the Barnard Adjunct Union Sonam Singh critiques UAW for undercutting members’ power and playing into the hands of their employer.
Kim Moody founded Labor Notes and theorized ‘The Rank and File Strategy.’ In this piece, he discusses the extension of that strategy to campus activism.
An update on graduate worker organizing at Emory University
The File is free, but we do have web and printing costs. Help us out with a couple of dollars here.
