After the Harvard administration caved to the graduate workers of HGSU in May 2018, the Columbia administration knew they’d lost the fight on bargaining with GWC-UAW.
Facing mounting anger from graduate workers, a national strike wave by educators, ongoing pressure from politicians, the recent unionization of CU postdocs, the impending contract renewal of the support staff union also in the UAW, and the credible threat of an indefinite strike by GWC, their options for further delay were dwindling. So why is UAW leadership staff trying to throw Lee Bollinger a 15-month lifeline?
Some essential background: like my union Barnard Contingent Faculty (BCF-UAW), Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC-UAW) is a bargaining unit within the NYC-based UAW Local 2110, which is itself part of UAW Region 9A. Above them is the International UAW, headquartered in Detroit.
From Detroit to Morningside Heights, all of us in the UAW share a commitment to fighting for workers, but history has shown that the strategies and ideologies of union bureaucracies do not always align with the those of rank-and-file workers. Working through these conflicts with clear transparency is essential to sustaining the strength and increasing the militancy of the labor movement. Which brings us to the proposed framework that UAW leadership staff are encouraging GWC rank-and-file workers to adopt.
The manner in which this proposed framework was negotiated is discrediting in itself. You cannot build worker power by intentionally locking workers out of negotiations with management, as appears to have been the case here. GWC has a democratically-elected Bargaining Committee, who are the only legitimate representatives of Columbia grad workers.
By going behind their backs, UAW staff have undercut this Committee’s authority. They have essentially sent the Columbia administration the signal that while the other side of the bargaining table may channel the anger, insights, and idealism of thousands of graduate workers, the real deals will be cut with union bureaucrats conditioned to settle faster and settle for less.
More distressingly, by conceding strike activity until April 2020, the proposed framework all but guarantees no meaningful progress on a contract will be made until the weeks before April 2020. Whether now or later, experience shows it will take a credible strike threat to get the Columbia administration to take bargaining seriously and assent to proposals that meaningfully address GWC’s bargaining goals.
Given the Columbia administration’s tenacious contempt for workers and its deep pockets, a union bargaining without a strike threat is bargaining from a position of weakness. Yes, the proposed framework would commit Columbia to “good faith” bargaining, but as I learned serving on a Bargaining Committee, the legal standard for “good faith” merely requires the employer to schedule regular meetings, offering proposals with micro concessions at the trivial edges of the workers’ demands. It does not require working towards achieving agreement. Columbia’s trained union busters will relish having 14 months of guaranteed strike-free bargaining to demean and dispirit the GWC Bargaining Committee with condescending rejections of their demands, insulting counter proposals that come in below the status quo, and a constant volley of slights and insults. And they will count on their UAW staff counterparts to encourage concessionary activity, significantly narrowing the bargaining agenda to Columbia’s advantage. That is to say, if GWC waits until April 2020 to strike, you’ll be striking for much, much less.
Even dealing with the more pliant and less competent administration at Barnard, it quickly became clear after almost a year of fruitless negotiating, that the main job of our Bargaining Committee should have been to prepare our members for a strike from day one. All significant bargaining only happened after we set a strike deadline. Strike now or strike later. Strike now and strike later. Nothing in the proposed framework will obviate the need to recreate all of 2018’s strike organizing again in 2020. But forgoing 2018’s strike for so little in return (and taking striking off the table for so long) suggests to Columbia that the national UAW’s commitment to supporting a meaningful strike is low, and the administration’s chances of securing a more favorable contract are high.
The bottom line is that, if the proposed framework is adopted, the Columbia administration will simply have to meet its bare minimum legal obligation to bargain—where it was already ineluctably headed. GWC, on the other hand, will enter bargaining with a compromised Bargaining Committee that has already acquiesced to troublingly amorphous concessions over “academic and governance issues” and with no access for over a year to its most essential tool, the strike. And the real fight over a first contract is deferred until after cohorts of currently engaged activists have graduated.
This is all good news for Lee Bollinger. If the proposed framework is rejected and a strike commences, the union will have to explain repeatedly why it “walked away,” risking internal dissension, complicating its public messaging, and a loss of momentum. That is to say, even if the framework is rejected, the December strike may suffer the effects of this clumsy interference by union bureaucrats. Also not a bad outcome for Lee Bollinger. This is a self-inflicted wound upon labor organizing at our university by union bureaucrats who have lost touch.
Sonam Singh was a founding member of the Barnard adjunct union and served on the bargaining unit. He teaches Literature.
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
