NEW YORK CITY, April 25—The Columbia University campus resounded with the chants of hundreds of graduate teaching and research assistants who began a five-day strike yesterday. They are supported by many undergraduate students, including about 50 undergraduate clubs, many professors, area construction workers, and other campus United Auto Workers (UAW) locals.
Graduate students do a large bulk of the teaching, grading, and even research their professors. In December 2016, they voted to join the UAW, at a time when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had asserted that these students are to be considered workers. For all the teaching and grading of papers they do, they are demanding a living wage, on-time pay, better health care, and protection from sexual harassment.
Columbia has refused to bargain with them, has appealed the decision in court, and is hoping that Trump’s new anti-union appointee to the NLRB will be approved and the recognition of grad students as workers will be reversed. But after waiting over 18 months for Columbia to “come to the table” and with a 90 percent strike authorization vote, the workers’ action began. Many classes have been cancelled or moved off campus.
Columbia’s anti-worker stance is nothing new. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the massive student strike and occupation of 1968, when students protested Columbia’s takeover of a park in Harlem to build a gym for students and the University’s participation in research supporting the Vietnam War. The action lasted a week and ended with the brutal arrests of over 700 students.
Columbia is still run by a Board of Trustees 75 percent of whom are bankers and it has now taken over a huge portion of Harlem and displaced thousands of low-income, mostly Black residents. It continues to educate an elite student body to become the managers, political and financial leaders of worldwide capitalism, and the scientists and academics who will oversee the U.S. attempt to maintain economic and military control in the world.
The last five years have witnessed an upsurge in student activism, stimulated by the summer of Occupy Wall Street. One group, Student Worker Solidarity (SWS), has fought for the rights and wages of campus workers and undergraduate student workers. Other groups have formed around divesting from fossil fuels, fighting racist speakers and racism on and off campus, supporting Palestinian workers, and other issues.
PLP members have been welcomed into SWS, and we continue to struggle with students about the need for revolution to abolish all exploitation of workers, and to join PLP to make that happen. Many hate capitalism, but have not yet been convinced that all reforms are temporary and that a long-range plan to change the system is necessary and possible. A five-day strike may not win any concessions, but it has heightened the class-consciousness of many. It is our job to build on this energy and win participants to a life-long journey of struggle with the ultimate goal of communist revolution.