NEW YORK CITY, February 9 — Today, despite freezing temperatures and snow, at least 75 Columbia University (CU) students rallied in defense of underpaid Faculty House workers. They were joined by about 25 workers, members of other unions and seven members of St. Mary’s Church in Harlem. It was a loud and militant procession, a unity which has not been seen in decades.
The Student-Worker Solidarity (SWS) group was formed last fall, composed largely of freshmen, many of whom had had ties with Occupy Wall St. Their first action supported Barnard’s (CU women’s school) clerical workers who were threatening to strike over pay and benefit cuts. Students leafleted several alumni events and demonstrated on campus, becoming an important factor enabling Barnard workers to win.
For the last two months, they’ve been supporting the Columbia workers at Faculty House, who haven’t had a raise in three contracts. The workers are also laid off in summer and other breaks during which they receive $65/wk. CU adds a 22 percent gratuity to every diner’s bill but gives the workers not one penny of it. Now CU wants to cut their health benefits and offer nothing in return. The wages are so low that many work 60-80 hours a week to meet expenses.
Students attempting to attend negotiations have been thrown out, but have demonstrated outside. They’re petitioning, approaching faculty, organizing teach-ins and leafleting. Every week their meetings grow.
Columbia is an elite ruling-class institution, run by a Board made up almost entirely of bankers and aims to train the next generation of rulers. The student body is predominantly white and well-to-do, and divorced from the neighboring poor and largely black working-class Harlem community. In the ’60s, amid the tumultuous student movement sparked by opposition to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, thousands of CU students demonstrated and occupied buildings to protest the campus of an exclusive CU gym in Harlem. They won.
Now, however, Columbia is taking over 17 acres of Harlem, causing the loss of low-income housing, small neighborhood businesses and jobs. Although there has been a community opposition movement for years, only a small number of students have been involved. Last year about 15 did participate in a 5-day occupation of 125th Street in Harlem, but nearly all of them have graduated.
This new vigorous student group is on the right track, building fight-back, united with campus workers. For the last few meetings, community residents from St. Mary’s Church have also joined them, an important step forward. This may enable an expansion and continuation of the fight to force Columbia to hire more local residents.
CU promised 7,000 new community jobs as part of its expansion agreement, but so far has hired no one. Columbia’s racism is apparent in the way they treat their largely black, Latino and immigrant workers and their Harlem neighbors.
Students are horrified by the unfairness and inequality they see at a university that pretends to be a bastion of progressive values. But, in fact, Columbia espouses capitalist values. It pretends that equality and fairness are possible under capitalism. This system depends on competition for the highest profits and on racism to divide and weaken workers.
As U.S. rulers compete with their imperialist rivals for the world’s resources, capitalism cannot maintain a pretty mask. Thus, students must recognize that they, too, are future workers and that unity with lower-paid workers is imperative to building a movement strong enough to overthrow capitalism, creating a whole new society, a communist society, based on equality and distribution of goods and services according to need.