Community Petition Urging University Administrators to End Their Anti-Union Campaign Gains Momentum NEW YORK – As support for graduate workers’ right to collective bargaining builds nationwide, more than 60 members of Congress today issued a statement urging Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and other university administrators in support of fair and free union elections. U.S. Representatives Bobby Scott and Jerrold Nadler along with dozens of other congressional leaders applauded the National Labor Relations Board’s recent decision to restore the rights of teaching assistants and research assistants to bargain collectively. “Collective bargaining between university administrators and the representatives chosen by TAs ...
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Graduate workers, who have been organizing for the past year, welcome recognition of needed changes from the Provost, Dean of Engineering NEW YORK – In a rare email to Ph.D. candidates, Columbia University Provost John H. Coatsworth announced a number of changes to improve workplace benefits for many graduate workers. The announcement – which includes parental leave, childcare subsidies and changes in fees – comes as graduate workers have been joining together to fight for respect and their rights as Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW (GWC-UAW). The announcement answers calls for change the group has been raising and builds on previous ...
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This semester, graduate students across the country will return to the same old routine of shuttling from the library to the lecture hall, hitting the archives in the afternoon and dozing off over a stack of half-graded papers by dusk. But they may be due for a reward worth a lot more than their tuition remission: validation of their work from the nation’s highest authority on labor rights. Late last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finally agreed to review the cases of Columbia University and New School graduate studentswho have been campaigning for years to form an official union ...
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Today’s decision by the National Labor Relations Board is a tremendous victory for the UAW and our members, graduate student employees at Columbia University and at New School University. For more than a decade the UAW has fought relentlessly alongside graduate student employees in private universities to win the right to bargain collectively. Earlier this week, we reached a tentative agreement with NYU for a contract that accomplishes substantial gains in compensation and healthcare. Now, this NLRB decision – fundamentally this is a victory for all graduate student employees who deserve the same fairness and organizing rights at Columbia, The ...
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NEW YORK, NY — Unions seeking representation for more than 3,000 research and teaching assistants (RAs and TAs) filed certification petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today. Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC-UAW), the union for 2,800 Columbia University RAs and TAs, and Student Employees of New School (SENS-UAW), the union for over 350 RAs and TAs at the New School, filed petitions at the Manhattan NLRB office to become part of the UAW. GWC-UAW and SENS-UAW both announced recently that a majority of RAs and TAs at their respective universities had signed cards choosing union representation and asked ...
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