A significant section of graduate workers at Columbia University have taken the courageous stand to continue their strike in defiance of the university and the United Auto Workers union.
The decision of the bargaining committee to accept a “pause” in the strike was in clear and direct opposition to the will of the 3,000 rank and file members.
A sharp warning must be made: Before the strike has even begun, the UAW is doing everything to sell it out.
The bargaining committee is employing many well-known mechanisms to try to browbeat the students into accepting a sellout proposal.
Columbia’s Board of Trustees is run by a collection of multi-millionaire and billionaire hedge fund managers and CEOs with deep ties to Wall Street, Corporate America, the Democratic Party and the military-industrial complex.
The struggle at Columbia, like all struggles of the working class, poses the question: Who should control the resources of society?
The UAW is not a workers organization but an arm of corporate management that works to isolate and suppress all opposition to the policies of the ruling class.
There are fundamental political considerations behind the media blackout, in addition to Columbia University’s financial and public relations interests.
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The vote is a devastating blow to the United Auto Workers and the majority of the GWC Bargaining Committee, who endorsed the contract despite overwhelming opposition from the rank and file.
The IYSSE urges student workers to draw the necessary political conclusions: Not a single step forward can be taken within the confines of the unions.
The strike “pause” at Columbia is intended to demobilize workers and prepare a sell-out deal.
From the beginning of the strike, the United Auto Workers union has worked to isolate graduate students at Columbia University, including from graduate students at neighboring NYU.
Autoworkers and others support the fight of Columbia graduate student-workers as the strike begins its third week.
We urge graduate students strikers to join us by building an independent rank-and-file strike committee to unite with other university student workers, K-12 educators and the working class more broadly throughout the US and internationally.
The New York Educators Rank-and File Safety Committee calls on all New York City workers and, in particular, K-12 educators to support the strike by Columbia University graduate teaching and research assistants.
The strikes by graduate workers is part of a broader movement of workers throughout the globe
Members of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality club at U-M have issued statements defending striking grad student instructors and calling for workers and students to mobilize against the university’s strikebreaking.
Throughout their struggle, Columbia University student workers confronted two hostile forces: the university administration, run by millionaires with close ties to the Democratic Party, and the United Auto Workers.
The ongoing struggle at Columbia has thus far, under the criminal leadership of the UAW and with support from the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left, been implementing a strategy of defeat for workers.
Columbia’s threats not to rehire striking workers raises the urgency for student workers to expand their strike.
In order to counter the United Auto Workers’ attempts to shut down and sell out their strike, it is imperative that Columbia students draw the correct lessons from the ongoing and past struggles.
In pursuing mediation, the UAW is preparing to sell out the strike of 3,000 graduate workers at Columbia.
Columbia University graduate students spoke to the WSWS about the issues in their strike.
More than 3,000 student workers are back on the picket line, after the UAW sabotaged an earlier strike this spring.
Last week, more than 3,000 student workers at Columbia University in New York City voted to authorize strike action against the university, continuing a years-long struggle for their first labor contract.
The NYU strike is an object lesson in pseudo-left politics.
The Academic Workers for a Democratic Union has been active in assisting the betrayal of the strikes by graduate workers at Columbia and New York Universities, promoting the lie that the UAW can be reformed.
Under conditions of a staggering social and political crisis, the terms negotiated by the deal provide the basis for an erosion, not a rise, in living standards.
The prominent role of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in propping up the United Auto Workers shows the political mechanisms the Democratic Party is employing to tie workers and young people to the unions and capitalist politics.
Late Thursday night, NYU raised its offered increase of hourly wages from $21.50 to $25, beginning September 2020, with a following yearly raise of 2.5 percent, which is the equivalent of the projected inflation rate.
The university administration is clearly waiting for the end of the semester next week at NYU in the expectation that the union will deliver further concessions.
The vote is a devastating blow to the United Auto Workers and the majority of the GWC Bargaining Committee, who endorsed the contract despite overwhelming opposition from the rank and file.
One striker told the IYSSE: “NYU has not recognized our needs for living in New York City. Master’s students already pay really expensive tuition. Then our hourly wage and monthly salary are not enough for us to even pay the rent. That’s why we’re striking.”
The intervention of Bernie Sanders, one of the most experienced bourgeois politicians in the US, is aimed at politically preparing the UAW sell-out and at stifling any opposition from graduate students to capitalist politics more broadly.
NYU president Andrew Hamilton, who takes home about $2 million every year, sent an email to the parents of striking graduate students as well as undergraduates on Monday in a blatant attempt to break the strike.
Graduate students at New York University began strike action on Monday as the United Autoworkers Union seeks to end the struggle of Columbia University grad students a few miles away by pushing a wage-cutting sellout deal.
