Category Archives: Organizing

More than 1,000 people rallied last Wednesday to back graduate students at New York University who want to keep their union, and 78 were arrested in acts of civil disobedience, Crain’s New York Business reported. NYU, which has been the only private university with a TA union, announced last month that it would no longer negotiate with it.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Tell NYU to Stop Union Busting!

Respect Academic Workers and their Freedom to Form Unions!

Join labor leaders, elected officials, faculty, undergraduates, campus staff and the graduate student employees of NYU.

Expose NYU’s attack on collective bargaining and union membership! The Bush Labor Board denied another group of workers the protections of federal labor law. First it was workers at the Dept. of Homeland Security, and then it was airport screeners, now its graduate employees. Who will be next?

These workers have fought for years for union protections. After a hard won battle for recognition and four years with a union contract, NYU is refusing to bargain. Join us on August 31 and demand that NYU respect democracy and the will of its graduate employees to form a union and bargain in good faith. Let’s send a strong message to NYU and every other employer that tramples on the freedom to form unions – that New York is a Union City.

Directions by Subway: Take the Lexington Avenue subway (No. 6 train) to Astor Place Station. Go west on Astor Place to Broadway. Walk south on Broadway to Waverly Place. Walk westward on Waverly Place until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Broadway subway (N, R or W train) to Eighth Street Station. At Broadway walk south to Waverly Place. Walk westward on Waverly Place until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Sixth Avenue subway to West Fourth Street-Washington Square Station (A, C, E, B, D, F, or V train). Walk east on West Fourth Street until you reach Washington Square. OR Take the Seventh Avenue subway to Christopher Street-Sheridan Square Station (1, 9 or 2). Walk east on Christopher Street to West Fourth Street. Continue east to Washington Square.

Sponsored by GSOC-UAW, UAW Region 9A, the New York City Central Labor Council, the New York State AFLCIO, and the New York Voice at Work Higher Education Committee–a coalition of unions representing the diverse workers in our state colleges, universities and research foundations. For further information contact Ed Ott at 212-604-9552 or Susan Borenstein at 212-661-1555 Ext. 12. http://www.2110uaw.org/gsoc/index.html

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
12-1pm, Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South (West 4th St. & LaGuardia Place)

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Declaration of Principles For Collective Bargaining in Higher Education

We are higher education workers, joined by community members and elected offi cials, who believe that quality higher education and the right to collective bargaining are essential to building a more just, democratic and equal society. We support all those–teachers, graduate employees, researchers, technicians, support and service staff, construction, and building maintenance workers, whether they do full-time, part-time, temporary, or contract work—who seek to improve their lives and the institutions in which they work through collective bargaining. We are particularly alarmed that access to affordable, quality higher education has diminished and that the right of workers in higher education to unionize and bargain collectively for a living wage has eroded. We have fallen victim to a cost-cutting, corporate model of teaching and learning that denies education’s historic mission to enrich community life, advance social justice, guarantee academic freedom, and provide opportunities for individual fulfi llment.

We believe that all workers at institutions of higher education must have the right to organize and the right to bargain collectively. Freedom of association and the opportunity to act together to advance our lives and secure our futures are fi rmly established public policy and standards of international human rights. The National Labor Relations Board’s recent decision to strip graduate research and teaching assistants of their right to bargain is a striking example of the downward spiral in labor relations.

All higher education employers must remain neutral in unionization efforts and be prohibited from using tuition, tax dollars or research funds to fi ght unionization. Employees should be allowed to form unions through a simple and democratic majority verifi cation card check process. We cannot permit legal maneuvers or our own money to be used to undercut freedom of expression and association. Contracting and procurement by higher education institutions, both public and private, must adhere to human rights, prevailing wage and responsible contractor standards. We cannot permit higher education institutions, guardians of democratic principles and traditions, to circumvent laws that protect prevailing wages, community standards and the right to organize and bargain.

Steady employment in higher education is a precondition to providing quality education and services and to guaranteeing a reasonable quality of life to academic employees. Job instability leads to inconsistency of service to students. “Casualizing” employment has a heavy impact on women, immigrants, and people of color. We cannot accept jobs segregated by race and gender, jobs that carry little security and offer no voice.

We resolve to work together to achieve these principles to ensure quality higher education and the right to collective bargaining.

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The Vermont Supreme Court last week rejected an appeal by a former lecturer of the University of Vermont over the decision of the university not to reappoint her. The lecturer had been a leader of efforts to unionize the faculty.

The Burlington Free Press reports that:

“The University of Vermont was within its rights not to reappoint a visiting professor who had been a leader in the school’s new faculty union, the Vermont Supreme Court has ruled.

Dawn Saunders taught economics as a visiting professor at UVM from 1995 to the spring of 2003. She was active in organizing the faculty to unionize and was a member of the negotiating team that hammered out the union’s first contract in February 2003.

University officials opposed the union’s formation, and that winter did not offer Saunders a new appointment for the following school year, ending her employment.

Saunders charged that her dismissal was retaliation for her union involvement, and grieved the university’s action to the Vermont Labor Relations Board.

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Tampa Tribune: “FAMU Leader Under Fire”

TAMPA – Florida A&M University’s interim president is being asked to step down because she picked the school’s No. 2 administrator without consulting the school’s faculty and trustees.
The calls come two weeks after Castell Bryant tapped Debra Austin as FAMU’s provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Bryant picked Austin, chancellor of Florida’s public university system, on Aug. 4 after bypassing the usual practice of appointing a search committee and opening the position to other candidates.

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The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that professional and scientific staff members at the University of Iowa voted by a nearly 2-to-1 margin against a plan to unionize with the Service Employees International Union, reports.

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International unions gather in Chicago to craft strategy

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Union leaders from around the globe gather in Chicago next week to craft a joint strategy to boost unionization in the developing world, and especially to target the U.S.-based retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Union Network International’s annual convention will gather 1,500 delegates from some 150 countries in Chicago to share labor strategies and discuss ways unions can collaborate over international borders.

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Inside HigherEd: “Worth Fighting for”

Worth Fighting For

By J.P. Leary

On August 4, three weeks before its historic first contract with the Graduate Student Organizing Committee was set to expire, New York University announced that it would no longer recognize its teaching assistants’ union. The decision was not a surprise — NYU has been campaigning against the union since last fall. So why wait so long to make this official announcement? NYU’s plans are not popular on our campus, and it preferred to reveal its intentions over summer break, when the university is nearly empty.

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IWW: An Appeal To the Rank-and-File

We can all agree that the AFL-CIO, and business unionism in general, is a dead-end for the working class in North America. We need a new international labor movement; one that is based on workers’ self-organization and on the recognition of the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.

We of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have stayed close to our roots and feel that we have some ideas and lessons, learned from bitter experience, for such a new labor movement. We feel that a new labor movement will have to return to the strategies and tactics of the workers’ movement before it’s decent into the bureaucratic quagmire of business unionism if it is to go forward.

We have a few suggestions on how to proceed:

1. Organize the unorganized into self-managed industrial unions. Unions built from the grass-roots by worker organizers. Unions run by the membership to address their own needs and aspirations on the job. Unions that are independent of government and political parties. Unions that welcome all wage workers and unemployed, regardless of nationality, race, gender, political or religious creed, sexual orientation, etc, on the basis of strict equality. Unions in which all officers are directly elected by those they serve and are immediately recallable by the membership. Unions in which remuneration for officers is tied to the average wage of the workers involved; where term limits for officers are strictly observed; and, where the officer returns to the job when their term in office is over. We call this Solidarity Unionism.

2. Re-organize the miss-organized of the business unions via establishment of shop-committees that can take direct action on the job in pursuit of workers’ needs outside of the restrictions of legal collective bargaining agreements. We reject dues check-off because joining a union should be a conscious commitment to solidarity not a “condition of employment”. We reject no-strike deals because we need to be able to act to defend and extend our rights at every opportunity. We reject “management’s rights” because they are inimical to our own.

3. Establish horizontal links between and among unions and shop committees to foster solidarity on a local, regional, national and international level. Build workers’ centers in every community to reach out to all sectors of the working class and unemployed, including their kids.

4. Solidarity Unionism recognizes no restriction on what we should strive for. Health and safety at work, the environmental and social impact of what we produce, shorter and flexible hours of labor, universal health care – everything is fair game! Ultimately, we reject the employing class’s so-called ‘proprietary rights’. We want to gain control of the means of life!

We offer these ideas in the hope that the new labor movement that will necessarily emerge from the shipwreck known as business unionism can avoid the same mistakes of the past that have led us to the present impasse.

For the Works,

Chicago General Membership Branch — Industrial Workers of the World

P.O. Box 18387, Chicago, IL 60618, chicago@iww.org, Voicemail: (815) 550-2018

General Administration: Post Office Box 13476, Philadelphia, PA 19101 USA, (215) 222-1905, ghq@iww.org

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New York magazine: “A Union Revolution is Brewing at Starbucks No. 7356 on Madison Avenue”

Nothing seems amiss at Starbucks Coffee Store No. 7356, on the southwest corner of Madison Avenue and 36th Street. It has a nice view of a nineteenth-century Gothic Revival church. The familiar aroma of dark-roasted Sumatra curls through the air. Most of the staffers are no older than teenagers, but none betrays the slightest hint of sullenness–or simmering political rage. “Here you go, sweetie,” says a barista in blonde pigtails as she hands a grande iced chai over the counter. You’d never suspect that this little island of repose in the crush of midtown is a revolutionary cell. Unbeknownst to its customers (or “guests,” as they’re called), store No. 7356 birthed the first-ever campaign to unionize a Starbucks–a movement that renegade baristas hope will spread through the chain’s 6,668 other U.S. outlets.

The battle has been heated (in fact, steamed-milk injuries are one of the sticking points). Two workers were hauled off to jail. Others have been warned that union sympathies could cost them their jobs. And now Starbucks–used to PR snags no greater than public furor over $3.95 lattes–must go before the National Labor Relations Board next month on charges of bribery, threats, and other illegal attempts to prevent employees from organizing.The trouble started back in May 2003, when Daniel Gross began work as a barista at store No. 7356. Gross is a 26-year-old from L.A. who’s now at Fordham Law School. He has piercing blue eyes, persistent stubble, and an easy laugh. He’s also a “Wobbly,” a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the once-storied “one big union,” which was largely stamped out after World War I and only partially revived by campus-activist types in the seventies.

A revolution is brewing at Starbucks store No. 7356.

The grandson of a truck-driving Teamster, Gross may have a predisposition toward rabble-rousing. He was even fired from a Green Corps gig for what he claims was pro-union activity. “I’ve had every bad job,” he says. “I’ve been a delivery person, worked in tree care. Borders Books was my first introduction into the reality of multinational corporate employment.” And soon after his arrival in New York, he decided to infiltrate Starbucks.

When Gross walked into the store for his first morning shift, he was dismayed–and encouraged–by what he saw. Just three workers were completely slammed with businesspeople for the A.M. rush. “In this kind of job,” he says, “you expect to work hard, but you don’t necessarily expect to go home feeling like you just ran a marathon.”

Gross spotted a likely fellow traveler in Anthony Polanco, 23, another new hire with a bad-job r

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BC: It’s Time to Build A Mass Movement

…There is only one place America’s next progressive mass movement can come from. There is only one identifiable constituency with a bedrock majority of its citizens in long term historical opposition to our nation’s imperial adventures overseas. This is America’s black one-eighth. While majorities of all Americans do believe in universal health care, the right to organize unions, high quality public education, a living wage, and that retirement security available to everyone ought to be government policy, and many even believe America is locking up too many people for too long, support for these propositions is virtually unanimous among African Americans….

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Haitian Students Back on the Streets

Port-au-Prince – Students from the State University are back protesting on the streets on the capital, Port-au-Prince. Over a year since the previous object of their anger – President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – left the country, the students are now turning up the heat on the current interim government, blaming it for increases in the cost of living.

Some students are also taking aim at members of the business elite who, they say, are the ones now holding the reins of power. The powerful influence of the private sector is being blamed for the worsening living conditions for the poor majority.

In the last months of 2003 and early 2004, students were in the forefront of the mass street protests that undermined the legitimacy of the Lavalas Family party government. Weakened by the protest movement that united disaffected sectors from different social classes, that government collapsed in the face of an armed insurgency, and President Aristide left the country on 29 February 2004.

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Z Magazine: Tent State University at Rutgers

The third annual Tent State University took place at Rutgers University the week of April 18, 2005. The demonstration had support from students, student groups, the Administration, faculty, and legislators. The basic message of their mission statement was: “Education, Not War.” Throughout the week, students attended workshops in the day, danced to bands in the evening, and camped in tents all night.

What is Tent State University?

Tent State University (TSU) was launched in 2003 at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N . Its purpose was to stop drastic state budget cuts to higher education that were pending in the wake of the war on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Following the activities of the local antiwar movement, a coalition of over 50 student groups, faculty, and staff unions came together o support the event. For 5 days, hundreds of students built and maintained a tent city with over 75 tents on Voorhees Mall (the largest and most traveled class area on campus), symbolizing the displacement of Higher Education in NJ. During the event, Rutgers students were organized to place thousands of calls to legislators in opposition to the dismantling of higher education and impending tuition increases. This legislative strategy was complimented by a wide array of activities, from alternative day-time classes to live bands and a variety of other performances every night.

TSU was more than just a protest. It merged the creation of an alternative “university” system and the most significant cultural festival at RU, all built around the recognition of education as a fundamental human right one that is compromised by war. Repeated in 2004 and now established as an annual event, TSU has been acknowledged as critical in helping to stop budget cuts and curtail tuition increases at Rutgers and throughout New Jersey

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