The strike
The lines for the elevators in the Silver Center usually stretch all the way across the entrance floor of the building during the major breaks between classes. Once the lines came out the doors and circled around the corner. Yesterday I walked right in my usual door and all the way across the hall; no more than ten people were in line. Only about half of the usual thirty or so students in my Amfic class showed up. Could this have anything to do with the graduate students marching in a circle chanting “No contracts, no work, no peace*” to the beat of (practically) plastic pickle tubs outside of the entrances?
A number of TAs went on strike Wednesday morning at 8 to protest NYU’s refusal to renew their contracts that expired in August. Since the National Labor Relations Board reversed the ruling that private universities must recognize graduate student unions, NYU has decided that graduates are students first, and then workers, and as such have no right to unionize. The graduate students want contracts to ensure their health benefits and salaries; NYU refuses to negotiate with the union because it wants a say in academic matters as well.
Although I support my TAs and their strike, I still went to class. I’m not going to the classes that they usually teach if someone is hired to take their place (right now, my Amfic and ConWest TAs are striking; I believe my NatSci TA will continue to hold lab, though), but I fully intend to continue going to the classes taught by the professors. It is, after all, their responsibility to teach the students, and it is our responsibility to attend class and learn from them.
My mother seemed upset yesterday morning when I said I wasn’t going to to the two recitations. It is true that my scholarship is contingent upon my maintaining a certain GPA, which certainly won’t happen if I fail two of my classes for refusing to turn in papers to the scabs. Luckily, I don’t think NYU has had time to hire any replacement TAs yet. My Amfic professor had looked in to moving the class off campus, so she definitely supports the strike, and she said that she would not count absences from recitation during the strike against us. She also said she’d grade our next papers, which means we may actually complete the course. My ConWest professor also seemed in favor of the strike, so I hope she won’t expect us to go to recitations not taught by our TAs. I planned, after hearing my mother’s disapproving tone yesterday morning, to at least go to the classes for a few minutes to see if anyone had been hired and what we students were expected to do about it, but after seeing the TAs marching around like that in the cold, I decided that I could not. It would be against my moral standards to go, and I refuse to violate them. NYU has no right to put students in such a position that they have to jeopardize their personal morals for financial reasons. They’re just buying support based on the fact that so many kids need to attend classes in order to maintain sufficient GPAs.
Czech this out for a complete explanation of the strike.
*Not necessarily exact quotation—it’s difficult to distinguish words shouted en masse.
[Title for this post taken from Dreiser.]
November 11th, 2005 at 7:11pm
Wow, that’s pretty messed up. I suppose NYU’s administration is pretty bad as well. Most of the students/professors/TAs hate the administration here, but at least they don’t go on strike or anything.
On that page you linked, one of the links was:
Students Asked to Report on TA’s Absences
That’s kind of pitting students against their TAs like you mentioned in your post. It’s like those events where kids report their own parents for doing “unculturally sound” things.
And, I lost my point so I’ll just stop now.
November 12th, 2005 at 2:34am
Yes, I saw that link. They make it seem like you can call for support if your class is canceled, but they really just want to know what the TAs are doing. It’s a shame that the administration and the faculty can’t get along.
November 12th, 2005 at 6:44am
Hi A
Just FYI, the administration says we interfered in academic decision making. But notice they never really tell you how, or in what way. They’ve only managed to come up with two examples, buried deep in the provost’s website:
http://www.nyu.edu/provost/ga/uaw-grievances.html. And these are bad examples, because they are grievances that NYU won anyway. NYU just wants to get rid of our union, no matter what, and “academic affairs” is a paper-thin excuse.
grad student
November 13th, 2005 at 2:57pm
Oh, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I don’t support the strike. I am definitely on the side of the graduate students, I just can’t afford to strike with them. Thanks for the information though. That “interfering in academic decision-making” bit was keeping my mother from calling to complain to John Sexton.
November 14th, 2005 at 9:22am
Well, I hope she called Sexton to complain. I can’t emphasize enough what a bunch of nonsense the academic interference charge is. Just for your info, even thogh you might know all this already: the two cases NYU complains about were cases where they hired non-NYU graduate students or law school students to lead recitation sections, but paid them as “adjuncts” (which is much less money and doesn’t include health coverage, for example). The union claimed that these teachers should be paid at the TA rate, rather than at the much lower adjunct pay rate, since they were doing TA work, i.e. leading recitations. The union didn’t make an argument about WHO should be hired to teach these classes, much less what they should teach, it just said that whoever NYU hired should be paid at the TA rate. That’s all. It’s hard to see why these two cases constitute some absolute obstacle towards negotiating a second contract. Basically, the “academic interference” thing is just a tactic designed to play on stereotypes about unions (i.e., “autoworkers” who don’t know about education) and that’s why they don’t ever give examples to back it up. But GSOC is run by grad students! Anyway, that’s my spiel. Thanks for supporting us.