Editor's note: This story was originally published by Columbia Spectator.
By Nelson Gomez, Caitlin Blanchfield, Ali Ugurlu, Rachel Meirs, Jeff Sherman, Naye Idriss, Laura Veit, and George Kimson
April 09, 2019
On Feb. 6 and 7, members of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers came together at the ballot box. We elected new members of our Bargaining Committee and voted overwhelmingly in support of two provisions to ensure open and transparent bargaining between our union and the Columbia management. The referenda were a precedent-setting victory for our union members. We sought to learn from previous negative experiences in other academic unions, when key aspects of negotiations with employers took place over the summer while large numbers of workers were not on campus. The practice was especially problematic in the case of the University of California’s graduate workers, whose most recent contract—by most indications a losing and regressive one—was negotiated and voted on during the summer of 2018.
Now, only weeks later, a petition is afoot to circumvent the democratic process and give the Bargaining Committee the illegitimate authority to ignore the referendum against bargaining over the summer. This petition is much more dangerous than an attempt to influence the opinion of workers within GWC-UAW; instead of calling for a re-vote on summer bargaining, which would be a reasonable course of action, the petitioners explicitly reject this option. In seeking that the Bargaining Committee undermine a union vote, the members behind the petition are setting a dangerous precedent within GWC-UAW, one that allows any democratic decision of its members to simply be sidestepped and ignored if the union’s leadership sees it fit to do so. A one-sided petition is not a substitute for a democratic vote.
Read the full story on Columbia Spectator.
