NYU AGREES: WE'RE WORKERS

After years of pressure from our union, the NYU administration is reversing its stance of the past ten years and recognizing that graduate teaching is work.

The NYU administration now claims that graduate employees who teach are eligible to join ACT-UAW Local 7902, the union for adjunct faculty. By enacting FAR 4 and proposing our membership in the adjunct union, the NYU administration is not seeking to acknowledge or protect all of the work that graduate employees perform on campus. The terms and conditions of a GSOC/UAW Local 2110 contract are specific to the situation of graduate employees and our work - which includes more than just teaching. Not all graduate employee positions will be eligible for protection under the adjunct contract.

GSOC/UAW LOCAL 2110 = THE UNION FOR NYU GRAD EMPLOYEES

Developed behind closed doors by an undisclosed group of NYU administrators, the restructuring - called FAR4 in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - is a poorly conceived and hastily implemented attempt at union-busting that GSOC/UAW Local 2110 finds unconscionable, both in the circumstances of its development and its content.

As the union for graduate employees at NYU, GSOC/UAW Local 2110 demands that President John Sexton and the NYU administration acknowledge our internationally recognized right to collective bargaining. As graduate employees, have the right to have a say in our working conditions, including how much we are paid, the amount of work we perform, and the quality and content of our health care and other benefits.

THE TIME IS NOW

In 2002, GSOC/UAW Local 2110 became the first graduate employees in the United States to negotiate a union contract with a private university. Highlights from our first contract included an average raise in pay of almost forty percent across departments; the establishment of a straight-forward grievance procedure; guaranteed health care, paid sick leave and bereavement leave; and subsidized child-care. However, a partisan 2004 ruling by Bush appointees on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) gave NYU legal cover to refuse to renegotiate a new contract by classifying graduate employees as "students" and not "workers" deserving of legal protection.

This decision (Brown University) reversed a bipartisan NLRB decision made only four years earlier, in which graduate employees at private universities were classified as both students and workers - just as graduate employees at public universities have been for over thirty years.

Now, following the election of Barack Obama, the political and legal climate is favorable for restoring our collective bargaining rights.

GSOC CONTRACT NOW

No matter how attractive certain aspects of the financial restructuring may seem, without a legally binding union contract ratified by GSOC/UAW Local 2110 members, the NYU administration maintains the unilateral power to decide our wages, benefits and working conditions. Only a GSOC/UAW Local 2110 contract can guarantee secure wages, benefits and working conditions for all NYU graduate employees, including teaching assistants, research assistants, graduate assistants, program assistants, graders and more.

We are only as strong as our membership. Contact our union to become more involved or if you have been asked to adjunct by your department.

gsocuaw@gmail.com or 212-529-2580.