Grad Student Union, Columbia Agree On Bargaining Framework

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY — Columbia University graduate students attempting to unionize have reached a breakthrough with the ivy league institution's administration and are on track to begin collective bargianing in early 2019, union officials announced .

The Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW and Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-UAW voted Tuesday to approve a framework agreement with the university that will end Columbia's legal challenge of the unions with the National Labor Relations Board and recognize about 5,000 graduate and research assistants as union members, union officials said Wednesday.

"We are proud that our preparation for further strike action led Columbia to finally recognize our unions," Rosalie Ray, a Columbia PhD Candidate andmember of the GWC-UAW bargaining committee, said in a statement. "Columbia has opposed bargaining with research assistants and teaching assistants for more than 17 years."

The process toward collective bargaining between the university and union members took a huge leap forward earlier this month when Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and Provost John Coatsworth announced that the school and union representatives struck a deal on a framework agreement to allow collective bargaining.

Under the framework agreement, Columbia agreed to commence collective bargaining for student assistants and postdoctoral researchers no later than Feburary 26, 2016 so long as union members agreed not to strike or disrupt university operations until after April 6, 2020, university officials announced on Nov. 19.

The unions had planned a strike for Dec. 4 if Columbia University continued its previous attempts to block collective bargainign.

At the beginning of 2018, the prospects for such an agreement seemed grim. In February, Coatsworth sent an email to the Columbia University community stating that the administration was "deeply concerned" with an outside party — the United Auto Workers — being involved in "academic and intellectual judgments by faculty members."

Graduate students have been fighting for collective bargaining at Columbia University for years. In December 2016, 3,000 teaching and graduate assistants voted 72 percent in favor to to join the newly-created Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers Union. In October 2018, 2,000 postdoctoral researchers voted by a margin of 68 percent in favor of Columbia Postdoctoral Workers-Auto Workers Union.

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