Two weeks after the University proposed moving negotiations with the union into mediation, the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers accepted the offer. The SWC-UAW and the University anticipate that moving negotiations on their first labor contract in front of a neutral third party will help bridge the remaining disagreements between the parties.
The SWC-UAW bargaining committee members hope that mediation will produce a fair agreement that will include many of their major proposals. While federal mediation last spring was not widely supported by the union, the committee’s choice to accept the University’s offer to move into mediation happened only after a vote among the general body of the union supported the decision.
“Mediation was garbage last time,” Lilian Coie, a sixth-year doctoral student in neurobiology and a member of the bargaining committee, said. “We are going to start anew, and we wanted to start with a mediator that has built a reputation and has decades of experience in higher ed.”
In the third week of striking, the SWC-UAW resolves to move into mediation with hopes of substantial movement toward an agreement
