For the last six weeks, graduate student workers at Columbia University have walked a picket line at the school’s Manhattan campus as they seek to negotiate a union contract that includes a living wage, better health care, and greater protections against harassment and discrimination. There has been music and dancing and marching and a giant inflatable fat cat perched atop a red car. Reports from the picket line take an overwhelming uplifting tone, and morale appears high, but this is a testament to the dedication and energy of the organizers—because the bare facts of the case are bleak. In 2014, I watched members of this union deliver a letter to the university president that asked him to voluntarily recognize their union. Now, seven years later, 3,000 members of Student Workers of Columbia are out on strike—currently the largest strike in the United States, in a year of many. That seven-year interval is a sign of the glacially paced tug-of-war that has defined the decades-long struggle of graduate employees to unionize.
The 20-Year Fight to Unionize Graduate Student Workers
