Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Interview: Student Strike Organizers at NYU

2006; University of Texas Press; Volume: 45; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cj.2006.0041

1527-2087

Jonathan Buchsbaum, Penny Lewis, Michael Palm, Asad Raza, Tricia Lawler, Elena Gorfinkel,

Labor Movements and Unions

Interview:Student Strike Organizers at NYU Jonathan Buchsbaum (bio), Penny Lewis (bio), Michael Palm (bio), Asad Raza (bio), Tricia Lawler (bio), and Elena Gorfinkel (bio) Interview with organizers of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, Local 2110, United Auto Workers, New York University. January 5, 2005 JONATHAN BUCHSBAUM (JB): Were all of you aware of the existence of GSOC once you got here? ELENA GORFINKEL (EG): Our stipends were being raised to try to ward off the organizing efforts, [so] you knew that this had to do with the organizing that was going on. AZAD RAZA (AR): The year I began teaching I believe was the first year in which our contract was governing what was happening. And not only did I get a large raise but also health benefits for the first time, which was manna from heaven for me at the time because I had been spending $1200 a year paying NYU for health insurance out of my $12,000 stipend, and it had been a real problem. When I began teaching it coincided with unionization and then later we ended up getting a check for a retroactive increase in our stipend that same year because of our negotiations. For me, the timing of it was such to make the union appear to be the best thing that happened to me in graduate school. Even so I did not become active in organizing until this past year when I became aware that our contract was going to expire. And it looked like the university was going to try to de-recognize us and that was the point at which I became really adamant. In fact, I started talking to people in my own department about how important it was going to be that we stick together if we did have to strike in the spring. . . . The year before I was working on the [Presidential] election campaign. And then that having ended, the idea that the Bush NLRB was going to now make an incursion into my own life. . . . He had already affected my life in a way, in that my mother lost her job because of funding cuts to federal programs. But when I realized this was now going to come home to roost at NYU, it just sort made me that much more adamant and that much more excited to get involved in this. JB: Do you feel you're part of a larger union movement? MICHAEL PALM (MP): We've been intimately linked with the Columbia campaign. But other unions definitely recognize this strike as important for their future. And they've been sending money and organizers since the strike started. We've had people down here from Yale for months who have been working full time on our campaign. People have come from the University of Illinois, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin. Sunday night, four or five people are going to come down again from the University of Massachusetts to help out next week to get things ready for the beginning of our semester. So, even people in public grad unions really see this as a kind of bellwether fight for the future of academic labor generally. [End Page 86] AR: We were the first private university to unionize in the nation, and so not only have we been linked closely with other private university unions, but the sense that we've gotten as the pioneer, in some ways, has always been that what happens to us is going to show which way the wind is blowing in the labor movement generally and in the larger political climate of the country. So I would even go so far as to say that what's happening here has made me more radicalized in favor of protecting our union because I actually do remember before we had a union contract how bad working conditions were, and have seen with my own eyes how much better they've become since we've had a union. And there's a strong desire to spread that benefit to graduate students at lots of other universities where we all know graduate students. TRICIA LAWLER (TL): Having come from a background of...