Striking NYU graduate students rally

Newsday reports:

Striking New York University graduate students and supporters rallied in Washington Square Park on Wednesday to demand that the university negotiate a union contract …

About 1,000 teaching and research assistants had been represented by Local 2110 of the United Automobile Workers from 2000 until August of this year, when NYU said it would no longer recognize a graduate student union based on a policy reversal by the National Labor Relations Board [i.e., the Bush administration].

In other words, NYU is getting away with this because the Bush administration told them that they no longer had to recognize the graduate student union.

See also Democracy Now.

The strike has gained the attention of the national labor movement. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Auto Workers, are both expected to attend a rally today outside the N.Y.U. library at noon.

For years, N.Y.U. has been at the forefront of a nationwide struggle to organize graduate student assistants. In 2000, the National Labor Relations Board gave the N.Y.U. students the right to unionize making N.Y.U. the first private university to have a graduate student employee union. The students are on strike because earlier this year the school stopped recognizing the union after the labor board reversed its policy on graduate student unions.

Please pass this information along and help support the strike.

Other references:

• Online petition.
  
  I'm number 946. Perhaps I should have waited to be 1000. New names are being added at the rate of at least one per minute. Go to the page and hit the refresh button to watch.
  
  As a matter of technical interest, the petition is hosted by Petitions Online, a web site that describes itself as providing "free online hosting of public petitions for responsible public advocacy." The NYU graduate student petition is listed as their 7^th most active.
  
  
• Press archive.
  
  
• GSOC STRIKE CENTER.