Graduate Student Organizing Committee - 2005-2006 Strike

2005-2006 Strike

In 2004, a newly constituted NLRB voted 3-2 to reverse its 2000 NYU decision in a case involving graduate assistants at Brown University. The Republican-controlled board stated in their decision that "there is a significant risk, even a strong likelihood, that the collective-bargaining process will be detrimental to the educational process." The dissenting opinion stated that "Today's decision is woefully out of touch with contemporary academic reality", and further that "It disregards the plain language of" Section 2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, which "defines employees so broadly that graduate students who perform services for, and under the control of, their universities are easily covered". Soon thereafter, NYU asked members of the university community for feedback regarding whether it ought to negotiate a second contract with GSOC upon the August 31, 2005 expiration of the first.

On August 5, 2005, NYU announced its decision not to negotiate with GSOC. Its primary grounds for this decision were the claim that GSOC had filed several grievances on non-academic matters regarding teaching assignments and that it had offered to negotiate with GSOC as long as the union would agree, before the start of negotiations, to surrender the previous contract’s third-party arbitration and agency shop provisions and become an "open shop" union, common in many southern states but largely without precedent in New York. However, on an official website devoted to the labor dispute, NYU to date has only cited two "non-academic" grievances, both of which were decided in the University's favor by an independent arbitrator appointed by both sides.

In response, GSOC argued that without rights to third-party contract arbitration and an agency-shop provision, the contract offer would render the union virtually powerless to represent its members, a union in name only. The union also dismissed NYU's claims of disruptive grievances, arguing that the grievances to which the administration referred were economic disputes in which some graduate students were given the same jobs as in previous semesters, but reclassified as lower-paid adjunct professors not covered by the union contract. The union argued that this was not only damaging to graduate employees' wages and benefits, but a deliberate tactic to weaken the union by depriving it of members. The union also said that the administration had only given it 48 hours to respond to its “ultimatum” and that the GSOC leadership, due to union policy, could not agree to contract terms without the consent of their members.

After several months without a contract, GSOC held a strike vote in which, according to GSOC representatives, 85 percent of those voting approved a strike. The strike began on November 9, 2005 and lasted through the entire spring semester. It is thought to have been the longest strike by academic workers at a college or university in U.S. history.

In response to the Brown decision, NYU’s decision not to negotiate, the strike, and the administration’s response, several GSOC-supportive groups have formed at NYU to call upon president John Sexton to end the strike by negotiating a new contract. More than 200 faculty members - including prominent physicist Alan Sokal, who has written several essays voicing his opinion on the situation - have joined a group called Faculty Democracy .

Student support of GSOC has been mixed. Undergraduates supporting GSOC have formed Graduate/Undergraduate Solidarity, and law students have formed Law/Grad Solidarity.

The unions of adjunct faculty members, office support staff, security personnel, and other NYU employees have variously supported GSOC.

On April 27, 2006, GSOC announced at a membership convention that a public majority of its members continued to support the union and had signed a petition which called on the University Leadership Team to bargain a second contract. After the convention, 43 GSOC members and 14 supporters engaged in an act of civil disobedience and were arrested for blocking traffic.

GSOC members resumed their teaching duties on September 5, 2006 (the first day of classes for the 2006-2007 academic year), officially ending their six-month-long strike without receiving a second contract or winning back administrative recognition of the union's collective bargaining rights. The administration had recognized these rights prior to the August 31, 2005 contract expiration.

GSOC, through the UAW, funded a failed lawsuit against the developer of a future NYU dorm. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were community members, but a large portion of the legal fees were provided by the UAW, which was not named on the lawsuit. The suit was dismissed on Sept. 22, 2006.