A number of graduate students at New York University are skipping their classes in favor of the picket line in an attempt to gain recognition as a union.
NYU's Graduate Student Organizing Committee began a work stoppage today in an effort to renegotiate a three-year contract that expired Aug. 31.
Members of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania will be joining GSOC in the strike, which organizers say will last an indefinite amount of time.
"We made many efforts to ask [NYU] to negotiate with us, and we are prepared to go out [today] and stop working until they volunteer to negotiate in good faith," said Susan Valentine, a History graduate student and member of the GSOC organizing committee.
The NYU strike comes on the heels of a similar one at the school in August, during which 77 protesters were arrested. That strike coincided with the contract's expiration.
The school initially agreed to recognize the graduate student union after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate students had the right to unionize.
However, in 2004, the NLRB overturned its previous decision, stating that the school was no longer obligated to negotiate with students.
The latest conflict came to a head yesterday when 25 faculty members met with NYU President John Sexton to discuss the impending strike but neither side could come up with a compromise.
A group of faculty members from NYU recently sent a letter to Sexton.
"If the union is not restored, we will have no peace on this campus for years to come," it read.
After the group's original contract expired, talk of a possible strike began when 800 graduate students signed a letter expressing a desire to renegotiate their union status but NYU administrators did not meet their demands.
On Oct. 31, 85 percent of the graduate students who voted in a strike-authorization meeting were in favor of a strike.
Bill Herman, a spokesman for GET-UP, said that the strike's length ultimately depends on the administration.
"NYU has the power to end the strike on their own, and, should they choose to negotiate, it will be easy," Herman said, adding that NYU graduate students "already had four years under a contract, and it went pretty smoothly."
Herman said that in addition to GET-UP, he is confident that Yale, Columbia and Rutgers' graduate-student groups will all support the strike directly.
"We think there will be lots of support and lots of people will be on the picket lines, including faculty and undergraduates," Valentine said.
However, some are skeptical as to how effective the strike will be.
"At some point, one has to stop trying to mend the past and turn to the future, and that's the point that we've come to now," NYU spokesman John Beckman was quoted as saying in the Washington Square News, NYU's student newspaper.
In addition to sending members in support of the strike, GET-UP will be hosting a protest at 36th and Walnut streets from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow to show its support for the cause.
Penn officials remain resolute in their decision to not recognize a graduate-student union.
"We believe graduate students are students, not employees, and don't need to be represented by a third party," Penn spokeswoman Lori Doyle said.
