Tensions run high at hearing on Columbia grad union petition

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Capital NY

By Conor Skelding

A lawyer representing the United Auto Workers in its attempt to organize Columbia University's graduate students became incensed during a labor board hearing Thursday when the opposing attorneys continued talking as he tried to respond to one of their arguments.

"Are you done discussing this with each other, so I can finish my comments?" Thomas Meiklejohn said to Edward Brill and Bernard Plum of the Proskauer Rose L.L.P., which is representing the university. "If you want to talk between each other that's fine, but I'd like to complete my response."

Moments before, Plum had called the Graduate Workers of Columbia, an organizing committee under U.A.W.'s international union and Local 2110, a "charade" and a "shell game." G.W.C.'s name is on the organizing petition but an international representative signed it. "We think the petitioner is the U.A.W.," Plum said.

Meiklejohn called Plum's characterization "very disrespectful to the individuals who intiated this campaign, treating them as if they don't know what they want."

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/04/8565415/tensions-run-high-hearing-columbia-grad-union-petition

[Dustlawyer]

1. Go unions!

[HardLineDem]

2. Grad students are used primarily as cheap labor

C'mon -- anyone who has been a grad student knows that academic research and teaching run on the cheap labor provided by grad students. They work for minimal pay as teaching assistants in courses where the nominal instructor could not possibly attend to the questions of every student, and could not possibly grade every quiz or assignment. They work for practically nothing as research assistants in the hope that having their names among those of the secondary authors on research papers will pay off somehow in their later careers.

[salib]

4. Not even close to the amount and value of cheap labor from "Adjunct" faculty.

I.e., the academic gypsies.

[BrotherIvan]

3. Wow

Universities are trembling at this idea. How on earth will they justify the soaring cost of tuition without free labor??