In this panel discussion, DSA members from several religious traditions share their perspectives on the importance of religion for sustaining, inspiring, and organizing political movement on the Left. Speakers for this event include Asad Dandia (Muslim), Ty Kiatathikom (Buddhist), Clyde Grubbs (Unitarian Universalist), Marie Venner (Catholic). This event was moderated by Nicole-Ann Lobo.

To the NPC of Democratic Socialists of America, the publishers of Democratic Left, and the Rutgers University community,

Central NJ DSA and North NJ DSA were alarmed to see that Democratic Left, a publication of the Democratic Socialists of America, recently published a piece by Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway, a man notorious for fighting against union demands.¹While this article has since been taken down and replaced, we are calling on Democratic Left to publish pieces by Rutgers educators and workers who are involved in its union contract campaigns. It is imperative that the DSA uplift the voices of working people, especially those challenging men like Holloway and the values they uphold. Going forward, it is vital that the NPC and Democratic Left do not undercut the labor and housing work of local chapters.

Central NJ and North NJ DSA are deeply involved in solidarity work with the Rutgers University unions, like AAUP-AFT, PTLFC-AAUP-AFT, BHSNJ-AAUP, URA-AFT, and other unions that represent the thousands of workers at Rutgers University that are working without a contract. Some of those workers are our own members. As an employer, Rutgers University has failed to bargain in good faith or offer dignified terms for the workers.

The decision to feature Holloway’s introduction to the 2023 edition of The Souls of Black Folk is a severe misjudgment on behalf of the editorial team at Democratic Left, in light of Holloway’s obstinate resistance to recognize the validity of union organizing and workers’ demands. As president of Rutgers, Holloway has been breaking the power of campus unions, even recently releasing a statement pitting workers against students and their families. He has been running the University for the benefit of predatory developers and business interests, without regard for the needs of the workers, students, or surrounding communities. None of these despicable actions are new – Holloway has established himself as an anti-union zealot as a dean at Yale, before his time at Rutgers, dragging with him a history of brutal and unnecessary layoffs.

Throughout the union contract campaign at Rutgers, our chapters have been striving, alongside the unions, to bring together faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members into a broad coalition against Holloway’s vision of a corporate university. Furthermore, we have united unions’ struggle with local tenant struggles, and built strong connections that we will leverage in our chapter’s long term work. President Holloway is a representative of the system we stand against. In direct opposition to the coalition-building work of our local chapters, we were shocked to learn that Democratic Left chose to publish an article written by Holloway and centering his views on socialism on the same day as the Rutgers’ unions rallied in Newark. This decision undermined the important solidarity and coalition work of our chapters. It is evident there was little research done into Holloway’s work before Democratic Left published this piece and the negligence to properly evaluate the credentials of a writer and historian shows a profound lack of coordination between National DSA and local chapters.

On February 28th, the faculty union held a rally in Newark to denounce the university administration for their greed and intransigence, to show unity among workers and the broader community, and to begin the union’s historic strike vote. It was a powerful event, the culmination of many months of enduring work, and DSA showed up in force to connect with fellow workers and offer our vision of a just and dignified society, a society in which educators and workers at Rutgers are compensated for their labor that sustains the university as a place for education and learning. Holloway’s vision, alongside others in his administration, is to find ways to pay workers as little as possible, all the while speaking about fairness in the most superficial terms.

President Holloway, who receives a salary of $1.2 million dollars, is hypocritical for reflecting on the legacy of socialist luminary W.E.B. DuBois while the workers he is responsible for negotiating with struggle to pay their bills.² In his 1918 article, “The Black Man and the Unions,” DuBois lauds the power of unionizing. “Collective bargaining has, undoubtedly, raised modern labor from something like chattel slavery to the threshold of industrial freedom, and in this advance of labor white and black have shared.”³

It was a mistake to invite Holloway to provide the introduction to The Souls of Black Folk because of his long history of failing to live up to the standards set forth by DuBois’ work and writings and by the other authors involved, who themselves represent a radical and more just vision of society. It bears reiterating that Holloway’s trail of destruction for everyday working people at the institutions he’s been part of extends far. Examples once more include Holloway’s disastrous tenure as Dean of Yale College during the 2017 hunger strikes of Yale graduate workers demanding better wages and working conditions, as Provost of Northwestern University amidst the 2019 “discussions” surrounding racist visiting lecturer Satoshi Kanazawa, and currently President of Rutgers during the Covid-19 pandemic when he laid off more than a thousand union workers as part of a broader “austerity” while him and others retained their own exorbitant salaries.⁴Resisting calls for divestment at Rutgers, Holloway has also strengthened institutional ties to Israel and the American military-industrial complex through a tech partnership with Tel Aviv University, opening the door to taxpayer funded weapons research.⁵ Holloway fails to achieve the wisdom and fraternity championed by DuBois. If he wants to live up to the socialist and anti-imperialist vision of DuBois, Holloway must settle a fair contract with the workers, and end the displacement and exploitation of the local communities.

For these reasons and more, we are reiterating our demand for President Holloway to quit pitting worker power against a prosperous Rutgers University and working class New Jerseyans and for Democratic Left, part of our own organization, DSA, to publish the insights and analysis of Rutgers workers.

In Solidarity,

Central New Jersey DSA
North New Jersey DSA

1. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/another-black-history-month-ends-what-will-we-do/ 
2. https://www.nj.com/education/2020/01/12m-a-house-and-a-car-what-are-the-other-perks-the-new-rutgers-president-will-receive.html 
3. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-black-man-and-the-unions/ 
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/opinion/why-yale-graduate-students-are-on-a-hunger-strike.html, https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/01/24/campus/holloway-defends-academic-freedom-saying-kanazawas-removal-would-make-matters-worse/, https://www.nj.com/opinion/2023/01/rutgers-prioritizes-union-busting-and-gaslighting-public-health-care-workers-opinion.html 
5. https://bdsmovement.net/news/academia-weapons-and-occupation-how-tel-aviv-university-serves-interests-israeli-military-and 

The post Joint Statement from Central NJ and North NJ DSA appeared first on Central NJ DSA.

Teachers and Community Defeat Stealth OUSD School Closure and Layoff Plan

By Michael Sebastian

On Tuesday February 28, with only 24 hours notice, OUSD board president Mike Hutchinson called a special meeting to consider resolutions relating to “Budget Adjustments” and a “Classified Employee Reduction in Work Force.” These resolutions, which Hutchinson negotiated in private with the district superintendent in the midst of teacher contract talks, would have cut 100 classified positions (translators, social workers, restorative justice counselors), enacted a district-wide hiring freeze, and merged ten schools in the district. Rapid-response organizing by Oakland teachers and the community helped defeat both resolutions, with candidates endorsed by the Oakland Education Association (OEA), Bachelor, Brouhard, and Williams, voting against. Board member Thompson joined Board President Hutchinson in the votes, while board member Davis abstained. 

Tuesday’s emergency meeting comes on the heels of the recent victory reversing planned school closures. Hutchinson had supported that earlier resolution, but angered many when he joined the superintendent in bringing forward the latest austerity proposal. At a time when OUSD has ample funding, the community loudly rejected the idea of cutting resources, schools, and jobs for the district instead of directing that funding to meet the needs of our students, as demanded by OEA.

OEA has presented the district with a list of common good demands to strengthen Oakland’s public schools and protect students as they bargain for a new contract. The resolutions presented on Tuesday are viewed as pitting teachers against other staff employees in order to unfairly strengthen the district’s hand at the bargaining table. “Tuesday’s proposal, cutting mainly from SEIU and AFSCME jobs within the district, was meant to create false antagonism between workers and weaken support for teachers and their demands,” said Lexi Ross, who co-chairs East Bay DSA’s OEA solidarity group. “OUSD has received $54 million in new state funding this year. Allocating that funding to fulfill teacher’s demands and cutting from the bloated administrative budget would eliminate any need for the cuts presented on Tuesday.” 

The magnitude of OUSD’s administrative expenditures has been a major point of contention. Comparing Oakland’s administrative budget to Santa Ana Unified, a district with 10,000 more students, Oakland spends $20 million more on administrative salaries. Instead of cutting needed jobs and resources from our schools, the district could “chop from the top”, cut the administrative bloat and be able to provide the common good demands that OEA is bargaining for.

At the meeting, community members voiced unanimous opposition to the cuts. Most public comments expressed dismay and exasperation that the district continues to fight to defund our schools when there are safety and resource issues district wide. Many mentioned the egregious amount that OUSD spends on administrative positions and its central office. Shane Ruiz, co-chair of East Bay DSA had this warning for board members voting in support of this budget at Tuesday’s meeting: “Networks are forming, people are watching, and come November people will be held accountable.”

The district’s efforts to pit educators against other essential school workers, and its claims that a long-deserved raise for teachers must come at the cost of layoffs, school closures or mergers may run afoul of state labor laws. Last year, OEA filed an unfair labor practice charge with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) when Budget and Finance Director Lisa Grant Dawson sent an email stating that the district would have to close and merge 12 schools to give teachers a raise. 

In a recent Oaklandside article, followed by a Facebook live stream, Mike Hutchinson stated: “Unfortunately for our budget, it’s a zero-sum game. In order for us to create resources to prioritize new and different things, we have to create those resources by making budget adjustments.” On his Facebook live stream Hutchinson also claimed that he was going to deliver an “historic” raise for teachers, but unless the budget with layoffs was approved the district wouldn’t have the money for those raises. Statements like these could set up an impasse similar to the unfair labor practice charge that OEA filed last year. 

The current round of contract negotiations have apparently stalled, with the district not meeting with OEA, the teachers’ union, since February 15, due to a lack of new proposals to bargain over. With little to show for months of negotiations with the district, OEA and its sister union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, are planning to walk out of “PD” or professional development sessions to attend simultaneous community rallies.

The community is invited to join educators at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Wednesday, March 15 from 2pm-6pm to demand that OUSD bargain in good faith.

 The contract covering over 30,000 workers through the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY expired late last month, and members of the union are joining with CUNY students, alumni, and the NYC community to fight for a new contract that will not only improve working conditions for CUNY’s faculty and staff but also move toward a more equitable, just, and vibrant public university system in the largest city in the country. On tonight’s show, we speak with rank and file organizers Zoe and Evan on how PSC members are organizing for raises, justice, and community in a contract that reflects The People’s CUNY.
 

View upcoming actions and ways to support PSC-CUNY in their contract struggle at https://linktr.ee/psc.cuny.

Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT Call on Norfolk Southern to Fully Fund East Palestine Cleanup, Compensate Residents and Meet Railroad Workers’ Demands!

For centuries, railroad companies like Norfolk Southern have prioritized profits for the capitalist class over the health and safety of their workers and the general public. Railroad workers endure notoriously brutal workplace conditions, are often expected to work on-call around the clock, and frequently suffer fatal accidents due to overwork and exhaustion. Meanwhile, as profits for billionaire shareholders rise, companies like Norfolk Southern continue to lobby in favor of industry deregulation and cutting corners – resulting in the slashing of maintenance, staffing, and equipment inspections as average train sizes increase – proving they see railroad workers as expendable.

In response to this exploitation, a majority of railroad workers nationwide rose up this past fall to reject an inadequate union contract which excluded crucial demands like sick leave and an end to Precision Scheduled Railroading. While workers prepared to strike, U.S. government officials invoked the antiquated Railroad Labor Act (RLA) to deny over 100,000 railroad workers the right to strike and tyrannically impose the unacceptable contract. Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT stand in full solidarity with the railroad workers, who continue to fight for better working conditions and reject Congress’s blatant labor rights violations.

Decades of deregulation have culminated in the derailment of multiple trains over the last month – including the horrendous incident on February 3rd during which a Northfolk Southern 32N train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, leading to a fire and subsequent evacuation of thousands of residents. This derailment was neither an “accident” nor “unavoidable”, as the Northfolk Southern executives would have you believe. On the contrary, this violent wreck – which endangered working people, contaminated drinking water, and even led to mass death of local wildlife – was the direct result of capitalist deregulation, attacks on workers’ rights, and the valuation of profits over the environment and human life. 

Atlanta DSA and YDSA GT join Railroad Workers United in calling for the immediate action of regulatory agencies and Congress to rein in Class One railroad corporations and pass legislation to place railroads under public ownership.

Additionally, we demand the following of Norfolk Southern, which is headquartered in Atlanta: 

1. Fund a massive clean up effort in the area around East Palestine to ensure no further damage is done to human health and the surrounding environment and watershed. 
2. Fully compensate every resident of the East Palestine area harmed by the derailment.
3. End the harmful business model known as Precision Scheduled Railroading, and ensure sufficient staffing in all crafts, with all trains operating crews of two people minimum.
4. Implement adequate maintenance and inspections of locomotives and rail cars, tracks and signals, wayside detectors, and cap train length and weight at a reasonable level.
5. Concede to the demands of railroad workers – guaranteeing them training, sick leave, adequate time off work, and an end to draconian attendance policies.
6. Terminate all lobbying practices aimed at abolishing or blocking safety rules and regulations that will help make the railroad safer.
7. Divest from the Atlanta Police Foundation and withdraw all support from the Atlanta police facility known as Cop City.

Further, we call on the Georgia Institute of Technology to cut ties with Norfolk Southern and its Board of Directors until it meets the above demands and ceases its attack on workers’ rights, destruction of the environment, and violence towards working people.

(A note from Troy DSA: Joining the Troy Partnership for Black Lives, we have signed onto this letter expressing our collective outrage at Troy Police killing a community member in a car crash last week and TPD’s ongoing history of reckless, dangerous behavior—this is police violence. The full text of the statement is included below.)

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We, the Troy Partnership for Black Lives, join our community in outrage to learn that another life has been lost due to the reckless driving of a Troy Police officer. Our deepest condolences and support go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and community. When will this City hold the Troy Police Department accountable for the violence they perpetuate on the very community they are supposed to protect and serve?   

Troy is not any different than Memphis or Atlanta where police officers have murdered Black and Brown people. On Wednesday, February 22nd just before 1:00 a.m., a Troy Police officer crashed into the car of a valued community member and father of newborn twins. The Troy Police Department has a history of failing to respect the lives of our community and neighbors, especially the lives of Black and Brown community members. This murder indicates that the Troy Police Department has not changed the practices and culture that have led to the loss of life in the past. Just like other times when Troy police have violated the rights and the lives of our community members, the first response of city and police officials is denial of responsibility, often including false information, before a thorough investigation can be completed. This was the response that began the cover-up of the police murder of Edson Thevenin in 2016 by the Troy Police, Rensselaer County DA, the Troy City Council, and Mayor Madden. 

The Troy Police officer was reportedly traveling at high speed through a dangerous intersection. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, the officer acted with depraved indifference because his job as an officer and his responsibility as a human being was to do whatever was necessary in order not to harm or kill anyone with the lethal weapon of his car. The severity of the crash shows the sheer negligence of the officer, who drove with absolutely no concern for the safety of residents or the laws of New York State for emergency personnel. Unfortunately, this is not isolated behavior on the part of the TPD. 

Troy PD has a history of reckless accidents:

• February 22, 2023 – Hoosick and 15th St – TPD killed a local father and respected worker
• February 2023 – TPD entered an intersection speeding without a siren or slowing and nearly hit a car with a mother and her infant
• October 2021 – Middleburg St and 6th Ave – TPD ran a red light and totaled a car in the intersection
• June 2021 – 5th Avenue in Lansingburgh – TPD ran a red light and totaled a car in the intersection, but ticketed the driver for failure to yield
• January 2020 – TPD ran a red light totaling a work van in an intersection that sent the small business owner and father to Albany Medical Center with serious expenses, missed work, and a ticket for failing to yield to an officer despite video surveillance showing that TPD failed to slow while approaching a blind intersection
• July 2009 – a 5-year-old boy was killed by a TPD officer driving an unmarked SUV in South Troy 

Long-standing community demands for deep changes in Troy policing policy and practices have been ignored by Mayor Madden, the Troy City Council, Troy Police, and the Rensselaer County DA for years. Troy needs accountability and transparency led by those who are directly impacted by police violence and negligence. This includes: 

• an end to over-policing of Black and Brown communities, 
• an end to harassment of Black and Brown youth, 
• community-based alternatives to law enforcement in response to mental health and other crises, 
• investments in resources for our communities instead of more investment in police – for example, getting the lead out of the water of all Troy households while prioritizing the most vulnerable households.

Instead of listening to the voices of community leaders, the city has offered us public relations campaigns to protect the Troy Police and City rather than the lives in our community. Just this month, the New York Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit against the Troy Police Department for refusing to provide police officers’ disciplinary records as required by a recent reform to New York State law. 

We do not want a kinder, gentler face on police violence. We do not want our taxes to fund TPD’s $19.5 million dollar budget. We want our children and families to be safe and community well-being to be prioritized by the entire city. We want Black Life to matter by divesting from police and investing in the support systems the community actually needs. 

Signed,

Troy for Black Lives
Democratic Socialists of America, Troy Chapter
Community Rising Project
Equality For Troy
Members of Ad Hoc Troy
Troy Area Labor Council AFL-CIO

Abortion providers across the country are bracing this week for a decision expected soon out of a Texas federal court which will immediately block access nationwide to one of the two medications commonly used for medication abortions. As the anti-abortion lobby and their allies in the United States government attempt to deal yet another blow to this fundamental human right, organizers here in New York state are continuing the struggle to ensure abortions remain safe and accessible for all. On tonight’s show, we are live with Nix from Reproductive Justice Collective and Marian from NYC-DSA’s Socialist Feminist working group to discuss the upcoming decision and what it means for abortion providers and patients. We’ll also hear about their efforts to ensure abortion access in NY state and how you can get involved with this crucial struggle.

 

Visit https://reprojusticecolumbia.org/abortion-pills to learn more about the campaign to ensure access to abortion on college campuses, then text NYCREPRO to 50409 to ask your elected officials to sign on the New York state legislation. Follow @NYCSocFem on Twitter for updates on NYC-DSA's Socialist Feminist Working Group. 

Welcome back comrades! In this segment, Ralph & Nicole-Ann kick off a new season for Heart of a Heartless World, catching up after a long hiatus and giving a preview of what is to come this year. It's a good dose of solidarity, spirituality, and of course, socialism – all the things that give us a little hope for the world.

Member Bruce Nissen shares a story about repairing his air fryer, and what it can teach us about capitalism and global exploitation.

The other day our air fryer had a minor breakdown. The drawer that you pull out of the main body to put in food was becoming loose and a machine screw was missing. Here’s what the entire thing, drawer and the container pan that holds it, looks like:

If you look at this closely, you can see that it is an inner drawer where you place the food, and an outside container that holds it. The problem was the outer container. Here’s a picture without the inner drawer in it:

If you look carefully at this outside container pan (taken after I fixed it), you can see two screws which attach the outside cover and the inner pan. At the time, one of these two screws was missing. At first, I thought I would just find a similar size screw, screw it in, and be done. However, when I did that, the screw didn’t engage with anything; you could turn it clockwise forever freely and nothing was happening. The screw would fall right back out.

I could hear something rattling around inside the front cover and soon realized that these screws connected with nuts that were inside the cover. One of the nuts had come loose, the screw had fallen out and was lost, while the nut was still trapped inside the cover. My only hope of fixing it would require me to disassemble the cover itself.

If you look carefully at the last picture, you can also see two much smaller screws that are helping to hold the two pieces of the front cover together. I removed those two screws — not enough. Then I found two more identical screws down at the bottom and removed them. Still not enough. Then I noticed 6 extremely tiny screws (3 on each side) that also connected the two parts of the outer cover. I took them out and finally was able to separate the two parts of the outer cover. Sure enough, a loose nut was rattling around in the cavity between the outer and inner walls of the front cover.

As I was going through this elaborate job of removing layer after layer of screws just to get to the inside of the front cover, I was thinking to myself, “What’s with this? Why this elaborate and intricate assembly of parts? It’s ridiculous. Why would they design something like this?” I was also thinking was that it was a good thing I did not do this kind of work for a living — I was thorough but way too slow to ever last as an employee. Any repair company would require much faster work so they could get me on to the next profitable job. It reminded me of my dad who lost several jobs as a welder because he did a thorough quality job of welding but not rapidly enough to suit the employer’s speed requirements.

I put the nut back into its designated cubbyhole, reattached the six tiny screws, put in the four screws, and finally inserted a suitable size/length/thread screw to replace the missing one. It engaged with the reinserted nut and screwed in tight. I was done! Repair completed! I felt proud of myself but noted that it had taken close to two hours to do the job, most of it sifting through my mason jar of random screws accumulated through the years to find the exact right size and length and thread of screw. Job done well but not efficiently.

I was still puzzling why the construction of the container pan and its outside front cover had been so complicated. It reminded me of an experience back in the mid-1970s when I was trying to help the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) organize shops in New Jersey. I applied for jobs at numerous places, both UE-represented shops and unorganized shops they hoped to organize in the future. I was first hired at a non-union shop at minimum wage. I was what later became known as a “salt” — someone taking a job in a nonunion workplace to aid a union in beginning an organizing drive.

The shop assembled electronic parts for some final product that I’ve long since forgotten about. Our job was to sit all day assembling an intricate array of circuit boards, washers, wires, nuts, etc. It was not an assembly line — each person individually did each product (or component) according to a choreographed routine. Over and over. Over and over. I especially remember that some wire posts required two washers, some required one, and some none. It was all very confusing, and I made repeated mistakes at this allegedly unskilled minimum wage job.

The job was abysmal. Almost all the workers were Black or Hispanic or Asian. A majority were women. The foremen were white men. I lasted at that job approximately one week because a UE-represented union shop called and offered me a job at double the wages and a much more relaxed atmosphere. I jumped at that offer and thus began my career in union activities.

At the time of my one-week job, companies doing that kind of minimum-wage work were going out of business because their work was being outsourced to China or Mexico or Central American countries. They had only survived in business because they offered extremely cheap labor, but even cheaper labor was becoming available elsewhere in the world.

This repair job led to a Eureka! moment when I realized that the air fryer’s front cover is designed to require manually tightening numerous screws because labor is so cheap (in some parts of the world) that it is economical to require more repetitive manual labor than it is to expend any more money on better design or different materials. If work was paid decently around the world, these products would be designed very differently. I looked to see where my air fryer had been assembled and sure enough, there it was: designed in California and built in China.

If you repair a household appliance with an enquiring and analytical mindset, there’s a lot to ponder. You might develop insights into the structure of worldwide capitalism and the exploitative conditions under which many of our consumer products are produced. Ditto for how our capitalist consumer culture discards people like my father who did high quality work but not at a fast assembly line pace. Our mass production worldwide economic system fails some segments of humanity even as it provides ever-higher levels of mass consumption for growing numbers. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism is a progressive force compared to earlier economic systems, but it is an exploitative system at its core and should be replaced by a more humane system that is centered on people, not private profit. Who would have thought that repairing a household appliance could illustrate all this? For me, it did!

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), the graduate worker union at the University of Michigan, is currently in the process of bargaining with the university to obtain a new contract for the upcoming three-year contract cycle. Despite months of ongoing negotiations, the university has left the union with little if anything to work with thus far. It wasn’t until earlier this year that their Human Resources (HR) representatives agreed to allow open bargaining, a process by which all graduate workers — as well as invited guests affected by the negotiation process — are allowed to attend bargaining sessions in-person/virtually alongside the union negotiators themselves. This is a substantial win for GEO, as open bargaining allows for a comprehensive viewing of the negotiation process, giving grad workers and other stakeholders the chance to see their futures deliberated on first-hand. However, with this victory coming in the middle of January, little time remains to conduct actual bargaining, as the deadline to finalize a contract with HR is March 1. What’s more, the union’s demands have been almost entirely rejected by the university, with its central editorial mouthpiece, The Michigan Daily, even referring to them as “unreasonable and extravagant”. Under such circumstances, it has become paramount to clarify and emphasize one outstanding point: GEO’s current contract campaign — and by extension, its rich history of labor organizing — is not just about the betterment of graduate worker life; it is a fight for the rights and dignity of our university and city-wide communities at large.

Talks of union contracts often begin with mentions of pay and working conditions. GEO’s campaign is no different in this regard. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage in Ann Arbor amounts to an annual salary of approximately $38,537. As it stands, graduate workers at the university earn approximately $24,053 annually for their labor, meaning that a $14,484 gap exists between the compensation graduate workers are currently receiving and that which they require to survive. Perhaps this is why 1 out of every 10 graduate workers at the university worry about having enough food to eat and another 1 out of every 6 would not be able to incur a spontaneous $500 emergency expense. The same is true for working conditions. GEO is currently demanding a discussion section class size cap of 18, as larger class sizes mean burdensome workloads for graduate workers and lackluster educational experiences for students as a result. Moreover, a lack of agency pertaining to COVID policies has left many grad students — especially those with disabilities and/or immunodeficiency disorders — without recourse in the event of a nearby contamination, as the university does not currently grant Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) the ability to require masking nor pivot to a virtual modality if need be.

However, it is when one moves beyond these two areas of demands that GEO’s contract campaign truly begins to encapsulate the university and broader Ann Arbor communities. As a union that engages in “bargaining for the common good”, GEO stands out as an organization that uses the contract negotiation process to its advantage, leveraging worker-specific demands alongside asks that speak to the needs of its surrounding communities. Examples of this dynamic abound, but two outstanding manifestations are its calls for paid positions to establish a Disability Culture Center as well as a community-based, unarmed non-police emergency response team. In solidarity with disabled university community members — and in support of Central Student Government’s (CSG) campaign to establish a Disability Culture Center — GEO has decided to take the conversation of on-campus disability justice a step further by proposing paid positions for those spearheading these efforts. Similarly, the union acknowledges the inherent danger posed to BIPOC students, faculty, and staff by a robust police presence and law enforcement-based response to on-campus emergencies. As such, they’ve reiterated the vision put forth by the Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety (CROS) and demanded that the university contribute funds of its own to finance this community-centered approach to public safety across Washtenaw County. Beyond these asks, GEO has also championed trans-inclusive/gender-affirming healthcare, parent/caregiver accommodations, and harassment/discrimination protections with their demands.

This isn’t a new course of action for the union, either. GEO has a rich history of pushing the envelope when it comes to individual and community-level changemaking. Officially certified in 1974, GEO was one of the first unions to represent graduate student workers in the country. In the mid-1980s, the union won a formal recognition of Affirmative Action from the university alongside tuition waivers for Teaching Assistants (TAs). The 1990s and 2000s similarly featured victories in International GSI compensation and trans-inclusive health benefits, respectively. Since then, GEO has worked to fortify the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and has maintained an unwavering commitment to organizing efforts and collective power building, even as conservative state-level decision making — such as the “Right to Work” legislation approved by Republicans in 2012 — seeks to hinder their progress.

So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with a comprehensive contract campaign — formulated by hundreds of grad workers over an extended period of time — chalk full of reasonable and necessary demands that improve the lives of graduate workers as well as those of our university and Ann Arbor communities. As we close out the month of February and approach March 1, we cannot forget that the success of this campaign relies not just on the efforts of the union, but on the solidarity of every university community member and ally, working alongside GEO to make these demands a reality.

To show your support, sign the “I Stand With U-M Grad Workers” letter and remain up to date on campaign happenings via GEO’s social media platforms which can be found @geo3550.

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GEO is Fighting for You was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.