by Nate H.

The prolific modernist architect and urban planner Le Corbusier once said that houses are “machines for living in.” He believed the sole function of a house should be to enable its inhabitants to thrive.

For renters in New Jersey, houses are quickly becoming machines for bleeding us dry.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, over 50% of New Jersey’s renter house- holds are rent-burdened and the problem is most acute among the state’s most vulnerable. There are only 45 available and affordable housing units for every 100 New Jerseyans defined as “very low income” (making 50% of the area median income).

Once an essential part of the American Dream, housing has become just another commodity for investors to squeeze profits from. Affordable homes are increasingly unavailable on the market because investors are buying up properties with the intention of turning them into AirBnBs or hiking the rents as high as they will go.

In Newark, investors account for nearly two-thirds of residential real estate sales. Hudson County recently made national news after residents complained of rent increases as high as 40%, and in 2019, AirBnB spent over $4 million in a failed bid to overturn an ordinance limiting short term rentals in Jersey City. (Ed: See What’s Wrong With Airbnb, written by NNJ DSA chapter comrades about this campaign!)

To compound the high cost of existing housing stock, new housing construction is also increasingly investor-driven instead of community-driven. As a result, most of the new construction we see is in private, luxury developments, often in working class, minority neighborhoods (see the massive projects underway in Jersey City’s Journal Square neighborhood or the horrifying rebranding of Hackensack as ‘The Sack’). These projects are clearly being built with future, more affluent residents in mind and not the current members of the neighborhood who are at risk of displacement.

The real-estate funded “Yes In My Backyard” or ‘YIMBY’ movement argues that this is not a problem at all. They believe that we need housing policies that attract private investment into the construction of new homes to achieve what they refer to as “housing abundance.” They insist that all new housing construction, regardless of its target consumer, will lead to greater affordability through a process called ‘filtering’. The idea is that as wealthy people move into the new luxury housing, old homes become free for others to move into, and so on, in a process reminiscent of ‘trickle-down’ economics.

Many YIMBYs position themselves as progressives, with some YIMBY groups even trying to enter DSA. It should be clear that anyone pushing Reaganite economic policy as a solution to the housing crisis is not a friend of working people.

As socialists, we understand that the cause of the present crisis is not that there is too little private investment in housing, but that there is too much.

As long as housing is an investment vehicle, it will never be affordable. A home should be a place where we rest, not a place that makes an increasingly smaller number of us rich.

To truly achieve housing abundance, we should follow a two-pronged strategy. The first step is to attack the idea of housing as a commodity from which to profit. We can do this by organizing with our fellow tenants, engaging in rent strikes, and forcing reforms that weaken capital’s ability to profit from housing. The next is to win massive public investments in housing, which should include upgrading existing public housing, taking over private housing, and building new public units.

The Fair Share Housing Center has identified 1,100 parcels of at least 0.5 acres currently owned by the state. They recommend choosing parcels in areas that have good access to transportation, are at low risk of flooding, and where the housing crisis is most acute to target for subsidized housing development. Why not go further and make these developments fully public?

To be fair, the current state of public housing in the United States may not engender confidence in such a plan. Our existing public housing is often seen as a crime-ridden symbol of urban decay. But that is not the result of anything inherent to the housing itself, but rather the neglect and dis-investment driven by racism and the profit system. The reality is that public housing in the U.S. was set up for failure and never meant to challenge real estate capital. It is reserved for those with very low incomes, ensuring that there is not enough money for maintenance, and its construction was paired with slum clearance so that the supply of available units did not actually increase.

Public housing can and does work in cities like Vienna, where 60% of the population lives in government owned housing, and rents are lower than any major city in Europe. Contrary to the post-Reagan consensus, public resources can provide an equitable and decent standard of living.

It is time for New Jerseyans to realize that we can do better. To demand that we do better. Instead of begging for crumbs from for-profit developers, we can have abundant, livable housing that is democratically controlled and permanently affordable.

The post To Solve The Affordable Housing Crisis, We Need To Build, Build, Build Public Housing first appeared on North NJ DSA.

by Liam P

The cost of prescription drugs in New Jersey is rising at an unsustainable and inhumane rate. People with chronic conditions who need these drugs face difficult choices, sometimes forgoing life saving medications. Those who don’t end up impoverished may pay with their health—or all too often, with their lives. The Health Justice Working Group of the North Jersey DSA has been hard at work pushing for legislation to set a price cap on life-saving prescription drugs such as insulin, EpiPens, and asthma inhalers.

On February 14, 2022 a post on the official website of the state of New Jersey announced that, “Governor Phil Murphy, Senator Troy Singleton, Senator Vitale, Senator Pou, and Assemblyman John McKeon today announced their support for a legislative package to make prescription drugs more affordable.” According to the New Jersey Legislature, this package includes S1614/A2839, which would require that health insurance companies provide coverage for EpiPens and asthma inhalers and would limit cost sharing for health insurance coverage of insulin; S1615/A2840, which “establishes certain data reporting requirements for prescription drug supply chain” and “requires Division of Consumer Affairs to issue annual report on emerging trends in prescription drug pricing”; and S1616/A536, which would establish new transparency standards for pharmacy benefits manager business practices. Over a year later, the bills have yet to become law.

The Building Health Justice in NJ(HJNJ) campaign has been putting pressure on the bill’s sponsors, demanding that they pass the bills but also amend them to include two key protections. The first of these protections is that price caps must cover all formularies of EpiPens, asthma inhalers, and insulin drugs, not just the preferred brands of insurance companies. As it stands, our state lawmakers are crafting these laws behind closed doors, with the usual roundtable of “experts” – the state’s pharma and insurance lobbyists. The only person telling us which drugs we can take should be our doctors, not the people who profit off of these life saving medications. The second amendment extends price caps to cover uninsured and undocumented folks. While S1614/A2839 does limit cost sharing for health insurance coverage of insulin, this law does not protect New Jersey’s most vulnerable residents.

In the words of Assemblywoman Carol Murphy, “No one should have to go without the medicines they urgently need.” But according to the New Jersey Legislature website, S1614/A2839 passed the Senate on June 29 unanimously and was sent back to the Assembly Appropriations Committee where it has languished ever since. This is deeply concerning as it is all too common for important bills to “die in committee.”

For that reason, Building Health Justice in NJ urges the public to reach out to their state legislators. It is especially important to put pressure on the sponsors of this legislative package: The complete legislative roster can be found at https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislative-roster. Our petition and calling script can be found at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/pass-prescription-drug-price-caps-in-new-jersey/.

In the coming months the HJNJ campaign will begin work for Medicaid expansion. We want to get the NJ Legislature to increase the state’s income eligibility threshold for Medicaid to at least 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) or higher (depending on household size). The FPL in New Jersey is woefully low given the high cost of living here. And to create a fairer cut off rate to give Medicaid Access to more working class families.

The post Prescription Drug Caps & Medicare For All first appeared on North NJ DSA.

by Mary R.

On May 10, 2023, Rutgers University union members voted 93% to ratify a new contract, after nearly a year without one. Three unions bargained together, betting that this unprecedented coalition would be able to secure bigger gains for the most vulnerable educators on our campuses. The bet paid off–but only after we showed our solidarity by going on strike.

For five days, starting on April 10, picket lines marched through all Rutgers campuses (including North New Jersey DSA members, employees and alumni), professors canceled classes and the union bargaining team and management were summoned to Trenton by Governor Murphy. Less than a month, and hundreds of grueling hours of negotiating later, the university agreed to contracts that substantially adopted the unions’ demands.

Pay for adjuncts, who teach at least one-third of classes offered at Rutgers, according to their union, will increase by 44% between now and 2025. They will also have more job security as people who have taught for two or more years will now be given con- tracts for more than one semester at a time, called “presumptive renewal.” Previously, adjuncts were hired on a per-semester basis, which made it almost impossible for people to plan for the future.

Graduate students, who teach classes, work in labs, and conduct their own research, will see their salaries rise to $40,000 annually by 2025. Incoming PhD students will be guaranteed five years of funding starting in 2024. Students whose research was disrupted by the Covid pandemic are eligible for additional funding. Full-time faculty will gain 14% pay raises over the contract’s four-year term. The full text of the contract can be found at rutgersaaup.org.

Rutgers administration did not meet all of the unions’ demands. One of our boldest strategies was Bargaining for the Common Good, which linked our labor with issues affecting undergraduate students and residents of the communities where Rutgers campuses are located. In New Brunswick, for example, Rutgers is the largest landlord. Students report inadequate living conditions at the same time that Rutgers is increasing rents. While we were unable to get the rent freeze that we bargained for, we won a $600,000 Common Good fund, paid for by the state.

Rutgers workers, like other educators at Temple University, University of California, Columbia University, and The New School, aren’t only fighting for better pay. We raised our voices together against the neo- liberalization of universities. Rather than caring about our core mission–education–the neoliberal university applies capitalist ideas to running the university to increase its so-called efficiency and profit. Universities become focused on growing endowments while reducing the numbers of secure tenure track jobs in favor of low-paid, insecure adjunct positions. While our jobs may be different, university workers are fighting for the same ideals of equity, dignity, and security as our fellow workers at Amazon or Starbucks and the writers currently on strike with the Writers Guild of America.

The post Historic Rutgers Strike Brings a Win first appeared on North NJ DSA.

Our vote tracker has launched. Find out where your Jersey City Council rep stands on a Right to Counsel for ALL and use this script to get them to vote YES:

The Right to Counsel (RTC) would guarantee legal representation for all tenants facing eviction or other issues with landlords. NO tenant should have to fight for their homes alone!

**Calling Script**

Hello, my name is [your name] and I am calling to ensure [council member] is supporting the Jersey City Right-to-Counsel ordinance in its fullest capacity. Let’s make sure this includes universal coverage for all renters regardless of income!

Landlords and developers have accelerated the soaring rent costs that make Jersey City the most expensive city in the United States to live in. With [council member]'s support, residents will no longer fear facing eviction alone.

Can we count on your support to vote for a Right to Counsel for all tenants paid by developer fees?

**Send an Email**

Dear [council member],

My name is [your name] and I am calling to ensure [council member] is supporting the Jersey City Right-to-Counsel and Developer Fee ordinances in their fullest capacity. Let’s make sure this includes universal coverage for all renters regardless of income!

Landlords and developers have accelerated the soaring rent costs that make Jersey City the most expensive city in the United States to live in. Landlords more often than not have legal representation in housing court, tipping the scales in their favor. With [council member]'s support, residents will no longer fear facing eviction alone.

In nearby NYC, evictions were reduced by an estimated 30% after the passage of their Right to Counsel program. Let’s pass one of the strongest RTCs in the nation by making sure all tenants are protected from eviction, landlord malfeasance, habitability issues, illegally high rents, and more!

Can we count on your support to vote for a Right to Counsel for all tenants paid by developer fees?

Best,

[your name]

Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America Chapter Committee condemns the recent introduction of Assembly Bill 642, legalizing law enforcement use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in California. We further condemn the recent co-sponsorship of AB642 by SV-DSA member and District 25 State Assemblymember Alex Lee. Only determined and militant social movements can chart a safe and just future for Californians and for the world.  AB 642 will open the door  to intensified surveillance on already over-policed communities and movements that challenge the status quo.

Assemblymember Lee retweeted the claim AB 642 is needed to institute oversight over facial recognition, given the impending sunset of the extant FRT ban and the Assembly’s failure to extend it last year. We reject this logic wholesale – the place of socialists is at the leading edge of the struggle for a just society, not tinkering at the margins in the vain hope of staving off further defeat. Another bill attempting to re-extend the FRT ban (AB 1034) is already in committee –  Lee should show real leadership by putting his support behind it.

We condemn AB642 in the strongest terms and call upon Alex Lee to withdraw his co-sponsorship immediately.

The post Chapter Committee Statement on Assemblymember Alex Lee and AB642 appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

Member Bruce Nissen shares his thoughts on our work with the labor movement

One of the more “foundational stances” of the DSA is support for organized labor. Both in written positions and (less consistently) in practice, the DSA positions itself as unequivocally a pro-labor organization. Some DSA chapters have no working relationship with unions beyond rhetorical support; others like the Pinellas DSA have some of our members actively involved in individual unions and in broader union formations like the local central labor council (CLC).

It is not hard to understand why the DSA has this pro-union orientation. Democratic Socialists believe in democracy and favor struggle with our 1% overlords, the capitalists. Unions are among the most important U.S. forces for democracy. Although they do not have the clout with elected officials that corporations do, unions nevertheless have much more influence than almost any left-wing organization, so their support for basic democracy is important. The unions consistently oppose attempts (usually by Republican lawmakers) to restrict the franchise, make it harder to vote, implement right-wing populist or fascistic measures, or cut back the influence of ordinary Americans by any other means. Research has shown that countries with higher union densities are more equal and more democratic than those with low union densities.

By their very nature unions are also adversaries of large corporations and capitalists. This is simply because bargaining and enforcing a collective bargaining agreement with an employer brings opposing economic interests into contention, at least to a degree.

Therefore, a strong alliance between Democratic Socialists and labor unions seems like a clear plus. That said, socialists often find practical limitations to their work in the labor movement. One stems from the Cold War legacy. Many Americans equate socialism with dictatorship and loss of freedoms for individual workers and their families. Nationally prominent Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) counter this image, especially among younger workers. DSA member behavior within the labor movement also dispels this misconception. I expect this obstacle to diminish over time.

Nevertheless, young DSA members who join and get involved in unions are frequently confounded. This is part of a pattern of American workers in generally often not understanding what unions are or how they work. A young DSA member first thinking about involvement in a union at their workplace may expect to see a dynamic organization on the move; what they often find is a bureaucratic, uninvolving outfit with few interests beyond protecting the contractual protections of its own members and few external activities beyond supporting Democratic Party candidates irrespective of how progressive those candidates are or are not. (Of course, this is not an accurate depiction of all unions — some are dynamic, progressive, internally democratic and involving — but these are the exceptions to the rule in today’s American labor movement.)

Given this “state of the unions,” some young DSAers may ask, “Why is it worthwhile to involve oneself actively in union or labor movement affairs? Isn’t it mostly a waste of time that would be better spent elsewhere?” I think this question deserves a serious answer.

The labor movement must be at or near the center of our focus because unions are the only institutions of any size in American society that are composed entirely of workers and are devoted entirely to the interests of workers. They are unique working-class institutions in a society that has attempted to obliterate even the notion of “working class” by lumping us all into a broad “middle class.” With all their flaws, unions are the only organizations we’ve got if we want to reach workers on a self-organized basis. And reaching workers on a self-organized basis I so crucial because working class people asserting themselves at the workplace (the “point of production”) is the only way that transformative change occurs, and historically this is the only way it has ever happened.

To illustrate this, consider the difference between putting our socialist energies into union work vs. putting them into a party like the Democratic Party. In the labor movement, you are working to build and contest politically within a clearly working-class institution that, however backward its leadership may be, is still at its core an organization composed of and answerable to workers. In the Democratic Party, you are working in a multi-class institution largely funded by and certainly answerable to a core of multi-millionaires and billionaires. Even if the political perspectives coming out of the leadership of both institutions should be identical there still would be a world of difference concerning which is worth serious socialist engagement.

To me, that means that we Democratic Socialists should view the Democratic Party in a totally opportunistic fashion: use it when you can (for example, use its ballot line in most cases) and soak it for support whenever that’s possible for our objectives and candidates, but don’t waste your time trying to internally build this organization that has no clear class basis and no internal discipline except for the discipline exerted by its funders. In contrast we should view the labor movement as fertile terrain for serious involvement and contestation over political and organizing/mobilizing orientation. We have a strong foothold for building class power to the extent that we are able to establish socialist influence and ultimately leadership within it. That means we have to build the labor movement; help it to thrive and then work to make it a better instrument to enhance the power of all workers.

That’s why I believe that an unshakable commitment to the labor movement and to establish and build a socialist current and ultimately socialist leadership within it to be absolutely crucial to the work of the DSA. Given the political and bureaucratic outlook of many labor leaders, that may seem a discouraging prospect but there is no alternative. The members of U.S. unions are much like other workers in our country, and we can’t expect unions to magically be way more advanced than their own membership. Building a socialist working class and ultimately a socialist America is a long-term task — work in the labor movement is crucial, but we must think of ourselves as long-distance runners.

(I want to thank Richie Floyd for incisive commentary on an earlier version of this blog, helping me to make it much better.)

The state chapter of the ACLU, the New Jersey Working Families Party, and the Fair Share Housing Center are among nine endorsing the right to counsel proposal in Jersey City.

The other groups lending their endorsement to the cause are the Latino Action Network (LAN), Housing Rights Initiative (HRI), Make the Road New Jersey (MRNJ), Our Revolution New Jersey, North New Jersey Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NNJDSA), and the New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP).

Read “ALCU, NJWFP, & Fair Share Housing among 9 endorsing Jersey City right to counsel” in Hudson County View

A response to “Jersey City’s eviction proposal will help lawyers but not solve the real problem | Opinion” by Wendy Paul, Executive Director of the Apartment Owners Association:

“…let’s lay out what Paul’s op-ed forgot to mention: Dozens of studies have shown that Right to Counsel is an effective, moral and cost-saving solution to the housing crisis across the country. In New York City, before RTC was passed, only 1% of tenants had representation in landlord-tenant court, while 95% of landlords were represented. Now, 56% of all tenants are represented…in NYC, 84% of all tenants who were provided an RTC attorney remained in their homes.”

Read “Right-to-counsel laws proven to aid tenants, communities | Opinion” in the Jersey Journal

Published in The Daily Princetonian.

The following testimonial comes directly from a service worker at Princeton University, presenting an authentic sentiment of inadequate financial support and an uncaring institution; it is just one of many voices of frustration and despair on this campus. It has only been edited for clarity:

“My salary is not enough for a single father with two kids. I can not afford to [pay for] rent and utilities, [not to mention] car fuel and maintenance… I literally have to choose if I’m going to have breakfast or lunch most days ’cause the price of food is high and I can’t afford to eat both meals most days… I’m asked by office staff if I have plans for a summer vacation; I can’t even treat myself to McDonald’s, so a vacation is just a dream. The small 2% or 3% raises we get are always erased [by] the annual 3% raise we pay for health insurance. I have been working for Princeton for a little over 3 years, and my salary has gone up by less than 800 dollars for the year… I left a job that paid me significantly more, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to work for what I thought at the time was a world-class university. I have come to realize that it’s smoke and mirrors and Princeton wants to pay us middle to low-end of the scale and expect to be talked about in the same breath as Harvard, [but] Harvard facilities operations [get] paid higher [than] we do here. So maybe Princeton should lower their view of [themselves] until they truly start acting like the prestigious university that they are.”

Our service workers are vital to the University community, yet paradoxically exist in a space disparate from it: a space in which their concerns and fears aren’t important enough for the University to accommodate them. While the University offers legitimately helpful benefits including healthcare, childcare, and retirement funds, which are genuinely appreciated by workers, a survey of over 100 union workers on campus – conducted by Princeton YDSA – tells us that they are simply not enough. Instead, the ostensibly meaningful benefits mask the impacts of low wages on those that need to pay for rent, a car, or even just food for their kids.

While the University helps faculty and students thrive, workers are left to the wayside – as one campus worker described, the administration “doesn’t really care what we are facing on [a] daily basis.” Princeton should no longer brush these issues aside. It must take these concerns seriously and commit to supporting its service workers with meaningful compensation.

While the cost of living has increased month over month all across America for the past two years, many Americans have felt left behind by the corporations that employ them. These employers have offered meager raises to pacify their workers while annual costs of living have skyrocketed by 8 percent and even 12 percent in some states, and many corporations are raking in record profits in an economy that is failing to support its essential workers.

Princeton, disappointingly, is following these trends. According to the survey, despite requests from workers to be fairly compensated under the cost of living increases in New Jersey (which stand around 8 percent, Princeton acts as if circumstances have not changed, offering minimum pay increases below inflation and the cost of their benefits to unionized workers. In other words, our employees are effectively seeing their wages decline.

In the survey, workers detailed the extent of the deep financial issues they face which Princeton must make an effort to remedy. Many of the responses mentioned general cost of living hardships in New Jersey and Princeton saying, “fuel cost + mortgage / rent is unattainable for my union brothers / sisters,” “I have problems paying my bills and paying for food,” and “I can’t afford anything but the bare minimum.” Cost of living increases along with Princeton’s disgracefully low wages have created unacceptable conditions for many of our most valuable and essential workers. However, beyond these already appalling day-to-day living situations, some workers described absolutely devastating stories due to the lack of financial support from Princeton. Among the most heartbreaking comes from a worker who was forced to sell his home to afford rising expenses: “[I had] to sell my home. Everything is so expensive for everyone; a big increase should [have] happened long ago for us [essential] workers.”

The lack of essential cost-of-living adjustments is made more devastating by the cost of Princeton’s healthcare benefits. Despite receiving praise from many workers in the survey, many also criticized the fact that unionized employees’ negotiated annual raises (around 3 percent) are almost entirely negated by the rise in healthcare costs each year (also around 3 percent) — even before inflation. Princeton’s pay stagnation shows a blatant disregard for the deplorable conditions that their essential workers live in — conditions that are in direct contrast to Princeton’s status as the wealthiest per-capita university in the U.S.

Princeton must give its workers automatic, meaningful increases in wages that account for changes in the cost of living. Responding to our survey, 105 out of 116 workers said that they would “support automatic cost of living adjustments” as a baseline policy. In responses that provided more detail, many mentioned a desire for financial security and fair compensation. “Our current raises hardly even keep up with yearly increases in health care let alone everyday cost of living increases,” noted one worker. Another asserted: “We all deserve more than just a cost of living raise.” Yet given Vice President of Human Resources Romy Riddick’s claim that Princeton is “paying very close attention to the salaries and making market adjustments,” it is evident that Princeton only cares about the market viability of its wages, not the needs of its workers.

Given Princeton’s current indifference to these conditions, students must play an active role in pressuring the University to make real changes — most importantly, annual wage increases across the board for its workers to combat the rising cost of living. Students’ voices can genuinely influence the actions of the administration. Look to the incredible efforts of Divest Princeton, for instance, and their resilient campaign that resulted in the University divesting its endowment from publicly traded fossil fuel companies Their work is far from over, however, and so is ours. We encourage students to advocate on behalf of workers who have found their struggles invisible to and ignored by Princeton. Join us in our fight against the University’s negligence for our most essential workers to live a life free from immense and unnecessary turmoil and hardship.

To help us advocate for this vital change, we encourage you to sign on to student groups’ petition for the University to address campus workers’ needs. Also, please join us on May 1st as part of the Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) May Day March for International Workers Day as we amplify workers’ grievances. The march begins at 112 Witherspoon Street on May 1 at 6:00pm and will feature speakers from YDSA, ULA, and other groups advocating for workers’ rights and empowerment.

Additionally, fighting on the side of Princeton’s campus workers in their attempt to receive fair and livable compensation is their local union, Local 175 of Service Workers International Union (SEIU). Made up of our indispensable workers (staff from dining halls, cleaning, maintenance, etc.), SEIU 175 is urging the University to better pay its workers. However, effectively utilizing the union to advocate on behalf of workers turns out to be quite difficult at Princeton, given their “no-strike” clause in the negotiated contract, as Bryce Springfield ’25 and Lucy Armengol ’26 argue in another piece.

David Beeson ’26 and Abdul-Bassit Fijabi ’24 are members of Young Democratic Socialists of America at Princeton. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of SEIU 175. This article was written alongside another in a series on campus labor.

Published in The Daily Princetonian.

Free speech is understood to be a central tenet of academic life at Princeton. Members of the University across the political spectrum have considered how free speech can and should be upheld on campus while maintaining a safe environment. But these conversations have failed to include an essential part of our campus community: workers. Until the University removes the ban on worker strikes, its commitment to free speech will remain hollow.

Members of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 175 (a union on campus that includes dining hall, custodial, and landscaping staff, among others) are unable to fully access their right to free speech. Workplace discussions about organizing are limited, and their freedom of expression is sharply restricted as well. Article 35 of their contract with the University prohibits the Union and employees from participating in “any strike, sympathy strike, work stoppage, concentrated slowdown, refusal to cross any picket line or interrupt work in any other way.”

Article 35 is justified under the University’s Statement on Freedom of Expression, which protects free speech unless it is “directly incompatible with the functioning of the University.” The University’s statement claims this is a “narrow exception to the general principle of freedom of expression.” However, strikes are one of the most meaningful and impactful practices of free speech.

Free speech has played a vital role in unionization and workers’ rights movements. In the early 20th century, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an organization that advocated for workplace democracy through general and industrial unionism, engaged in a series of “free speech fights.” Members of the IWW spoke out and organized strikes across the United States, often resulting in their arrest. Many organizers refused to be released from prison and demanded a trial as a platform to advocate for both free speech and the right to strike and unionize.

Working conditions improved during the Progressive Era as the federal government was forced to make concessions to labor organizations in the face of strikes and other forms of union activism. For example, in the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912, mill workers who were predominantly immigrant women went on strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, after their wages were decreased. 23,000 workers went on strike and almost 20,000 were on the picket line. Ultimately, the Bread and Roses Strike increased not only their own wages, but the wages of textile workers across New England.

Labor activism has played a critical role in achieving many of the labor protections which we take for granted, including weekends, overtime pay, and the elimination of child labor. Without the ability to strike, SEIU Local 175 is significantly disempowered in their contract negotiations with the University.

To investigate the state of worker satisfaction on campus, the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) at Princeton surveyed 116 union service workers during the Spring 2023 semester. On one hand, the survey found that most workers seemed grateful that the University offered relatively good non-wage benefits. However, as expressed by Abdul-Bassit Fijabi ‘24 and David Beeson ‘26 in a separate piece, surveyed workers have consistently expressed concerns; for example, some noted that they are woefully underpaid – especially in a time of high inflation – as staffing shortages and a sense of alienation plague many union shops on campus.

SEIU Local 175, which employs over 700 employees at Princeton University, makes active efforts to improve working conditions and wages for unionized workers. As one worker expressed, the union “[f]ights for all employees and has… sav[ed] employees’ jobs”; and as another notes, the union has “done well with getting us increased raise amounts over the past couple years.”

Yet, these aims are severely limited by the imbalance of power in the contract negotiations between the University and the Union, particularly when the University bans free expression in the form of a strike.

In the United States overall, unions consistently demonstrate strong benefits for workers, including up to a 20 percent income premium compared to similar non-union workers. Unions, moreover, demonstrate comparable lifetime earnings gains to those of a college degree despite earlier retirement, with a major part of the causal mechanism being the strike. As demonstrated by economist David Card, strikes in the US have historically had significantly positive effects on unionized workers’ wages, and such strikes were deeply intertwined with empowered labor unions.

Within the University of California system, this freedom of expression enabled educators to gain substantial improvements to students’ education quality and their workplace conditions, with 48 percent higher minimum wages for teaching assistants and 61 percent for graduate students. In 2022, even the mere threat of a strike among Kaiser Permanente nurses resulted in major improvements for both workers and patients, with 22.5 percent higher pay and improved staffing to provide improved patient care. More recently, though the fight continues, the Rutgers strike enabled faculty and graduate students to make strong gains, including 14 to 44 percent higher wages, after the Rutgers University administration simply refused to make reasonable concessions for its employees to see decent compensation for their contributions, by extension ensuring that educators can better serve their mentees.

With the no-strike clause in Article 35, SEIU Local 175 and the workers it represents have less power in their negotiations with the University, as they lack one of the most “powerful tool[s] for any union [to] express its voice,” as put by an anonymous employee. If the University disagrees with a demand, the union cannot effectively use its leverage to encourage the University to listen to workers.

This unconscionable restriction sharply contradicts the University’s romanticized rhetoric about its free speech policies, preventing workers from freely expressing themselves. Free speech is an essential value that must be accessible to everyone, including workers and including for expression that challenges Princeton University, if it is to truly value free expression. Even some past Supreme Court rulings have protected the right to strike on the grounds of protecting workers’ freedom of expression, such as Thornhill v. Alabama (1940) and NLRB v. Washington Aluminum Co. (1962).

Although workers are severely limited in the extent of free expression permitted by the University, students do have the ability to platform the unheard grievances of workers. By acting in solidarity with the employees who sustain our education and living as students, we can show that students will not accept the University’s neglect and disrespect of workers’ needs and free speech principles.

We encourage you to sign on to student groups’ petition for the University to address campus workers’ needs. Additionally, please join YDSA on May 1st to amplify workers’ grievances as a part of Unidad Latina en Acción’s May Day Rally, starting at 112 Witherspoon St on May 1 at 6:00 pm.

Lucía Armengol ‘26 and Bryce Springfield ‘25 are members of Young Democratic Socialists of America at Princeton. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of SEIU 175. This article was written alongside another in a series on campus labor.