On Thursday, grads entered the second week of our strike with pickets across central and north campus. Meanwhile, our community continued to have our backs. In an open letter joined by 55 professors and lecturers, UM Law faculty condemned the University’s attempt to use the courts to break our strike. Professor Sanjukta Paul reminded readers that UM’s movement for an injunction is just another chapter in the long and bleak history of union busting labor injunctions. Today, these injunctions are essentially banned at the federal level and strongly disfavored as a matter of public policy in states. That the University has resorted to a tactic with such a reprehensible history shouldn’t surprise us: workers have always faced steep opposition when we demand fair wages and safe and just working conditions. We should learn from this history as well: when workers stick together, our power grows.
Thursday evening, grad workers held a Strike Seder to celebrate the second night of Passover. Grads shared a potluck dinner and read from a Passover Haggadah specially written for the 2023 GEO Strike (you can read the full Haggadah at bit.ly/GEOHaggadah). Passover commemorates the exodus of the ancient Jews from slavery in Egypt. As a celebration of liberation, the holiday shares many themes with our strike.
From the Bargaining Table
The pressure of the strike began to yield results as management finally offered a real proposal on harassment protections. For months, HR had flatly rejected grad workers’ proposal to expand LSA’s no-questions-asked transitional funding program for survivors of harassment, and make it cover all grad students. Today, HR offered to create a 1- year pilot program for GSIs. This still leaves out many grad workers and – unlike the LSA program – has formal reporting requirements that have been shown to make survivors less likely to use the program. It also requires ECRT to approve the funding. Nonetheless, this demonstrates the power of the strike and what workers can achieve as pressure continues to accumulate.
HR conditioned the 1-year pilot program on grads dropping proposals for additional GSSA positions for disability justice, trans health, and public safety. These GSSA positions would make U-M a more just campus. HR did not even engage with the changes grads made to these proposals in response to concerns HR had raised previously.
Maria Laura, RLL
“I find it infuriating that the University gives awards to professors whose research advocates for separating funding for workers experiencing harassment or discrimination from reporting mechanisms, yet refuses to act on their recommendations. I also don’t know why we’d accept a 1-year pilot for a 3-year contract.”
Fight the Injunction: Hearing Monday Morning
On Monday April 10th GEO members will have their day in court. Come fight the University’s attempt to use the courts to circumvent the bargaining process. The hearing begins at 10:00am at the Washtenaw County Circuit Court in downtown Ann Arbor. Stay tuned for more information on how to be involved Monday morning.
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