Tag: labor

Strike deadline at WMC

From Weill Cornell Medical postdocs union (WCMPU-UAW):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

After Nearly Two Years at the Bargaining Table,
Weill Cornell Medicine Postdocs Set a ULP Strike Deadline of 9am on October 30

WCM postdocs, represented by WCMPU-UAW, prepare to walk picket lines after two years at the bargaining table and a 92% affirmative strike authorization vote.

New York City – Postdocs at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) will begin an Unfair Labor Practice Strike on Thursday, October 30 if a fair agreement on a contract is not reached by then. Last spring, the union voted with a strong mandate (92%) to authorize the Bargaining Committee to call a strike if one was required to reach a fair agreement. Now, after WCM has sought to unlawfully bypass the union’s elected representatives while delaying a fair agreement for months, the Committee is exercising that right. Their fight for a union has been supported by the broader labor movement and elected leaders, including New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander.

“Weill Cornell has left us no choice but to move forward with an unfair labor practice strike,” said Dr. Kaitlin Murtha, a postdoctoral associate in the Cell and Developmental Biology department. “We are committed to holding Cornell accountable for their unlawful conduct and securing a contract that improves our working conditions, including fair compensation for the lengthy bargaining process, and protections against unfair layoffs. We will not settle for less. After nearly two years at the bargaining table, we are ready to walk off the job and onto the picket line.”

“We are disappointed that Weill Cornell has taken advantage of unprecedented attacks on higher education to reject basic protections for our majority international workforce,” said Dr. Krithika Karthigeyan, a postdoctoral associate in the Pediatrics department and a member of the Bargaining Committee. “For most of us, an unfair layoff could mean not only leaving a job, but having to leave the country – uprooting our families and abandoning the live-saving research that brought us to the U.S. in the first place. Despite WCM’s intransigence, our community has continued to show up to every bargaining session, demanding WCM give us the protections we need to focus on our work and make WCM stronger.”

“Instead of denying postdocs basic workplace rights that already exist for thousands of our postdoc members across the country, WCM should be working with us to protect science funding and make the institution more equitable,” said UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. “We can get a deal done, but if not, UAW members and the labor movement across New York City will stand with our postdoc members for as long as it takes to secure a strong first contract.”

WHO: Weill Cornell Postdocs, community leaders, and allies.

WHAT: Strike, picket line, and rally for a fair contract. 

WHERE: 1300 York Ave, New York, NY 10065

WHEN: 9am, Thursday, October 30th

Postdocs at Weill Cornell Medicine are crucial to the University’s research mission. The union represents nearly 500 researchers who perform cutting-edge work that attracts millions in funding, including on diseases like cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative conditions. But WCM has dragged out bargaining sessions and refused to agree to basic protections against unfair layoffs that are increasingly standard among unionized postdoctoral researchers. If WCM administrators fail to meet workers’ demands for basic needs and protections at the bargaining table by October 30, WCMPU-UAW will strike.

For more information visit us online and on social media. 

What it is to break a strike

(This is a piece in the Cornell Daily Sun written by Cornell AAUP Chapter vice president David Bateman. It is not a chapter statement.)

BATEMAN | What It Is to Break a Strike

Members of the Cornell community — custodians, groundskeepers, cooks, food service workers, greenhouse employees, gardeners, mechanics and others — are on strike. As the administration has acknowledged, the work these employees do is absolutely essential to the basic operation of the University. None of us can work, learn, research or teach in their absence.

Naturally, the strike has placed enormous stress on the institution. Basic work can’t be done.

And so the University leadership has asked us all to “step up” and pitch in, with emails from central administration, many colleges and other units giving guidelines on how all of us — students, faculty, staff, etc. — can do “our part.” To take extra responsibility to keep facilities clean. To volunteer for additional shifts. To serve food to students in dining halls. Retirees have been invited to fill in for former colleagues. The University leadership wants us to think of this as a noble, community effort to ensure that our students are fed, our facilities are clean and that Cornell continues to function despite the absence of its essential workers.

No doubt some of us have an inherent impulse to “step up” and do our part. This is natural, and the desire to help is a good one. We probably all believe that we should contribute when there is a crisis. And we hold in some contempt those who refuse to do so, who treat additional work produced by a crisis as someone else’s responsibility.

A labor strike, however, is one of those vital moments where a deeper logic is revealed. Strikes reveal the moral inadequacy of “community” as a guiding principle, how “stepping up” and “chipping in” can in fact be a cover for immoral actions.

A labor strike is not equivalent to a natural disaster or a crisis outside of our making. A strike reveals a profound conflict within our community, in this case one that is the result of the University’s own policies and choices. These include Cornell’s consistent refusal to recognize or pay for the considerable costs associated with its successes — a cost-of-living crisis in Ithaca and surrounding communities — and its desire to keep in its control as much of the value produced by its workforce as it can.

The workers represented by UAW 2300 have voted, democratically and overwhelmingly, to collectively withhold their labor until this conflict is resolved on terms that allow them to live and thrive.

The capacity to collectively withhold labor is the only real source of power workers have. In this context, “stepping up” or “doing our part” in the way that the University would like takes on a very different meaning. The workers have chosen to withhold their labor. The University would like us to replace it. This is not chipping in – it is choosing a side. When we replace striking labor, whether in their jobs or the work that they would be doing, we attack and undermine our friends and colleagues in their collective decisions and struggle. To “step up” in this context means taking the side of their employer, who wields enormous power over their lives and the lives of many others.

This is what it means to break a strike. This is what it means to scab.Subscribe to our daily newsletter!

“Community” can be a vague, empty term. We only imbue it with meaning through our actions. The University leadership has shown us its vision of “community.” It has shown this vision of community in its persistent refusal to recognize the value of its workers and the costs it imposes on Ithaca and neighboring communities. It has shown this vision of community in its misleading communications, wrongly implying that members of the Cornell community are outside employees of the UAW. It has shown this vision in spending what must be, after successive campaigns, millions of dollars to strike-breaking and union-busting firms, in order to undermine the democratic decisions of its employees. And it has shown this vision of community in its requests to employees to replace the work of their friends and colleagues.

The University appeals to our better natures, to our commitment to community, to conceal their real ask: to betray these friends and colleagues, at the moment when they are most in need of our support.

The Cornell leadership of the UAW 2300 chapter, by contrast, has shown a richer vision of what community needs and what it can be. They too appeal to our desire to help out, to step up. They have asked for solidarity, rather than to undermine each other.  To not replace striking labor or the work that they do. To show up on the picket line. To voice support. To demand that Cornell sign a fair contract. They have asked us to take the side of those members of our community fighting for a better life. They have asked us to stand with them. 

And in so doing, they are teaching us that real community can only be forged by a honest appraisal of injustice and unfairness, by a real understanding of the power that a few employers and institutional leaders hold over everyone else, and by a real commitment to challenging it.

David A. Bateman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government. His research focuses broadly on democratic institutions; he is an expert in the American legislative branch. He can be reached at dab465@cornell.edu.

AAUP Chapter Statement on Bargaining between Cornell administration and UAW Local 2300

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August 14, 2024

The Cornell University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors stands in solidarity with UAW Local 2300 and its fight to improve wages and working conditions for essential University workers. Our AAUP chapter, the union for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, adjuncts, librarians, postdocs, and academic staff, urges the administration to agree to a fair contract in line with the workers’ demands. These include a pay increase to fairly compensate Cornell employees for their work, which is essential to running the University; bring wages in line with the cost of living; annual cost of living adjustments so that wage increases do not fall behind the cost of living; and greater allowances for parking and clothing to reduce costs and risks borne by the workers themselves.

Over the last several years, working conditions at Cornell have declined considerably, in line with the University’s broader failure to adequately compensate workers and to pay a fair share to the surrounding communities. Like any corporation, the University’s value is produced by its workers, and its operations generate burdens and costs for the community. For years now, University leadership has shifted costs onto workers through inadequate wages and benefits, just as it has chosen to shift costs onto Ithaca and neighboring communities by refusing to pay its fair share for public services.

Cornell creates employment opportunities in Ithaca and the surrounding region. At the same time, it has made living here increasingly unaffordable. This stems not only from its success in attracting workers and students to the region, but also from its refusal to pay its fair share to the city of Ithaca and neighboring communities through local property taxes or adequate payments in lieu of taxes. Cornell doesn’t pay, so everyone else has to pay more. 

As the cost of living increases, Cornell refuses to pay its workers a living wage, let alone a thriving wage. The MIT living wage calculator puts the living wage at $24.64 for a single person with no dependents and higher numbers for other household circumstances: $30.82 for two working parents with two children and $56.85 for a lone parent with two children. By contrast, the lowest entry-level wage in the recently expired contract is $19.17. Cornell’s offer of a 4% pay increase brings this up to $19.93, more than $4 below a living wage. (Cornell administrators have pointed out that this is above the current living wage as calculated by the ILR School’s Buffalo and Ithaca Co-Labs. However, if it were calculated today, it would be close to the MIT number, and when it is next re-calculated in February 2025 it will be even higher.)  

One result of wages not keeping up with the cost of living is that more and more workers commute from outside Ithaca and Tompkins County. This means that workers pay the cost of gas, wear and tear on vehicles, uncompensated commuting time, and parking. Along with these costs come risks. Workers who can’t get to work on time are vulnerable to disciplinary action, even if it is due to factors outside their control. Parking at Cornell is expensive and is assigned with little regard to need. Cornell could show respect for workers and reduce the daily stress facing workers by providing free parking near the place of work.    

We must not forget that UAW members bore the brunt of Cornell’s response to COVID-19. Many administrators, faculty and staff were able to work remotely, providing them with greater flexibility. Largely excluded were workers represented by the UAW, whose skills are essential to keeping the University’s physical infrastructure operational and who literally keep much of the University community housed and fed. These workers have been treated as a second-class workforce, last in line when benefits are doled out, first in line when cost reductions or new burdens are imposed. 

The University touts its public mission but refuses to behave as a good citizen. It privatizes the costs and burdens and claims for itself the successes and benefits. It rolls out the red-carpet for wealthy donors while stonewalling in bargaining and giving short-shrift to the people who make the University work. It is acting with the rapacity of a for-profit corporation sitting on $10 billion in wealth rather than with the public-mindedness and fairness required of a great public institution. 

The AAUP does not believe it remotely possible for the University to function if there were a strike. It would be equivalent to March 2020, when all operations had to cease and the University’s educational and research missions had to be put on pause. This would further corrode University life and community after several difficult years. The expertise of the UAW 2300 members cannot be replaced, and University administration knows it. 

The responsibility for averting a strike lies entirely with the administration. Faculty across the University know that without the work of UAW 2300 members, our teaching and research will grind to a halt. We will stand in solidarity with workers fighting for a living wage and fair working conditions. 

Cornell University Chapter of the AAUP Executive Committee: Risa Lieberwitz (President), David Bateman (Vice-President), Ian Greer (Secretary-Treasurer), Suman Seth (At-Large Executive Committee member), and Darlene Evans (At-Large Executive Committee member).