Columbia Tries to Undermine Its Unions, Hire Scab Instructors

Imagine you get a letter from your manager a week before you are set to teach classes, removing you from teaching duties but saying you’ll get paid anyway. This odd experience has happened to around 137 graduate students at Columbia University in New York City who teach core curriculum, language, and writing classes. They are members of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), Auto Workers Local 2710.

Getting paid to not teach might sound pretty good, but in fact the university is hiring adjuncts with no union contract to do the work of union members.

“I spent all summer not knowing if I was going to teach or not, and then they finally were like, ‘No, your class is canceled,’” said a core curriculum teacher who asked not to be named. Rumors had been circulating, but the university didn’t tell their workers anything directly.

And the letters are still coming. “The goal is to terrify everybody,” said Grant Miner, president of the local.

The cuts to graduate instructor jobs seem to be part of a concerted strategy by Columbia to undermine its unions. The Ivy League university has offered an insulting 2 percent raise to three unions currently in negotiations, including SWC-UAW. That’s so low that when inflation is counted in, it amounts to a pay cut.

On Tuesday, workers in dining, medical, and library services, members of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, picketed at the university’s gate on Broadway in Manhattan, alongside support staff and clerical workers who are members of UAW Local 2110.

“Columbia uses a lot of the same kind of union-busting approach, so we are uniting our forces today,” said Olga Brudastova, president of Local 2110. Her local also received the 2 percent offer.

NOT A LIVING WAGE

“It took three negotiating sessions for them to even give us their proposal of 2 percent, which is not a living wage for anybody,” said 1199 Vice-President Ray Wilson. “This is Columbia University, it’s not a mom-and-pop shop around the corner.”

Many dining workers are laid off in the summer and have to get additional jobs because the summer stipend they receive is not sufficient, he said.

One 1199 member blew a yellow whistle and marched with a sign, “Sorry we couldn’t all be here today… some of us were busy working two jobs to make ends meet!” Another’s sign said, “The second largest landowner in NYC does not pay us enough to pay our rent.”

Student Workers of Columbia distributed a flier pointing out Columbia Executive Vice-President of Arts and Sciences Amy Hungerford’s compensation: $894,126 a year, 18 times the average dining worker pay and 24 times the pay of student workers in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, where she’s a professor.

CANCELLED BARGAINING SESSIONS

Student Workers of Columbia joined the protest to address not only the insulting pay proposal and the layoffs, but also the university’s recent filing of an unfair labor practice charge against the union.

Columbia accuses the union of not bargaining in good faith by demanding that negotiations be conducted via Zoom, that Miner be allowed to attend, and that the university negotiate over what the latter considers permissive subjects of bargaining, like campus security protocols.

“The two groups, Columbia and SWC, have scheduled eight bargaining sessions,” said union member Johannah King-Slutzky. “Columbia has either canceled or walked out on six of those eight, but they're accusing us of being intransigent and failing to bargain.”

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The university sent an email about the ULP to the entire campus, she said. “They're all getting messaging about [the union] harming the community because it goes straight to their inbox.”

“We had members really worried. They thought that [Columbia] was suing us,” said King-Slutzky.

Back in March, on the opening day of bargaining, members learned that Columbia had expelled Miner, the president of their local, for participation in protests on behalf of Palestine. Columbia is still curtailing access to campus in an attempt to stop further protests.

On X, the union suggested that the strategy has been created by union-busting consultants: “Admin is using every tactic at its disposal to overwhelm our membership—cutting jobs & spreading misinformation. [Columbia] is paying union avoidance lawyers thousands of dollars an hour to play these games,” they wrote August 9.

HIRING SCABS

Last fall, Hungerford started mentioning plans to cut graduate labor, said King-Slutzky. Then in May, faculty learned that the university had frozen hiring of graduate instructors. But the workers were not told.

The university started recruiting to replace union members for the core curriculum and writing courses. “They’re just sending random emails to different universities saying, ‘Please send somebody to us,’” said Miner. “Whereas, we’re told that this is one of the most rigorous application processes that me and my program would go through, instead of just being given to whomever.”

As part of the push, already-existing contingent faculty are being made to teach more students. Miner estimated that contingent writing faculty have experienced a 15 percent increase in student load.

Adjunct faculty have been organizing with the UAW, but have not yet gained union recognition. This means the student instructor layoffs are eliminating union jobs and replacing them with non-union jobs.

Student Workers of Columbia is asking academic workers to shun the university’s hiring push, and hundreds of academics have signed a letter to Columbia administration saying they won’t publicize the jobs and calling “all workers in higher education to boycott Columbia’s recruitment of scab labor.” They are soliciting additional signatures.

“It's pretty clear that the strategy is to spend as much money as possible on replacing workers,” said Miner. “Right now, they’re essentially paying two people to do one job.” Despite the extra expense it has created, Columbia has implied that the replacements are due to Trump administration funding cuts.

EMPTY POSITIONS

Miner said it was unlikely Columbia could fill as many positions as they would like by hiring adjuncts. “They’re emailing recent graduates, they’re emailing just random people, essentially just kind of pulling people off the street,” he said. “But we’re also not sure how they’re going to cover all the students. It doesn't seem like they’ve substantially expanded the adjunct pool for something like university writing.”

For the laid-off workers, the damage could be lasting because teaching experience is important to getting a job later.

“I still don't know what I'm doing in the spring,” said the laid-off core curriculum instructor, who had expected two semesters of teaching. “And there’s no timeline to tell me. This fall I get funding, and in the spring it’s like, who knows?”

“It seems like there’s a real concerted strategy across all the units that 2 percent is the magic number,” said Miner, “and they’re willing to completely torch graduate education in order to pay substandard wages and to not have any disruptions on campus.”