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Owen Park is a student at Columbia University and participant in the strike; Grant Miner is a PhD student at Columbia and a member of the Graduate Workers Union, which supports the strike.
On Jan. 22, the deadline for Spring semester payments, Columbia University students officially began a campus-wide tuition strike. They are calling it the largest of its kind in United States history with over 4,000 pledged participants.
This action, chiefly organized by Columbia’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), had been in the works since last summer as a response to unsatisfactory administrative adjustments to the COVID-19 pandemic, including university President Lee Bollinger’s refusal to reduce his $4.6 million annual salary in the interest of increasing student aid. The movement gained further momentum in the Fall 2020 semester with national media coverage and a broad base of support from other student groups, such as Students for Ju
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Illinois State University’s Graduate Workers Union has asked for a state labor mediator to step in to what it calls stalled negotiations on a contract.
Negotiations began in October 2019. The union said ISU took more than 14 months to respond to its initial offer. Now, the union has requested mediation from the Illinois Labor Relations Board.
“If ISU has something to offer us that actually addresses the severe crises TAs face that ISU creates with low stipends, poor benefits, and high fees we are ready and willing to hear it. But until that time, we have nothing for ISU except the notice that we request that the Labor Board impose mediation at this time,” the union said in a press release.