An Update on SWC Negotiations

Dear Colleagues,

As the spring semester is underway, we want to update you on negotiations with the Student Workers of Columbia union (SWC) and share why, despite our good faith, the union’s positions hold little potential for meaningful progress. The current divide is much more fundamental than a matter of bridging differences between our positions—most troubling, SWC has recently revealed a position that contests our faculty’s control over academic decisions and the University’s responsibility for its operations.

Since early in negotiations, much of SWC’s focus has been on issues unrelated to the terms and conditions of employment. In our most recent bargaining session, SWC rejected any such limit to their scope of authority. It did so by verbally repudiating the 2018 Framework Agreement, which set the foundational ground rules for collective bargaining with academic employee unions at Columbia. The Framework Agreement established essential boundaries distinguishing between employment matters, which are subject to bargaining, and academic and operational matters that must remain under University and faculty control.

In reaching the Framework Agreement, Columbia agreed to negotiate over matters like compensation and other employment conditions, while SWC explicitly agreed that any contract “must not infringe upon the integrity of Columbia’s academic decision-making or Columbia’s exclusive right to manage the institution consistent with its educational and research mission.” This Agreement serves as a firewall preserving the faculty’s authority over academic matters. But the natural conclusion of the union’s position could let it claim a role in decisions about what constitutes acceptable scholarship, who teaches what, how research is conducted, and what amount, type, and quality of work meets the standards for a Columbia degree. SWC would have these questions answered not by the academic judgment of department chairs, faculty, or academic leadership, but through grievance procedures under labor law standards. This is a serious challenge to our faculty’s academic expertise and independence.

The Framework Agreement, which sets academic and operational matters apart from employment matters, was the precondition for recognizing SWC and negotiating its first contract. In announcing their rejection of the employment/academic distinction, SWC’s leadership is unilaterally claiming that graduate-student employees share the faculty’s authority and should have rights that no university union was ever authorized or intended to have.

As just a few examples of how this development is reflected in the bargaining so far, SWC has demanded:

• A new contractual definition of retaliation by faculty that includes critical grading, the number of academic assessments, refusal to write recommendation letters, writing critical recommendation letters, and denial of professional opportunities, when judged by the student and the union to be unwarranted;
• Defining “power-based abuse” to include whatever the student or the union judges to be instances of excessive monitoring or management, overriding or excessively questioning a graduate student’s decisions, open and unwarranted criticism of performance, and giving what a graduate student takes to be unreasonable or unrealistic workloads or deadlines;
• Imposing their own version of a University bullying policy, which must be adopted and applied to the entire University, if the University fails to adopt a policy within three months of contract ratification;
• Prohibiting Columbia from opening its Global Center in Tel Aviv;
• A mandatory six-year funding guarantee for all PhD students in all schools, regardless of program-specific funding models or academic program structure; and
• Eliminating use of the E-Verify platform, despite the fact that it is required for international student participation in STEM-OPT extension.

Taken together, these provisions show that SWC’s campaign is not simply about wages, benefits, or employment conditions—it is a bid to shift decision-making power over academic and institutional governance from faculty and University leadership to the union.

SWC’s leadership has been clear that they hope to shut down Columbia’s teaching and research if their demands are not met. In fact, the union already is advertising a “Strike Authorization Vote General Body Meeting” on February 5—rushing to strike after only five bargaining sessions and, by the union’s admission, without yet putting forward all of its contract proposals. By contrast, SWC held 73 bargaining sessions with the University before deciding to strike in 2021. Similarly, we understand Harvard, which is currently seeking a successor contract with its graduate student union, has held 17 bargaining sessions and continues active negotiations.

Columbia is committed to reaching a fair, competitive, and sustainable successor contract, while holding strong to the Framework Agreement that recognized labor rights for students when serving as employees, and while respecting that students come here as students to earn degrees and learn from faculty—faculty who must be empowered to properly teach them. But we cannot hand over academic and operational control, subordinate educational considerations to labor law, and devalue the experience and judgment of the faculty, chairs, and academic leaders entrusted with the institution’s teaching and research mission.

We will continue to keep you informed as negotiations progress and appreciate your continued dedication to our students and scholarly community.

Sincerely,

Amy Hungerford
Dean and Executive Vice President, Faculty of Arts and Sciences