Picketing the Political Line

On students who are workers, workers who are students, and the recent Unfair Labor Practice complaints against the SWC. 

By Duda Kovarsky Rotta and Gabriela McBride

Illustration by Derin Ogutcu

Columbia is the birthplace of student employees being recognized as workers. In 2016, the National Labor Relations Board’s “Columbia Decision” granted graduate researchers, teaching assistants, and resident advisors the full breadth of rights that any other workers have. With the newfound ability to unionize, Columbia’s student workers formed a chapter of the national United Auto Workers. In early 2021, The Graduate Workers of Columbia (eventually becoming the Student Workers of Columbia) went on strike for ten weeks—a massive undertaking that garnered national attention. The GWC won many of their demands in the finally-signed contract. Witnessing their fellow students and instructors strike in the face of an administration unafraid to show its claws mattered not simply for the material concessions. It was a political awakening for many union members and undergraduates who were on campus at the time. 

However, the last class of undergraduates to have witnessed the movement first-hand graduated last year. With the short, four-year long, institutional memory of a college setting, the gravity of SWC’s current round of bargaining is not as palpable as it might have been a few years ago, especially amongst undergraduates. With another expiry of the contract this year, many expected the Union to strike again—but it hasn’t. Instead, two federal charges have been filed against the Student Workers of Columbia this semester: one from the University and another from an anonymous group of alleged ex-union members. They both claim the Union has ceased to protect the rights of their workers, and have instead become devoted to so-called political agendas.

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The new bargaining process, which began in March 2025, has yet to reach an end. Both parties have accused the other of not attending sessions in good faith. In July, when Columbia proposed a new contract, the Union voted to reject and counterpropose. In response, Columbia filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against SWC. This was an unprecedented escalation: A ULP is a formal complaint, filed against an employer or a union, that claims employees’ rights were violated under the National Labor Relations Act. The issue is evaluated by the National Labor Relations Board, possibly going before an administrative law judge in more extreme cases. The most common result is a cease and desist to the violating party. If it escalates up the NLRB ladder, a ULP can cause a loss of NLRA strike protections, especially if the decision lies in the hands of a conservative Board. Currently, the five-person Board has two vacancies, which are expected to be filled by the Trump administration.  

Columbia’s ULP argues that SWC refused to bargain over permissive issues—that is, issues which neither party is required to bargain over, but may choose to do. The National Labor Relations Board specifies that parties may not “insist to impasse” over permissive issues; Columbia claims that the request for sessions over Zoom, and the presence of their President, Grant Miner are permissive issues leading to the bargaining stall.  They also cite the Union allegedly supporting the demonstration at Butler Library on May 7 , 2025, as in violation of the NLRA. Though Columbia doesn’t associate each violation with a specific argument, they claim SWC violated sections 8(b)(1), 8(b)(3), and 8(d) of the NLRA, citing that “in effect, the Union has ceased functioning as a labor organization within the meaning of the Act.” In other words, they claim the Union has left aside workers rights in favor of other, less relevant, issues—whatever they have decided those are. 

This most recent bargaining process has shed light, not only on the lengths Columbia will go to in order to suppress the full breadth of demands from the Union, but also on the particular vulnerability and exploitation of the student-worker dual identity. When it comes to punishment for protest or picketing, Columbia claims that student-workers are students, subject to University policy. However, when the Union brings student issues to the table, student-workers are workers, bound only to so-called workplace matters. The ULP is a glaring example of Columbia’s intentional manipulation of the student-worker role. 

The prong of the ULP about Grant Miner’s presence at the bargaining table—and that it would threaten the entire process—exemplifies the dual-identity manipulation. Columbia claims that bargaining could never be done in “good faith” in the presence of Miner, who was expelled on March 13 2025, one day before bargaining was set to begin, for his alleged participation in the 2024 “Hind’s Hall” protest. His expulsion was an act of student discipline, but amounted to the loss of his job as a PhD candidate in the English and Comparative Literature department. The ULP claim is that because Miner has no more connection to the University, he “is not a proper officer under the CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement.]” The Union counters by citing Article 7 of the NLRA, which says an employer cannot choose which bargaining members they want to meet with. 

However, when it benefits them, the University treats student protesters not as students, but as workers. The ULP argues that SWC encouraged students to join the demonstration at Butler Library on May 7, 2025, and that one of their members was arrested that night. Columbia structured their argument over the bizarre claim that SWC’s solidarity with the protest was in fact a form of strike. They said, through social media, the Union was, “directing its members to engage in an unlawful sit-down strike.” They claimed that the protest violated the rules of strikes, citing the “No strike / No lockout” provision of their agreement, where student employees cannot make “any other concerted interference with the University’s work” during the lifetime of a collective bargaining agreement. But the demonstration on May 7 was obviously not a SWC strike or even “concerted interference” orchestrated by the Union. There is a world of difference between individual Union members being present at a protest, and holding an SWC demonstration, even if the Union expresses solidarity with fellow students and their cause. But because it was convenient, the University framed student protesters as workers obstructing the workplace. 

Lastly, Columbia’s ULP argument over the forum for bargaining centered on SWC’s request for Zoom bargaining sessions. But according to bargaining member Sohum Pal, as the delay began to drag, the Union repeatedly asserted that conversation over Zoom was no longer a decisive factor, as long as enough physical room was provided for their members. The problem was that Columbia repeatedly suggested places that could not fit SWC’s large numbers. However, by playing up the Zoom ask, Columbia was able to paint SWC as utterly difficult students unwilling to budge. Juliana Torres, an SWC member in the History department, sees Columbia’s focus on Zoom is not simply a delay strategy, but an attempt to paint the SWC “as if we are silly.” Despite the SWC’s October decision to concede on the Zoom question, finding a place to meet still proved difficult. According to the NLRB, sessions between employers and employees must be held in neutral spaces—and back in June, Columbia had proposed a meeting in their lawyer’s office at the World Trade Center. 

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As the University presses on the Union's understanding of itself through their ULP, other forces bring criticism of the union from other directions and with different implications. In September of this year, SWC had another ULP filed against them, this time by an anonymous group of ex-union members called Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression. GRADS claims the union’s leaders are “illegally using bad faith bargaining to demand political concessions from the Columbia administration.” They receive free legal representation from The National Right to Work Committee, a widely known anti-union organization whose mission is to “eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism abuses.” The GRADS press release, published by the NRTW itself, argues the SWC is not fairly representing student workers, and reads: “While it’s wrong from the start that any student is forced to accept union boss ‘representation’ they oppose, it’s even less acceptable that UAW union officials are trying to use their monopoly bargaining privileges to enforce their divisive politics on the entire campus, including undergraduate students.” 

To SWC member Juliana Torres, the suggestion that union aims were not democratically chosen stands on weak grounds. She described the union’s rigorous process of determining the bargaining campaign platform. “If you’ve entered our union meeting, you've been through the process of democratic caucus, you've seen it.” It’s hard to imagine how these “union bosses” could be “enforc[ing] their divisive politics” when, as Sohum Pal explained, every single bargaining provision was voted upon, right down to the minutiae of wording.

Further, the issues that are being labeled as political, like campus surveillance or gate closures, are not even permissive issues. If campus is a workplace, then surveillance and access in the workplace are workers’ rights issues that the University is legally obligated to bargain over. The idea that discussing the opening of the gates, for example, is asking for inappropriate political concessions is foundationally flawed, because the conditions of access to a workplace is a textbook “workers right” issue. However, the reality is, even if these permissive subjects were political, bringing them to the table would be standard to the process of union bargaining. SWC Bargaining Committee Member James Heard explained to us that though the employer is not required to bargain over them, “every single union bargains permissive subjects. It is a standard part of the bargaining process.” And in some ways, is integral to the function and project of a union. 

“One of the great things about unions as a political body is that workplaces are never isolated,” says Heard, “When you bargain for improvements in your workplace, you can actually bargain for the betterment of those outside of it as well.” If a worker can be disciplined as a student, and subsequently lose their job as a worker because of campus activism, these political demands clearly and intimately pertain to workers rights. Just because the Union’s bargaining affects the people around them—like disciplined undergraduate students and West Harlem community members who have been sequestered from campus access—does not annul their relevance to workers’ rights. 

Unions are by nature political bodies and as such, they hold power at our University to improve the circumstances for graduate workers, undergraduates, and community members alike. Even the most basic pillars of a union’s function—those that might seem “apolitical”—are all politically charged. Take, for example, the idea that all student workers should have equal access to their workplace. This implicates those that are disproportionately targeted by public safety presence on our campus, and face a greater challenge in coming into work. But it also implicates the two year closure of the campus gates, and Palestinians being denied access to the Tel Aviv Columbia Global Center. In this way, a call for divestment is no more political than a demand for NYPD to be off campus, or a demand for a wage increase. 

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Bargaining has continued since the August ULP, with the first meeting occurring on Nov. 7. But under new protest rules unilaterally decided upon by Columbia’s Board of Trustees, the line between worker and student continues to be exploited, and suppression of the union continues. Earlier, on Oct. 17, the SWC held a picket on College Walk; Columbia responded by sending 20 SWC members disciplinary letters for their attendance at the rally. On one end, Union activity is protected by the NLRA. On the other, students’ demonstrations can now be disbanded for seemingly any reason. 

If the University is determined to use the vulnerable double identity of student and worker, so can we. Just as these identities are intertwined, so are their aims and struggles. And as students, Columbia undergraduates must recognize this kinship with student workers, how every demand for a more better workplace operates as a demand for a better classroom and community. Real collective power at the University requires students and workers to recognize solidarity and build coalition from there. What this looks like in practice? “If or when a strike occurs, Columbia will attempt to scab those positions,” predicts Heard. “It’ll be important that students let the university know that they are very unhappy with this situation. And that it is not just the student workers on strike, but the students as well.”