“Worker Power Is a Threat to the Way the University Is Run”
Graduate workers at the University of Chicago are on strike this week. They’re demanding union recognition from an administration that is relying on a Trump-appointed labor board’s hostility to workers to deny graduate workers’ organizing rights.
An empty classroom at the University of Chicago today. uchicagogsu / Twitter
This week, graduate student workers at the University of Chicago are engaging in a three-day work action to demand the university recognize their union, Graduate Students United.
The action comes shortly after graduate workers went on strike at University of Illinois-Chicago, resulting in major wins, as well as recent teacher strikes at charter schools in the city that made similar gains for teachers. The work action at UChicago is also part of the larger teacher strike wave happening across the country, starting with teachers in West Virginia inspired by the Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012 and whose current contract expires at the end of the month.
The week before the strike, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Sean Duffy spoke with Laura Colaneri, a student in her third year of a romance languages and literature PhD who teachers Spanish 102 and coordinates student workshops, a member of Graduate Students United, and a member of DSA.
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