Like workers at John Deere and Kellogg’s plants across the South, Midwest, and West, and like teachers, hospital employees, and steelworkers elsewhere in the country, graduate workers in New York City’s Morningside Heights are on strike. On November 3, the thirty-six-thousand-member Student Workers of Columbia (SWC)-UAW Local 2110 laid down our teaching, grading, and research and headed to the picket line.

Our demands for what would be a first contract are in line with those of other graduate student unions (including Harvard’s, which is also set to strike on November 16): health care (including dental), neutral third-party arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination (unsettlingly common within the hierarchical structures of higher education), and a wage which meets the cost of living in New York City.

This is the union’s second strike this year. The first, which began in March, ended with a tentative agreement that was narrowly voted down by the unit. But the fight for a fair first contract began way back in 2017, when UAW Local 2110 was formally recognized by the university, yet the university nevertheless would not join the union at the bargaining table for over a year. More than two years and over eighty bargaining sessions later, Columbia student workers still have no contract.