On the picket line
www.workers.org
UPenn graduate students unionize Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania voted overwhelmingly this month to unionize as Graduate Employees Together UPenn – United Auto Workers. They join other graduate students from major universities, including Harvard and New York University, who ha

Along with demands for safer work conditions and fair financial compensation, GETUP-UAW is demanding disability justice, protection against harassment, equal rights for international students and just treatment for surrounding neighborhoods.

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The New York Police Department has brutally attacked and arrested students at Free Gaza Encampment sites on multiple campuses in the city, including Columbia University, New York University and the City University of New York (CUNY).

However, on April 23, after arrests were made at a Palestine solidarity demonstration in Brooklyn, several Metropolitan Transit Authority drivers exercised their union rights and refused to transport any arrestees loaded onto MTA buses confiscated by the NYPD. These drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, legitimately refused to work for the police and left the NYPD scrambling to find replacement drivers.

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The MFJ union workers strike has demonstrated solidarity with some of the most oppressed people in the New York City community. Underfunding by the city, despite the Right to Counsel law, has overburdened the legal aid staff at MFJ, with the rate of attrition increasing as compensation for their work fails to keep up with the cost of living. The strike is a vivid example of class war in that it emanates from the lived experiences of social conditions and shows how union organizing can challenge the status quo.

The MFJ union tactics included demanding that former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder refuse to cross their picket line to attend the MFJ gala where he was to be honored. Holder complied. Striking workers have picketed in front of the $2 million home of MFJ management negotiator, Anu Garfield, and residences of other management bargainers.