A House Divided: Why Columbia's Student Union Infighting Cannot Stand
The University’s graduate employee population is divided in the face of the Student Workers of Columbia’s shifting bargaining demands.
Ideally, unions serve as a haven for collective organization and worker empowerment. By fighting to improve working conditions, unions have successfully bargained for the eight-hour workday, health and retirement benefits, and protections against unfair dismissal, among many other notable accomplishments.
Columbia’s own student union, the Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), has unquestionably made significant improvements to labor conditions across campus. The most recent contract negotiated by the SWC was signed in January 2022 after a ten-week strike in late 2021. This agreement included a six percent increase in annual salaries, a raise in hourly wages from $15 to $21, coverage of 75 percent of dental costs, and the creation of a $300,000 emergency fund to handle unexpected medical expenses.
More recently, however, the SWC has gained a reputation for making demands that exceed the scope of Columbia’s student worker conditions. For example, in addition to the expected demand for a pay raise to keep pace with the city’s soaring cost of living, they have also requested that Grant Miner, their former president, be allowed to participate in the bargaining process. Miner was one of the students expelled after the occupation of Hamilton Hall.
One of the most outspoken critics of the SWC is a newly formed group of graduate students who have chosen to remain anonymous, citing concerns over harassment. GRADS, which stands for Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression, is represented by free legal counsel from the National Right to Work Legal Foundation (NRTW). The NRTW is a non-profit that describes itself as fighting against “coercive union power and compulsory unionism abuses.” It’s also known for its ties to far-right groups aiming to undermine civil liberties and for the funding it has received from the Koch brothers.
In the Unfair Labor Practice Charge GRADS filed in September with the National Labor Relations Board against the SWC, they make four main claims. First, they object to SWC’s demand to bargain over restricting security and government agencies, including the NYPD, and to have veto power over calling law enforcement to campus. Although it was never formally voted on, the SWC has defended the “Cops Off Campus” proposal as a “mandatory” subject of bargaining, defining it as a matter of workplace conditions. The SWC based its request on incidents of violence on campus involving the NYPD, especially following October 2023.
Second, GRADS opposes the SWC’s demand to have Grant Miner serve as a bargaining representative. Third, they list several demands they view as outside of the bargaining scope. These include the union’s demands to negotiate over the “Boycott, Divest, & Sanction” policies of the entire university, to end the undergraduate dual-degree program between Columbia and Tel Aviv University, and to close the Tel Aviv Global Center. While the SWC argues that the Center discriminates “against people by national origin,” GRADS points to Columbia’s other global centers in Tunis, Istanbul, and Amman. Tunisia has seen a sharp crackdown on government dissent; Turkey, under Erdoğan’s control, has faced reports of suppressed press freedom, targeted civilian attacks against Kurdish groups, and cruel and unusual punishments for imprisoned dissidents; Jordan’s government, meanwhile, has arrested peaceful protesters, dissolved oppositional political parties, and continues to limit the rights of women and girls. The SWC has not raised concerns about these global centers.
Finally, GRADS’ complaint notes that SWC’s demand for amnesty for disciplined students concerns students who “are not part of the graduate student bargaining unit.” Similarly, GRADS criticized the SWC’s attempt to intervene in the undergraduate dual degree program with Tel Aviv. The SWC is intended to represent student employees—undergraduates who the university does not employ do not fall under its jurisdiction.
All of these demands, GRADS argues, are made in “bad faith,” characterized by the lack of a genuine effort to reach agreements or, in this case, by the unreasonableness of the demands.
Recently, GRADS issued another statement sharply criticizing the SWC’s plan to enforce a union shop policy, which would require all student workers to join the union and pay dues. The SWC explained that the goal of a union-shop policy is to address student worker concerns more efficiently and collectively by avoiding the time-consuming process of recruiting new members. GRADS, of course, views the situation differently. While emphasizing that they are not opposed to union power, GRADS argues in the statement that forcing graduate students to pay dues “infringes on graduate students’ academic freedom and freedom of association” because the SWC has become a “political organization.”
While the SWC did not respond to my request for comment, it has a page addressing the complaint issued by GRADS and the role of the National Right to Work Foundation. The page emphasizes the right-wing political affiliations and ideological history of the NRTW, particularly its consistent support of right-to-work laws, which prevent the formation of union shops. GRADS and the SWC both accuse their counterparts of betraying their intended purpose by acting as political organizations.
SWC defends its controversial bargaining proposals as representing the views of its members as a result of collective decision-making. GRADS students, however, have asserted that an ideological environment governs SWC. The back-and-forth continues while the core concerns of student workers, such as salaries and healthcare costs, have faded into the background. In fact, negotiations after the June 2025 expiration of the 2022 contract have not yet begun, marked by conflict between the SWC and Columbia’s negotiations team.
Besides the permissive demands GRADS objects to, other current requests from the SWC highlight the challenge of covering the city’s rising living costs with graduate student salaries. A further concern is the university hiring non-union adjunct faculty to teach courses, especially in the Core (classes that many graduate students have traditionally taught as well). The SWC has criticized this action as “clear union busting,” a deliberate effort to weaken the union’s power and representation on campus. Given the current stakes, it is especially important that the union operates effectively.
Unions have long played a vital role in American politics, including during the Civil Rights Movement and in pushing for Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. If the SWC seeks to follow this tradition, it must be able to fulfill its duty to “ensure livable wages, adequate benefits, clear workload expectations, and consistent and transparent employment policies.” Achieving the union’s full potential to enact change depends on the unity of its constituents—a unity hamstrung by the recent internal divisions. More importantly, it is past time to consider which processes can help bridge this gap and refocus attention on workers’ concerns. At such a pivotal moment, the need to rebuild majorities and restore trust in fair representation is more important than ever.
Mathilda Simons is a freshman at Columbia College studying economics. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.