NYU LABOR ORGS TO THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION: REINSTATE GRANT MINER, PRESIDENT OF SWC-UAW LOCAL 2710
We write as labor organizations representing workers at New York University (NYU) to denounce Columbia University’s decision to fire our comrade Grant Miner, the President of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710, for exercising his rights to free speech, organized advocacy, and peaceful protest.
We stand with the @uaw.union, which stated in response:
“Trade unionists everywhere, defenders of the Constitution, of freedom of speech, of academic freedom, and of the right of free association, should be appalled and disgusted by the behavior of Columbia University, and should take it for the clear signal it is. If they can come for graduate workers, if they can arrest, deport, expel, or imprison union leaders and activists for their protected political speech, then they can come for you. For your contract. For your paycheck. For your family. And for your rights.”
To the Columbia administration, we say: we stand with the thousands of our comrades in SWC and with all workers at Columbia and demand the reinstatement of Grant Miner to his academic position. The Columbia administration’s appalling cowardice in the face of political pressure, its willingness to betray every value underlying its academic mission, and its violent reprisals against its own teachers, students, and staff for exercising their rights is a disgrace from which the university will struggle to recover.
We remind our own administration at NYU: we have seen your own cowardice, your own failures to understand (much less defend) the role of a university, and your own repression of our protected speech and action. As unionists—as the students, faculty, and staff who make this university run—we never forget that all our power as organized labor comes from dissent, from concerted activity, from strikes, from disruption, from protest. No matter who sits in authority in Washington or on the NYU Board of Trustees, we will never cede our power to speak and act in defense of workers and all marginalized and exploited people.
In solidarity!
