Seattle Press on Line - UW and Grad Students Avoid a Strike

UW and Grad Students Avoid a Strike

"We got a settlement?" GSEAC members recess picket sign construction when they hear news of bargaining progress.

Dec 13, 2000 -- University of Washington graduate students "recessed" their planned strike December 4 after an agreement was carved out in midnight negotiations, just four hours before picket lines were scheduled to go up around UW's main campus in Seattle. Union leaders said they were not giving up their right to strike, but wanted to remove the threat of a strike in order to permit a compromise.

In the agreement, the UW promised to bargain with the union, which represents 1,600 teaching assistants, readers and graders, and to settle the issue of official recognition after giving the legislature a chance to pass enabling legislation.

The union is the Graduate Student Employee Action Coalition (GSEAC), which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers. The UAW has organized graduate assistants in the University of California system, at MIT and on several other campuses.

The university and the union agreed to go hand in hand to the legislature in January to try to satisfy the UW's request for specific legislation authorizing bargaining with the graduate students' union.

The union does not feel that special legislation is needed, but compromised on the issue in order to facilitate agreement in other areas, according to Steve Williamson, Executive Secretary of the King County Labor Council, who took part in the negotiations.

Williamson said the agreement "is a careful balance of the grad students' needs with the university's concerns."

Several unions in the city pledged support for GSEAC's strike, including Metro bus drivers in Amalgamated Transit Local 587, who said they would honor picket lines and not drive their buses on campus during a strike.

Williamson praised UW President Richard McCormick for being able to figure out how to balance the university's needs with grad students' concerns. "It was a tough job," he said.

Williamson contrasted the efforts of McCormick and the university negotiators with the "bunker mentality" at Seattle's daily newspapers, now in the third week of a strike with the Newspaper Guild. "They stationed armed guards on the roof and boarded up their windows, because they knew their rigid bargaining offer wasn't going to be acceptable to their workers," he said.

"It's amazing to compare how these two great social institutions approached the question of their employees' needs and desires," Williamson continued. "UW worked to find a compromise everybody can live with. But the Times and P-I declared war on their own workers."

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!

No comments yet!