Early this summer, the AFT Higher Education program and policy council issued a strongly worded objection to the tactics used by Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and other private institutions to clamp down on graduate employee organizing.

At its May 19-20 meeting in Washington, D.C., the AFT leadership group blasted officials at universities that are “abandoning the principles of collegiality, fairness and freedom of association.” These officials, the PPC charged, are using “every means within their disposal to frighten, harass and impede graduate employees from acting collectively to secure decent compensation and professional rights.”

The PPC action came in response to a memo written by Columbia University provost Alan Brinkley and sent to all department chairs and deans. The memo was disseminated Feb. 14, two months before the Graduate Student Employees Union/UAW job action held the week of April 18. Brinkley proposed various responses to striking graduate employees, including making them ineligible for further work or scholarly awards.

The same week as the Columbia action, unions held limited actions at other campuses that have been barred from unionizing by a 2004 National Labor Relations Board decision. These actions occurred at the University of Pennsylvania, where the graduate employees are organized with the Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania/AFT (GET-UP)—and at Yale, among others. The AFT program and policy council called on university administrators to “stop hiding behind the current anti-worker policies of the NLRB and other agencies and to allow their employees the freedom to belong to unions, if they so choose.” The PPC sent the statement to the administrations at Columbia, Brown, Yale, Tufts and Penn, as well as to the members of the NLRB.

In other action, the PPC devoted considerable attention to staffing trends that have been debilitating colleges and universities over the past decade. Through publications, conferences and strategic planning, the PPC is addressing the persistent erosion in tenure and tenure-track positions throughout the public and private sectors, as well as the increasing reliance of college administrations on contingent, nonpermanent workers such as graduate employees, adjuncts and part-timers, temporary instructors and nontenure-track faculty.