Boston College: Stop Punishing Grad Workers and Bargain Now!

Dear Father Leahy and Boston College Board of Trustees:



We urge you to stop your efforts to punish graduate student workers for exercising their basic labor rights on campus. For more than a year, you have refused to honor the results of these workers’ decisive, democratic vote in favor of unionization. And now your administration has opted to unjustly discipline more than a dozen graduate student workers who engaged in peaceful efforts to distribute leaflets and exercise their free speech right to inform the public of the college’s refusal to bargain. Your attempt to silence these workers is unacceptable and directly contradicts Jesuit values.



Catholic social justice teachings support workers’ rights. Nine* other private universities (including Harvard, Brandeis, and Tufts in the Boston area, plus a fellow Jesuit institution, Georgetown University) have already agreed to bargain with graduate workers after they vote to unionize. Boston College needs to stop defying history and Catholic teachings by coming to the bargaining table.



As a community, we demand that Boston College:

1. Drop all discipline against graduate workers for union actions.

2. Respect the rights of our graduate workers and bargain with their union.



*Since the writing of this petition, Columbia University has agreed to bargain with the CU graduate workers union GWC-UAW, so the number is now TEN private universities.





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