Dur­ing a ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton Square Park Decem­ber 2, mem­bers of the Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee (GSOC, affil­i­at­ed with Unit­ed Auto Work­ers Local 2110) announced they were con­fi­dent that its mem­ber­ship will autho­rize the union to strike by Decem­ber 11.

If New York Uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors don’t start answer­ing teach­ing assis­tant demands soon, the nation’s sec­ond most expen­sive col­lege could expe­ri­ence a work stop­page as ear­ly as next year.

Bar­gain­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber Ella Wind, a Mid­dle East­ern Stud­ies stu­dent, said that NYU man­age­ment had not sub­stan­tive­ly respond­ed to union demands in the past three con­tract nego­ti­a­tion ses­sions over the past year. GSOC wants the uni­ver­si­ty to imple­ment an uni­form health care cov­er­age plan to teach­ing assis­tants — grad­u­ate stu­dents who teach under­grad­u­ate stu­dents — rather than dif­fer­ing plans depend­ing on one’s spe­cif­ic school with­in NYU, Wind explained.

The union is also demand­ing tuition reim­burse­ment and an improve­ment for teach­ing assis­tant den­tal ben­e­fits. Cur­rent­ly, grad­u­ate stu­dent instruc­tors can pay into a pro­gram, clev­er­ly called the Stu-dent Plan, where they receive den­tal care from NYU den­tal stu­dents, the union said. Instead, the union wants cov­er­age under the fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors’ den­tal plan.

GSCO also wants an improve­ment to the NYU child care plan. GSOC bar­gain­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber Shelly Ronen, a soci­ol­o­gy stu­dent, said stu­dents can apply for a $200 per semes­ter child care sub­sidy from the uni­ver­si­ty — an ​“insult” com­pared to oth­er uni­ver­si­ty plans, such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, which pro­vides direct child care for grad­u­ate stu­dent employ­ees. GSOC is demand­ing a child­care sup­port ben­e­fit writ­ten into their con­tract for each of an employ­ee’s children.

“Peo­ple feel like things are drag­ging,” Wind said dur­ing the rally.

She added that the union had met with the uni­ver­si­ty and a medi­a­tor the pre­vi­ous night.

“Because of our esca­la­tion, they’ve been forced to respond,” Wind said. ​“I’m cau­tious­ly optimistic.”

In 2002 GSOC suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed a con­tract with a health plan and increased stipends for mem­bers, but two years lat­er the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB) ruled in a case involv­ing Brown Uni­ver­si­ty that pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties had no oblig­a­tion to rec­og­nize grad­u­ate stu­dent unions. Last Decem­ber, NYU broke with that prece­dent under pres­sure from the union and oth­er activists and for­mal­ly rec­og­nized the union after a 620 to 10 union autho­riza­tion vote from grad­u­ate stu­dent workers.

The GSOC ral­ly hap­pened as grad­u­ate stu­dent instruc­tors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon, which as a pub­lic insti­tu­tion is not bound to the NLRB prece­dent, announced a strike to com­mence dur­ing finals week. Among their demands are a 5.5. per­cent wage increase for min­i­mum salaries over the next two years and two weeks of paid med­ical and par­ent leave per year, accord­ing to the Ore­gon­ian.

A GSOC strike next year would involved numer­ous chal­lenges for stu­dent union­ists, includ­ing deflect­ing the accu­sa­tion that grad­u­ate stu­dents would be pun­ish­ing under­grad­u­ate stu­dents for a labor con­flict they aren’t involved in. But mem­bers say they are con­fi­dent that stu­dents will under­stand the union’s mes­sage that invest­ment in teach­ing assis­tant com­pen­sa­tion trans­lates into a bet­ter edu­ca­tion for under­grad­u­ate students.

“We’ve been engag­ing more and more and train­ing mem­bers how to talk to under­grads,” Wind said.

Five of the eight mem­bers of the GSOC bar­gain­ing com­mit­tee are mem­bers of a dis­si­dent cau­cus elect­ed by the mem­ber­ship ear­li­er this fall called the NYU Aca­d­e­m­ic Work­ers for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union, which believed that the pre­vi­ous union lead­er­ship had failed to mobi­lize rank-and-file sup­port. ​“More and more grad­u­ate stu­dents are com­ing to our events,” Wind said. ​“Stu­dents are inter­est­ed in this.”

The union last struck in 2005. The next medi­a­tion ses­sion between the union and NYU admin­is­tra­tors is Decem­ber 18.

NYU spokesman John Beck­man said in a statement,