***Contact for interviews: Sophie Coppieters 't Wallant (847-204-9630, president@mitgsu.org)***
Unions representing over 100,000 university workers across 58 university campuses have issued a joint statement condemning attacks by university administrations on students and workers engaging in peaceful pro-Palestine encampment protests. We call on universities to respect their students’ and workers’ rights to free speech, assembly, and protest. The twenty-nine unions issuing this joint statement represent graduate workers, faculty, postdocs, staff, dining hall workers, university hospital workers, and more. Included are UAW 4811 and SWC-UAW 2701 who represent workers at UCLA and Columbia respectively, where protestors have been the target of some of the most violent attacks.
Rafael Jaime, president of UAW Local 4811, comments on the recent attacks on the UCLA encampment: “Our members were bravely and proudly on the front lines of the encampment exercising their right to protest the genocide in Gaza. The university illegally allowed a violent mob to attack them and then directed police to brutalize and arrest them.” UAW 4811, which represents 48,000 workers across the University of California system, has called for a strike authorization vote in response to the attacks on students and workers at UCLA.
Sophie Coppieters ‘t Wallant, president of UE Local 256 MIT Graduate Student Union, states, “We are making this call as labor unions because the freedom to protest is foundational to our ability as workers to collectively fight for and win improvements in our workplaces, just as the freedom to protest is foundational to our ability as humans to collectively fight for and win a better world. These attacks by university administrations are not just attacks on the peacefully protesting students and workers, these are attacks on all of our collective democratic rights.”
Julia Bannon, president of Student Workers of Columbia UAW 2710, notes that “Student protests and encampments have created peaceful commons across the country where students have formed true community and intellectual bonds in spite of attempts to silence them. As academic workers we must collectively protect all places of real learning—anything less is to participate in the destruction of our profession. If universities are indeed places of learning, they must put the wellbeing of their students and teachers above that of their lawns and buildings and donors.”
Read the joint statement and find the full list of union signatories here: tinyurl.com/labor4protest
***Contact for interviews: Sophie Coppieters 't Wallant (847-204-9630, president@mitgsu.org)***