How Columbia workers prepared ranks for strike

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By BRENDA The clerical workers at Columbia University recently won a modest but significant victory for equity for women and racial minorities when they settled their contract the morning of the strike deadline.

The union had voted to walk out on Oct. 13 unless the university addressed its main demands: an end to institutional discrimination, equal pay for equal work regardless of race or sex, appropriate training for all, childcare benefits, no givebacks, and fair wage increases for all.

Like support staffs at many other universities, the 1100 members of the Columbia local of United Auto Workers (UAW) District 65 are predominantly women (76 percent) and non-white (56 percent).

The workers' adamant demands were hardly surprising. In the three years since the first union contract was signed, the wage gap between whites and non-whites In the early part of the industrial era, workers in factories and sweatshops (including women and children) endured 12hour-or-longer days, six-day or seven-day weeks, poor light, foul air, unsafe machinery, and supervisors who forced them to maintain an inhuman pace.

It was only through decades of militant struggles that industrial workers were able to win child-labor laws, the eight-hour day, and minimal health and safety standards-as well as the right to organize themselves into unions to fight for a healthier workplace and a better standard of living.

But most office and service workers have only been on the fringes of these struggles. One reason for this is that these workers are outside of commodity production, which is the decisive sector of the economy. In addition, their work is seen as safer and less demanding. They have also been excluded because they are predominantly women.

The rapid automation of the office since the mid-1970s has been called by many analysts "the second industrial revolution." The lack of strong trade unions has left the workforce unprotected. Clerical workers are more concentrated, more productive, more closely supervised, and more alienated from the end results of the services they provide.

Chronic health problems

Several medical surveys in the United States, Canada, and Europe have shown 4 SOCIALIST ACTION widened from $1000 to $1500. This was largely as a result of "discretionary" [discriminatory] hiring practices which channel non-whites into the lowest grades and into the lowest rates of pay within grades.

This racial inequity was perpetuated by Columbia's refusal to provide equal training and promotion opportunities for those in the lowest grades.

The disparity in average pay for male and female workers on campus is even more pronounced. The average salary in the mostly male maintenance-workers' local is $12,000 higher than the average (mostly female) clerical workers' salary.

While the university provides faculty and officers with childcare and private schooltuition subsidies, they refused to grant similar assistance to the nearly 25 percent of clerical workers who are parents.

The last straw for the union was Columbia's insistence that it could pay no more than 3-percent pay increases across the board for three years and that it needed to reduce vacation for new hires.

Building solidarity

Enraged by Columbia's takeback proposals, the workers took advantage of stalled negotiations to organize support for the planned Oct. 13 walkout.

Significantly, UAW District 65 secured a commitment from the two other campus unions-Local 1199 and Local 241 of the Transport Workers Union-to honor their pickets. (The inability of the clerical workers at New York University to obtain a similar guarantee severely hampered their strike, which ended last month.)

One week before the strike deadline, a massive noontime rally was held on campus with the support of the campus unions and the New York City Central Labor Council. In addition, faculty and student support committees were organized weeks in advance and arranged to have hundreds of classes and other services university's proposed two-tier benefits plan would make new workers skeptical of the union and undermine future organizing efforts.

Main lesson? Stick together!

Campus workers Charles Hodge and Marlene Mansfield provide a living example of the unity that was forged during prestrike preparations.

Hodge is a Black computer technician who has been the victim of Columbia's institutionalized racism. He earns less than $20,000 in Grade 8 after 10 years of service, while just this year a white Grade 5 receptionist was hired at $20,000.

As a member of the negotiating committee, Hodge explained that the workers "want the university to acknowledge that it is racist because it's profitable."

Marlene Mansfield is one of the higherpaid white workers. But still gets $4000 less pay per year as a student coordinator than a male window-cleaner does. She is also a single mother who is saddled with substantial childcare costs.

Both Hodge and Mansfield realized that their specific injustices could only be addressed through a strong union. These two class conscious workers are an example of why the demands raised by the union this year will be fully achieved through united struggle in the coming years.