GREENWICH VILLAGE — The graduate students who work at New York University are holding a rally Wednesday to protest the school's failure to uphold its end of the contract they negotiated earlier this year, student union representatives said.
The school has delayed providing benefits and retroactive pay to hundreds of students, according to the union, GSOC, which is part of the United Auto Workers Local 2110.
And the students say international students, who can't legally work off campus, have been hit the hardest.
“As an international student I rely on the university to hold up its end of the bargain and carry out the provisions of our contract in good faith and with precision," said NYU Tandon School of Engineering graduate worker Parth Singh in a statement. "Instead we have seen late responses and bureaucratic dilly dallying, and this year NYU has sunk to new lows through mismanagement and willful inaction.”
Graduate student workers said the school has delayed retroactive pay owed to hundreds of workers and "botched" health care refunds for roughly 1,000 workers who were promised subsidies. The health care benefits promised to some workers have been delayed, students said, and the school has failed to waive almost $200,000 in fees.
NYU spokesman John Beckman acknowledged that there have been "delays or issues," but maintained, "They are the inadvertent consequence of trying to implement a completely new and complex contract that extends new benefits and compensation — both raises and retroactive pay — to hundreds and hundreds of individuals not previously covered."
Beckham added that the university wouldn't have entered into the deal with the union if they didn't intend to honor it.
"We regret the problems, we are working hard to correct them and get every issue resolved, and we are in constant communication with the union," he said.
Among the students' grievances is the closure of the Coles gym on Mercer Street, which the students said meant the loss of jobs for many of the school's international students, who can't legally work off-campus.
The Coles gym is closing so it can be demolished as part of the first phase of NYU's expansion plan. The city approved NYU to use a former Crunch gym on Lafayette Street, but students have doubts that the space can accommodate as many users as Coles did.
The graduate student workers plan to start their protest at 12:30 p.m. outside the Coles gym at 181 Mercer St., then walk to the Steinhardt School at 82 Washington Square East, before ending at the Bobst Library "with a parody sketch of outgoing NYU President John Sexton crumpling under the weight of pent-up graduate student worker grievances."
