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NYU Averts Grad Student Strike With 'Tentative' 11th Hour Deal

By Danielle Tcholakian | March 9, 2015 5:28pm | Updated on March 10, 2015 8:34am
 Grad students who work as teaching and administrative assistants at NYU reached a deal to avoid a strike on Tuesday.
Grad students who work as teaching and administrative assistants at NYU reached a deal to avoid a strike on Tuesday.
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DNAinfo/Andrea Swalec

GREENWICH VILLAGE — New York University reached a last-minute "tentative agreement" with graduate students who teach and do administrative work, avoiding a strike Tuesday morning — right in the middle of midterms.

A school spokesman said the administration and the Graduate Students Organizing Committee, part of the United Auto Workers Local 2110, "agreed not to share the terms and details of the agreement pending ratification."

Members of the union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The union wanted higher wages and better benefits, but the administration accused them of being stubbornly unwilling to compromise for over a year of contract bargaining.

"We are prepared to be generous, but we're not prepared to be irresponsible," said NYU spokesman John Beckman on Monday, insisting that the school was offering an unprecedented deal, with new dental benefits, expanded medical coverage, and retroactive raises. "The union's demands would cost millions more, and they haven't made significant efforts to meet us partway." 

Beckman had emphasized that the grad students are part-time workers, meant to work only 20 hours a week, 28 weeks a year, and said they are demanding benefits greater than those of the university's permanent, full-time employees.

But representatives of the union said they often work more than 20 hours a week, and that the school is underestimating the student workers' value.

"Faculty could not teach the large classes that they do at NYU without their reliance on grad student workers," said Natasha Raheja, a grad student in the anthropology department and a member of the GSOC bargaining team.

The grad students' union and the university administration returned to the bargaining table Monday night, as the grad students vowed that they were prepared to strike for up to four days, promising "a full graduate work stoppage" starting with a picket line at 11 a.m. on Tuesday at Bobst Library.

But after about six hours of bargaining, with the help of a mediator, a deal was struck. It has not yet been formally agreed upon.

Raheja and other union members had said on Monday that not all working grad students are covered equally by NYU's last contract offer. Fully-funded doctoral students would continue to have 100 percent of their medical insurance costs covered by the university, as they have for at least 10 years, but the Masters students at NYU Polytechnic in Brooklyn would only have 70 percent covered by the school.

NYU has so far contributed nothing to the health insurance costs of Poly's Masters student workers.