There was a celebratory air outside of Indiana University’s Ballantine Hall on Wednesday, as Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition (IGWC) members held up picket signs calling for union recognition and marched to the beat of a pounding drum.

It was their first day of a three-day strike against IU that they hope will apply renewed pressure on the university to recognize their union and pay graduate workers a living wage, as defined by the MIT Living Wage calculator.

But Michael McCarthy, a financial officer for the IGWC, said he and his fellow coalition members would rather be teaching.

“We want to be back in our classrooms, teaching our students,” McCarthy said. “We don’t want to have to strike, but we’ve been forced to.”It was a sentiment shared by many coalition members as they abstained from teaching, grading and other instructional duties to picket just two weeks out from the final day of classes at IU. But it was a cause they felt was necessary.

“I think it should be clear by now that the union is here to stay,” said Zara Anwarzai, an organizing coordinator for the coalition. “And we’ll keep doing this until we’re recognized.”

Strike begins day after no-confidence vote against Whitten administration

The Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition intentionally planned their three-day strike, from April 17-19, to begin on IU Day, IU’s annual fundraising marathon during which the university hopes to collect $1 million in donations this year.

But organizers hadn’t planned for the strike to begin just one day after a historic vote against three key members of the IU administration. On April 16, hundreds of faculty voted on three motions expressing “no confidence” in President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav, and Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs Carrie Docherty.

For many coalition members, the no-confidence vote was the motivation they needed.

“After hearing the votes, I slept like a baby,” said Michael Johnson III, an associate instructor and coalition member. “It just shows that there are consequences for not listening to (stakeholders).”Forming a pathway to a union election is a decision for the IU Board of Trustees, but Zara Anwarzai, an organizing coordinator for the coalition, said the Whitten administration could influence the trustees into recognizing the union.

“Unions are recognized at the will of the board of trustees, but effectively, the person who is ultimately in charge of this campus is Pamela Whitten,” Anwarzai said. “It’s up to her to convey to the board that this is important to the people of this campus.”The coalition has asked the administration on three occasions to recognize the union, presenting over 1,000 union cards each time. Each request has been ignored, and coalition members say the administration has still not responded to a letter submitted to Whitten’s office in January asking for a “living wage” and a pathway to unionization.

In a statement to the campus community after the no-confidence vote, Whitten stressed the importance of “respectful collaboration” and “shared governance” in navigating campus tensions and threats to higher education.

Coalition members say Whitten’s continuing to ignore communications from the IGWC is in direct opposition to this statement.

“We’ve been trying for a long time to communicate with the administration,” said Katharina Schmid-Schmidsfelden, an international student in the coalition. “To bring shared governance up now is a slap in our faces, honestly.”

Grad workers want ‘a permanent seat at the bargaining table’

The coalition’s last strike during the 2022 spring semester resulted in major victories for the IGWC, including standardizing and raising graduate worker stipends to $22,000 and elimination of mandatory fees for graduate workers.

But those changes came without union recognition, and were instead credited by IU to a provost-convened task force.

Since then, the “living wage” needed for a single adult with no children in Bloomington, as prescribed by the MIT Living Wage Calculator, has increased by nearly $5,000.

Coalition members argue a union is necessary to ensure wages keep pace with cost-of-living expenses, without the need for disruptive actions like strikes.

“We need a permanent seat at the bargaining table so we don’t have to do this every time,” Ivy Kline, a department organizer for the coalition, said. “This is what we have to do, and we’ll do it until we get a living wage.”

Graduate workers are part-time appointments (IU expects 20 hours of work), but coalition members say between research, instruction and being students themselves, there’s little to no time to have other part-time jobs.

Schmid-Schmidsfelden said this is particularly true for international students like her who are legally prohibited from working jobs outside of their appointments due to stipulations in their F1 student visas.

“So what the university pays me has to be a living wage, to make ends meet,” Schmid-Schmidsfelden said.

Anwarzai said in the two years since the last strike, several new first- and second-year graduate students have joined the coalition. She says this continued momentum should make it clear to the administration that the coalition will keep fighting until the union is formally recognized.

“With this strike, we’ve seen an incredible surge of interest from students who weren’t even here from the last strike,” Anwarzai said. “They’re going to continue this legacy and fight this fight for years and years to come, so if there’s a message to give to this administration, it’s that this fight is not going away.”

Reach Brian Rosenzweig at brian@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana University graduate workers launch three day strike picket IU