Classes don’t start for a week, but Cornell is already back to its miserly ways. This time, it’s in negotiations with their employees, members of the United Auto Workers Local 2300. Negotiating for simple, common-sense guarantees of a safe and dignified working environment at an Ivy League school, workers have found themselves facing obstinate administrators who’d rather brush their needs aside than sign a fair contract. Now, with 94 percent of members voting in favor, the union has begun a historic strike. The Sun stands in solidarity with striking workers and echoes their demands: We call on all students, alumni and faculty to do the same.
If you read the email statements the University has sent the Cornell community, you might get the impression that workers are asking for the moon. But what’s the union actually demanding? Wage increases that match the ballooning cost of living, free parking and measures to better guarantee workplace health and safety. In forcing a strike over the demand that workers be able to afford to live, University administrators continue to run Cornell’s reputation into the ground by consistently prioritizing profits over people.
Rather than seriously asking how an Ivy League university could fail its workers in their fight for a fair contract, administrators have decided to play the blame game, and have tried to pit students against employees. They’ve threatened to raise tuition, vaguely gestured at need-blind admissions and whined that strikers are invoking the obscene $10 billion endowment as a justification for a living wage. If Cornell really can’t afford these basic demands, which is a dubious claim, perhaps it ought to consider cutting overhead and downsizing its pencil-pushing, bureaucratic, do-nothing administration.
At Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the right to unionize and bargain is held sacred. When the University turns its back on workers, failing to extend its founding promise of equity for “any person” to those who make our dining halls run and keep our buildings clean, it renders the whole project hollow. Whether it’s cracking down on dissent throughout last year’s sham free expression theme year or paying its workers less than what they deserve, our administration seems to act directly against its stated values.
As students move in and start classes, student workers will likely be asked to fill the responsibilities of strikers and cross the picket line to maintain business as usual. The Sun urges Cornellians to reject the status quo, respect the picket line and affirm Cornell’s commitment to dignity at work, even if our administrators won’t.
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