DETROIT _ The University of Michigan Graduate Employee Organization will go on strike Tuesday as classes begin on campus, citing concerns over COVID-19 safety and policing on campus.
"This is a historic moment; GEO membership has voted to strike in the middle of a pandemic at the beginning of the academic year, and is prepared to withhold our labor in pursuit of a safe and just campus for all," the union said in a news release.
The union represents more than 1,000 graduate student instructors and graduate student assistants. The employees teach classes and do other work for the university.
The university's administration could not immediately be reached for comment.
The strike is called for four days and could be extended.
The university is currently planning on a mix of face-to-face and online classes. The faculty senate recently raised a number of issues about having to teach in person and plans a no-confidence vote in University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel on Sept 16.
The union plans to stay out until its demands are met. Among those demands are:
_ Transparent and robust testing, contact tracing and safety plans for the campus.
_ Support for graduate student instructors working remotely and an option to switch to remote from hybrid/in-person.
_ Flexible subsidies for parents and caregivers, including those with school-aged children or care obligations for adults.
_ Diversion of funds from campus police.
_ Ending any and all ties to local law enforcement (Ann Arbor Police Department) and other agencies (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
The demands about the campus policing diversion are coming as part of the national movement to defund police.
"GEO membership's commitment to including anti-policing demands in our current stoppage platform demonstrates how urgent and linked our membership's priorities are," the union said. "The university administration has run roughshod over the lives of the community's most vulnerable."
The university's lecturer union _ those instructors who aren't graduate students but aren't on the professor track _ said in a statement it supported the move.
"Like our graduate student colleagues, LEO condemns the way the administration has mismanaged the return to classes this fall: employees, including lecturers, were not properly consulted; information about the fall plan, and internal disagreements over it, have been withheld and the testing regime in place appears inadequate to the task of keeping students and employees safe," Lecturer Employee Organization president Ian Robinson said in a statement. "We stand in solidarity with GEO and all of the graduate student workers concerned for their lives and livelihoods, and encourage lecturers to support their efforts.
"The University of Michigan administration's leadership style has become more and more top-down and intransigent as this crisis has evolved. We urge President Schlissel to acknowledge the vital role that faculty and staff play in making this university work and keeping it safe, and to engage with us cooperatively and respectfully, as our contributions to this institution warrant."
