Academic unions from across New York City converged at 3 p.m. outside The New School’s University Center for a May Day rally. Partway through, members of the New Student Workers Union (NewSWU), faculty, and alumni split off and entered TNS Welcome Center at 72 Fifth Ave. to deliver a petition demanding union recognition for residential workers.

May Day or International Workers’ Day, celebrated annually on May 1, is a celebration of laborers and the working class promoted by the international labor movement. 

The rally, organized by the NYC Committee on Higher Education, started at the University Center before marching to Washington Square Park to meet with other unions. Those who split off folded into a separate demonstration, reflecting a semester-long fight for ResLife unionization. 

The petition, addressed to Dr. Shondrika Merritt, senior associate provost for student affairs and dean of students, called on the university to recognize a comprehensive union unit that represents resident assistants (RAs), graduate resident advisors (GRAs), and community assistants (CAs). The petition comes after administrators denied NewSWU’s counterproposal to include all of these roles in a combined unit. 

Many NYC academic unions were present at the UC for the rally against the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education on May 1.

 Among them were SENS-UAW, AAUP-TNS, NYU Adjuncts Union (ACT-UAW 7902), AAUP-NYU, Columbia AAUP, and the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. 

“The New School was chosen because everybody is acutely aware of the terrible crisis we face,” Jeremy Varon, professor of history at TNS and president of the New School Chapter of AAUP, said. 

Demonstrators began by picketing in front of the UC, where they chanted call-and-responses, such as “Higher ed is under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back.” 

Protesters also held a variety of signs from different union chapters. A sign from PSC-CUNY read “Money for education not oligarchs.” One sign, made by a TNS student, featured a series of edited photos of University President Joel Towers.

“Unions are the best way in which we protect faculty governance, freedom of speech, academic freedom on our campuses,” Jack Condie, a teaching assistant at Parsons School of Design and a PhD philosophy student at The New School For Social Research (NSSR), said.

“When our graduate students who do a lot of teaching and research labor for this university come together with our part-time faculty members, and hopefully one day our full-time faculty members, we can actually make this a democratically run university,” Condie said. 

As an academic student worker, Condie is part of SENS-UAW, which is primarily made up of teaching assistants, research assistants, and course assistants. 

“The idea is to build power as a sector, to protect faculty and students and curriculum and benefits and wages at any school where they’re threatened,” Varon said.

Inside The New School, the other contingent of demonstrators were engaging differently. As the rally moved towards Washington Square Park, NewSWU members, faculty, and alumni entered the 72 Fifth Ave. building.

Inside, members of NewSWU delivered a petition to Merritt, asking for a union election agreement for all ResLife workers.

“This has been a really long battle over the years, so long that we started this and we’re about to graduate,” Emily Li, former USS chair, a fifth-year communication design and politics major, and one of the NewSWU members who helped present the petition, said to Merritt. “But I think the student workers know what they want and they’ve known the power of a union and how to organize.” 

“I commit to reading this and really digesting what you are asking for here and seeing what I can do to be in communication and work with you,” Merritt told those presenting the petition. 

When NewSWU brought the petition to Merritt, it had 60 signatures. When asked by the New School Free Press for a comment on the petition, Merritt declined. 

Benjamin Helton, a fourth-year dual major in economics and politics, and an RA at 301 Residence Hall, said the Residential Education Department (ResEd) is facing a lack of job security, vague contracts, and the threat of losing their university-provided housing. 

“We have housing security dangled over our heads, so we’re at risk of being homeless at any given time, and our pay does not help to cover basic living expenses of being in New York City,” Helton said. 

Helton referenced an RA at 301 who was recently fired for what he called “a very small infraction” and given only 72 hours to move out and find a new residence. Helton created a petition to rehire the RA, Lara Damabi, which is currently being circulated among students. 

The dispute between NewSWU and TNS over forming a union for all ResLife workers is complex. TNS offered NewSWU the option for a union election last October, but only for RAs, excluding GRAs and CAs.

NewSWU’s March counterproposal, which would include GRAs and CAs in one combined NewSWU unit, was denied by administrators. NewSWU was seeking private recognition from TNS after withdrawing its petition to have a union election considered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“It was extremely disappointing,”  Li said when asked about TNS denying their counterproposal.  “A big core philosophy of NewSWU since the beginning was the idea that … we include more than just a couple handful of workers that we represent.” 

“We ask you to join us, to sign this agreement that acknowledges your desire for a ResLife Union, a unit comprising RAs, GRAs, and CAs. An agreement that supports your desire to improve your conditions so that you may truly begin to thrive,” the May Day petition read. “And finally, an agreement that recognizes your desire to be seen as human beings.”

“Management is anti-union and uses every trick in the book and every legal loophole to try to prevent unions from existing,” Varon said. “They want maximum flexibility in managing the finances of an institution, and if people are locked in to contracts and have things like job security, that ties their hands in terms of how they can extract revenue.”