NYU strike continues

Today is the 28th day of the NYU grad employee strike, and the first day after NYU President John Sexton's deadline for strikers to return to duty. It's Sexton's move now. I suspect that the NYU administration will spend this week gathering information and will soon decide, based on how strong they think GSOC remains, whether to settle with the union or to wash their hands of the strikers.

There has been, this last week, a fair amount of blogospheric discussion of the issue of grad unioization sparked, I'm ashamed to say, by philosophers who ought to know better. For myself, I don't have the patience to wade into an argument with anyone whose blinders allow them to believe that graduate teaching assistants aren't employees. Luckily, there's little need for my efforts, since Jessica Wilson has put together an exhaustive refutation.

Also worth mentioning, I suppose, is that NYU has been busily erecting the scaffolding of a company union. In a frankly ridiculous series of events on Sunday, the Graduate Affairs Committee of the NYU Student Senate sent out an email to all grads (using the sort of mass mail access one would think is reserved for administrators and their minions) breathlessly offering a compromise solution. If GSOC would end the strike, then the, ahem, neutral GAC would mediate the dispute and construct some new, unspecified beyond being non-union, mechanism giving grads a voice in university governence. Shockingly, the university President and Provost sent an email (using the same sort of mass mail access, of course) accepting the proposal. GSOC, not being composed of idiots, saw the proposal for what it was and declined.

Lastly, a good resource for documentary materials surrounding the NYU grad strike has been brought to my attention, the NYU Strike Archive. It's worth a look.

Addendum: One more thing. There's an online Scholars in support of GSOC petition making the rounds. If you happen to be associated with a university, take a moment to add your signature.

Update: I gather that Sexton extended his deadline, though I haven't found out the details. That's got to be good news.