U of M Labor and Community Strike Support Committee

We, the faculty and chairs of the American Indian Studies Department, the African and African American Studies Department, the Chicano Studies, and the Asian American Studies Program, write to express solidarity with the AFSCME workers and those who support them in striving to achieve a contract that compensates University clerical, healthcare, and technical workers with an acceptable and just wage. We urge you to return to negotiations and reach an agreement that acknowledges the importance and significance of their labor in building this institution.

The UMCCC community – the teachers, staff, parents, and children – are deeply feeling the effects of the University administration’s refusal to properly compensate ASFCME workers with funds the legislature has earmarked for this purpose. Nine of the 25 AFSCME employees at UMCCC are presently on strike. Staff who remain at the center continue to provide excellent care, but under difficult conditions. One teacher who had been on maternity leave has been called back to work. Many parents have considered bringing in their children for shorter days or keeping them home whenever possible in order to alleviate pressure on UMCCC teachers and staff. But this is not an option for many of us if we wish to continue to do the university's work.

We write to express our concern over the ongoing strike of clerical, technical, and healthcare workers and to urge you to reach an agreement that reflects the high value of these workers to the School of Music and the University of Minnesota as a whole.

Monday at a noon press conference in front of Morrill Hall at the University of Minnesota, eleven University of Minnesota students declared that they are hunger striking to support the clerical, technical, and healthcare AFSCME workers who have been striking for a fair contract for thirteen days. A faculty member and a staff member are also joining the hunger strike to show their solidarity with the students and the workers. Professor Richa Nagar, who is hunger striking, said, "A hunger strike is not about sacrificing oneself; it is essentially about bringing attention to an injustice by shaming those who propagate it. The idea is that anyone who is human has the capacity to feel ashamed, and a hunger strike is a call to that person to show his or her humanity by correcting the wrong."

This faculty solidarity message was published in the Crookston Times on Friday 9/14... As we enter the second week of the AFSCME strike at the University of Minnesota, we faculty feel the need to speak out to the press and public. We write on behalf of the more than 250 faculty members who are engaging in activities that support the strike.

Our business as educators then must be to restore the
dignity, the gravity of the effort to radicalize democracy, not by
imposing it upon others, but by making palpable where it can be made
more present for us all. The members of AFSCME are pointing this
effort in a crucial direction: that of the living wage in a
sustainable world system.

We, the students, staff, and faculty of Macalester College, support
the workers at the University of Minnesota in their efforts to obtain
a real living wage.

We write to you both as scholars and as members of the university community with grave concern over the current crisis faced by our community due to the university administration’s failure to deal fairly with the members of the AFSCME union.

We are writing to express our concern regarding the administration’s negotiations with the AFSCME clerical, health care, and technical workers on campus. As faculty and staff in the Sociology Department, we are deeply committed to social justice in our teaching, research, and engagement with society. This commitment begins at home, right here on this campus. It is of the utmost importance to us and to our students that this strike be settled immediately so that the workers who serve us so well do not miss one more day's pay.

We need supporters to join our picket lines at key times and locations, indicated below, to motivate our members and maximize our impact. Please be sure to join us for the Early Bird Special Pickets on Thursday morning!