Research Assistants at SUNY Stony Brook Keep up Contract Fight

Since they joined CWA Local 1104 eighteen months ago, research assistants at the State University of New York Research Foundation at Stony Brook have been fighting back against an anti-union management and the University's refusal to bargain a fair contract.

CWA President Larry Cohen met with the group when he spoke at a university forum; District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton and other CWAers also were on hand.

The RA bargaining team has been meeting two or three times a month with management since March 2009 but management has refused to move forward on a first contract. The 740 research assistants are PhD candidates who work for faculty at University's Research Foundation which is supported by federal funds.

"The foundation has been using the time meant for bargaining as an extension of its campaign to get rid of the union," said Jim McAsey, Local 1104's organizing director who helped the RAs organize.

Some research assistants earn as little as $20,000 a year and put in 80 hours a week or more. The union is working to increase minimum pay, in addition to other issues.

Management constantly tries to create dissension and divide the group, McAsey said. It pulled permits for events the RAs had scheduled and sent an e-mail to all faculty members advising them, illegally, to not give the RAs any raises.

The unit did win a victory earlier this year when it saved the jobs of the lowest-paid RAs at Stony Brook, who management tried to fire after the union proposed to improve their pay and working conditions.

"The RAs are frustrated and angry, but they are determined to stay together and stick it out, as long as it takes," says McAsey.