Graduate Employee Strike At UO and Fighting for Worker Control w/ Lola Loustaunau

The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF 3544) has authorized a strike to begin on November 4, 2019 at the University of Oregon. More than 1,000 workers authorized the strike after 11 months of intense negotiations with university management. Lola Loustaunau, a graduate employee and member of GTFF, discusses the strategy GTFF has adopted for their collective bargaining efforts, the reasons the strike has been authorized, and the broader experience these negotiations have had on fellow workers and union members. She also provides personal insights into how public universities are using a post-Janus environment as an opportunity to try to discipline and destroy higher ed unions, and for these reasons along with many others unions need to recommit to a vision of fundamentally transforming society and ending exploitation. We also had a brief interview with Erin Kanzig, VP of Bargaining for the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) about their current collective bargaining efforts and their goals in bargaining. More info: GTFF 3544 http://gtff3544.net CGE 6069 https://cge6069.org/bargaining