Student workers are drowning in the rising costs of living and learning in Bellingham and WWU Admin are unwilling to make movement towards our top priority proposals in bargaining to address these issues - on May Day, we're putting out an SOS (Support Our Strike authorization vote) call to action for the WWU Community!! March with us to Old Main to show WWU Admin that we will not accept "NO" as their solution to the fix the real problems that educational student employees are facing.
On
Wednesday, May 1st from 11:45am - 1:00pm, we will be Marching on Old Main, and educational student employees and other unionized workers at Western (faculty, staff, operational student employees, etc) will gather together to bring awareness to our
Strike Authorization Vote (May 6th-9th) and to the road blocks that Western Administrators are putting up at the negotiation table. As we’ve conducted 8 months of negotiations, our WAWU bargaining committee has responded to the Administration’s concerns, modified our proposals, and made a huge number of compromises, especially to make our proposals more affordable. Despite our flexibility and movement, the Administration continues to insist on a rigid, inflexible framework that keeps student jobs as contingent and precarious.
They are still refusing to agree to following key priorities:Fair, competitive wages that address the cost of living in Bellingham
Partial tuition waivers for hourly workers
Bereavement Leave
Accountability when the University mishandles discrimination and harassment cases
Closing critical gaps in members’ healthcare coverage
We understand that Western is the most underfunded public university per student in the state of Washington, but that is not a valid excuse for WWU Admin's unwillingness to protect student workers. We are committed to working with the University to make systematic changes to the funding of Higher Education, but Admin has shown over and over that they are not committed to facing that challenge together. They refuse to recognize that the proposals in our contract are essential to making higher education accessible to low income, diverse socio-economic background students. They have the power to elicit real, meaningful change at the bargaining table and instead are responding simply with "we won't".
MAY DAY ITINERARY
11:45-12:15 Gather in Red Square, Introductory Speeches, chanting
12:15-12:20 Walk as a group over to Old Main Stairs
12:20-1:00 Old Main Stairs/Lawn informational speeches, chanting,
**Note this is NOT a Strike Picket Line. If you have a work or class at this time, you are not encouraged to skip those obligations**
