Columbia student workers union will not strike in spring semester after parent union rejected strike
Source: Columbia Spectator
The majority of the Columbia local’s members previously voted in favor of setting April 23 as its deadline to strike.
By Fiona Hu and Pedro Meerbaum • April 28, 2026 at 1:09 AM
Columbia’s student workers’ union no longer plans to go on strike during the spring semester following its parent union’s decision to not approve the strike earlier this month. As of April 14, members had voted in favor of setting April 23 as their deadline to strike.
The Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers, a labor union representing over 3,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers, began bargaining for a successor contract with the University in March 2025, three months before its first contract expired in June 2025. Since then, bargaining sessions have yet to yield a successful contract, with the University writing in its most recent bargaining update that the union and the University remain “far apart” on most issues.
While 82.2 percent of SWC-UAW’s members voted in favor of setting a strike deadline of April 23, its parent union, United Auto Workers, rejected the union’s request to strike, according to an April 14 email from SWC-UAW to its members obtained by Spectator. UAW recommended that SWC-UAW delay its strike until it appears that the University will not concede further without a strike, according to the email.
Despite the majority of voting SWC-UAW members supporting a strike, without UAW approval, the union’s members would not get paid during the strike. The rejection is the latest instance of scrutiny from the parent union after it asked the local to narrow its contract demands earlier this year.
Read more: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/04/28/columbias-student-workers-union-will-not-strike-in-spring-semester-after-parent-union-rejected-strike/