Op-Ed: IU Bloomington provost needs to engage in conversation to end graduate worker strike

Well over a thousand members of the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition-United Electrical Workers have been on strike for more than two weeks on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington.

The IU Graduate & Professional Student Government and the IU Student Government have publicly supported the strike. Hundreds of faculty members have signed pledges declaring that they will not collaborate in efforts to penalize the strikers.

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Yet, IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav hasn't engaged directly with the leaders of the strike because they are seeking recognition of a union. The provost said he cares about current graduate student concerns and about the need to resolve the strike. But the only way for him to realize these claims is to talk directly with the coalition leaders who speak for the strikers.

Shrivastav might rather talk to other graduate students through other, more conventional means. But responsible leaders seeking to pursue diplomacy don’t get to choose their challengers or interlocutors. They must engage the challengers that actually present themselves — as the coalition and its members are doing.

Such conversation does not require the provost to formally recognize any union or to meet with union leaders.

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The coalition’s existence long predates its demand for a union. Whatever one makes of the role of unions on a college campus, the coalition is not an “outside union” but a freely associating group of on-campus student workers. The coalition began as an effort of graduate student workers to press for fee changes. The effort to form a union came later in response to the IU administration’s refusal to seriously address the coalition’s demands.

The fact the coalition is distinct from the union is underscored by the letter sent by Interim Provost and Executive Vice President John Applegate on Feb. 1, 2022 — the same letter on which Provost Shrivastav has often drawn.

The letter, sent on “Office of the Provost/ Executive Vice President” stationary, explicitly refuses to recognize the United Electrical Workers as a bargaining agent of the coalition. But it does not refuse to engage the coalition. Indeed, by addressing the coalition directly, by its very name, Applegate was implicitly acknowledging its existence and granting this existence recognition. Further, in saying that IU refuses its union demand, the provost was implicitly acknowledging that UE recognition was a coalition demand and not the Coalition’s essential purpose.

Applegate directly addressed the coalition because it is a campus-based stakeholder group, and he took its members seriously enough to say “no” to them.

If Shrivastav is serious about resolving the strike and addressing the student worker demands, then he needs to now say “yes” to the Coalition.

Not a “yes, I accede to your union demand,” but more like a “yes, I hear you, and I see you. While I can’t say yes to your demand, let us talk together and see whether we can work this situation out by taking each other seriously and engaging each other respectfully.”

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Such a diplomatic overture from the provost is not foreclosed by his refusal to recognize a union. It is required by his insistence that he wishes to resolve the current crisis by being a leader of the campus community as a whole.

Being a leader means taking your constituents seriously.

If the provost is serious about being a leader, he must engage the coalition — not pretend that it does not exist. He must work in good faith to come to a mutually respectful and agreeable resolution of the current situation.

The provost did not create the tense and problematic labor situation on the IUB campus. However, only he can resolve it in a way that is true to university values.

The strike is for him a challenge, but it is also an opportunity to lead.

Jeffrey C. Isaac is a James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and has been teaching at Indiana University Bloomington for 35 years.