Over a thousand people gathered at the Austin Steward Plaza in downtown Rochester on Thursday — both to celebrate the annual labor movement holiday, May Day, and to condemn President Donald Trump’s administration for actions that organizers say are harming workers and immigrants.
The ‘Unite and Fight’ rally, organized by the Rochester-Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, was one of many demonstrations on International Workers’ Day across the U.S.
For Justin Grossman, a PhD student in the history department at the University of Rochester, it was also a moment to call for more community support as unionizing graduate students continue to strike for the second week.
“The University of Rochester has continually shown that they are adverse to anything that supports the people who work for it,” Grossman said. “And that that's really harming the university. And as the largest private employer in upstate New York, it harms the situation for working with people across all of — the whole region.”
May Day coincided with the eleventh day of the graduate student strike at the University of Rochester. At picket lines from the River Campus to the Eastman School of Music on Gibbs Street, students and union organizers continued to call on UR’s administration to allow students to vote on forming a union.
Many in the crowd held white and purple signs reading “Shame on U of R,” and “We stand with U of R graduate workers,” that were handed out.
As rain fell, the rally turned into a march to the Eastman School of Music. A large crowd filled Gibbs Street, live music played, and organizers assembled a canopy and sound system for student speeches.
“Anytime you hear about the exciting discoveries being made at the University of Rochester, some medical breakthrough, it was graduate students doing most of the work behind that,” Keelin Quirk, a fourth-year mechanical engineering PhD student said. “We’re the people doing the lab work, the reading, the writing, the data analysis.”
At the rally outside of the Eastman School of Music, Quirk’s speech was followed by Emefa Amoah, a fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology, who said her reasons for wanting a union stem in part from her experience with the university following the death of her mother.
“Three days after she died, the university told me I had to make a choice: either take a bereavement leave and lose my income, my health insurance and a year of funding on top of restarting my student loan payments,” Amoah said. “Or shove down my grief and return to work within a week of her death.”
The strike comes down to one thing, Amoah said: authorizing a vote to unionize. Meanwhile, she and others said there are plans to hold a “day of action” on May 16, the university’s commencement day.
“They say a union election isn't in the university community's best interests, as if —” Amoah said, interrupted by boos from the crowd. “As if 1,400 grad workers, the people doing the teaching, the research, the mentoring, aren't a part of the university at all.”
According to a spokesperson with the University of Rochester, and union organizers with SEIU Local 200 who are assisting PhD students, university leaders declined the Graduate Labor Union Organizing Committee meeting request this week.
"There is no legally recognized union that represents our graduate students," spokesperson Sara Miller wrote in a statement. “Because the Graduate Labor Union Organizing Committee is not a recognized student group ... it would be inappropriate, and potentially unlawful under the (National Labor Relations Act), for University leaders to meet with any purported representative of this group under the circumstances.”
