Columbia University Student Strike Ends with Tentative Deal

In a contract that still needs to be ratified by union members, the university has agreed to boost student pay and allow for independent arbitration in cases of alleged misconduct and discrimination.

Written byCatherine Offord
| 2 min read
The Library of Columbia University
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Update (January 31): The Student Workers of Columbia-UAW has voted 97 percent in favor of ratifying the contract, according to an internal email sent by the university’s provost, Mary Boyce, on January 28.

Student workers at Columbia University have agreed to end a 10-week strike after reaching a tentative agreement with the university to address student demands regarding wages, benefits, and arbitration in alleged misconduct and discrimination cases. The contract, a result of years of negotiations, will be put to a vote among the student union’s 3,000 members later this month; if ratified, it will be in place until mid-2025.

“We are thrilled to reach an agreement with Columbia after seven years of building toward this first contract,” PhD student Nadeem Mansour, a union bargaining committee member, says in a statement. “What our members achieved is impressive, but this is only the start. We look forward to building on our ...

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  • After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.

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