A number of hunger strikers at Purdue University enter their 20th day without solid food today. Jesse Russell reports:

Mark Franciose was one of the first students to hunger strike at Purdue. On Tuesday he told the Workers Independent News that he was starting to feel the effects:

[Franciose 1]: It’s definitely taking its toll, I have pains - I’m hoping to see a doctor when I have time.

The 15 students at Purdue who have been joined by hundreds of supporters both nationally and internationally are demanding that the university require Purdue apparel providers to practice fair labor standards - including letting workers unionize and demand living wages. Wednesday morning workers who had recently been fired from apparel plant in Kenya for trying to form a union called the office of Purdue’s President and received a chilly reception.

By Jesse Russell

A heated 14-hour sit-in at the University of Miami ended on Wednesday when the university agreed to send a statement to the janitorial contractor in support of campus workers. It is the fifth-week of a strike against Unicco, the company used by the University. Seventeen students had taken over the schools admissions office demanding that the University encourage Unicco to allow the janitors to vote freely on their right to have union representation. The school will also facilitate a meeting today between Unicco, the workers, faculty, students and the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU is the union leading the push for organizing the workers. Two weeks ago the university agreed to a wage increase for the workers of at least 25 percent and to provide comprehensive healthcare coverage. The increase covers janitors, food service staff and landscape maintenance.

By Doug Cunningham

Students are working with labor on campuses nationwide this week on joint corporate campaigns. Silky Shah, an organizer with Not With Our Money, says it pays for labor to forge alliances with university students.

[Silky Shah ]: “The investment is really important from the labor community. A good example is the Taco Bell campaign and some of the stuff that’s going on with living wage right now. I think students play a major role in just getting attention to these issues.”

Shah says a campaign is underway against Farallon, a hedge fund that invests in private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America. Carl Lipscombe, Coordinator of the Student Labor Action Project, says a campaign is also underway against Coca-Cola for alleged human rights abuses. Lipscombe says he hopes these actions reach students who are unaware of unions and labor issues.

By Jesse Russell

New York University graduate students resumed their strike as the new semester opened on Tuesday. The strike began in early November of 2005 after the university announced it would not recognize the union. The administration has threatened to strip striking students of their stipends and teaching appointments if the strike continues.

Last month, graduate teachers at Columbia and Yale went on strike, demanding that the universities recognize their unions. In a new development, the Nation magazine has released a previously undisclosed internal memo from Columbia. The memo, dated February 16th and signed by Columbia provost Alan Brinkley, details what anti-union prodcedures the university should take in the event of a graduate employee strike. The memo suggested that graduate teachers who participated in a strike could quote "Be required to teach an extra semester or year within a five-year period in order to meet the teaching requirements for their degree, lose their eligibility for summer stipends, and lose their eligibility for special awards, such as Whitings" end quote. Under a National Labor Relations Board ruling, graduate employees at private universities are considered apprentices, not workers, and unions they form are not federally protected. Student teachers argue they have similar responsibilities to regular faculty, but receive poor wages and benefits, and should have the same rights as other teachers.

From George Washington University to University
of Mary Washington, students are demanding that
service workers on their campus receive living wages
and better working conditions. Now that fight is
heating up on the campus of Washington, DC's Howard
University, a historically black college.

Selling Musuta of the dc radio coop reports from the
District of Columbia:

Throughout the country, students are forming groups to
address unfair labor practices on their campuses. For
Irene Schwoeffermann, a staff member at United States
Student Association and a Howard University alumn,

The latest campus victory for worker's rights was at Washington University in St. Louis where students used a sit-in and hunger strike to win a commitment of at least one million dollars toward a living wage for campus service workers. Erica Smiley is Media Organizer for Jobs With Justice. She says this growing campus movement for worker rights is a very important boost for the labor movement in general.

[Erica Smiley] : "Oh, I think it's huge. I think it kind of demonstrates that labor isn't just some special interest group you know out there dictating things, but that there's broadbased support for workers and for workers rights. And that workers aren't just the employees of someone but they're also our parents and our teachers and our TA's and the people we go to church with and the people we are on campus with. And so it definitely broadens the issue so that it's not seen as such a special need but as something that's going to benefit all of us in our communities."

Members of the Professional Staff Congress flooded the streets yesterday demanding a fair contract with the City University of New York. The rally drew 700 people insisting that after two and a half years with no contract and four years without a raise CUNY needs to give its teachers a better offer.

[Bowen 1]: "The best offer that we had from management is still below the level of inflation so it would actually add up to a salary cut."

Barbara Bowen is president of the Professional Staff Congress. Her union is holding a rally today in support of the striking graduate employees at Columbia University. Graduate employees there are demanding better health care and the right to organize with the United Auto Workers. Graduate employees at Yale are also on strike in the first multi-campus job action ion Ivy League history. Bowen said she hopes these actions will highlight the fact that universities are often poor employers.

The national movement to win fair wages for service workers on college campuses continues - this time with a statewide action in California. Vinny Lombardo has the story.

University of California service workers staged a one-day strike at nine
campuses and five medical centers, statewide, Thursday to demand better pay, advancement opportunities and an end to hiring discrimination. When their contract expired last June, shuttle bus driver Larry Cheek, was tapped as the UC Santa Cruz rep on AFSCME's statewide bargaining committee.

[Larry Cheek 1]: "Right from the very start, they've refused to bargain fairly on almost any issue...and they claim that we don't deserve a raise because we don't produce a profit for the university."

Students at St. Louis' Washington University are holding a sit-in that started Monday demanding a living wage for service workers on campus. They're occupying an office and a hallway in a campus building. Ujugo Ozauma (ooh-zoo-go O-zam-a) is one of the organizers.

[Ujugo Ozauma 1]: "We want the university to lift all its employees out of poverty."

Ozauma says this action in St. Louis is in solidarity with similar movements for living wages at a hundred campuses nationwide, including Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where students won living wage concessions after a hunger strike.

[Ozauma 2]: "This is a time when students kind of accused of being apathetic and that kind of thing, so this is our moment to take that activism from the 1960's and 1970's and bring into our time."

After three years of organizing and a 10 day hunger strike, workers at Georgetown University claimed a living wage victory last week. Jack Mahoney is a member of the Georgetown Living Wage who helped coordinate the campaign. Mahoney says that although they didn't get every single thing they were looking for, it is a victory because campus workers will begin receiving $13 per hour in July of this year and $14 by July 2007. That's up from the current $11.33 per hour.

Georgetown University students on a hunger strike to win living wages for campus janitors are determined to win. They have the support of the AFL-CIO's Metro Washington Council and religious leaders in the Washington, D.C. area. Rachel Murray explains why 28 students are on the hunger strike as part of a three year campaign to win living wages for janitors at Georgetown:

[Rachel Murrray 1]: "Since the administration wasn't addressing the urgency of workers who are living in poverty, then maybe they would address the urgency of students starving themselves and not being able to go to class."

Taco Bell has not been invited back to the student union of Cal State San Bernardino. The fast food giant will not be returning next fall, after students launched a campaign saying that Florida tomato pickers are underpaid and mistreated. A national boycott led by the Student Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has resulted in 21 colleges removing Taco Bell from their campus. According to the coalition, the pickers are paid roughly $55 for every two tons of tomatoes they pick. Also most pickers receive no health insurance, sick leave, vacation. Taco Bell officials insist that they buy less Florida tomatoes than any other fast-food company. The company has also sent a check to the coalition for $110,000 and has offered to assist them in lobbying for changes to Florida labor laws.

Marking the eve of Human Rights Day, National Labor Committee organized hundreds of NYU students to march through campus yesterday. The marchers were calling on fellow NYU students, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, to sign a pledge guaranteeing that any women sewing their garments sold at Walmart will be granted the legal right to maternity leave with benefits.

Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the National Labor Committee.

"Walmart is the biggest sweatshop abuser in the world today. Walmart says it has moral values, but Walmart has no moral compass. In Bangladesh today, women sewing Walmart clothing are working from eight o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock at night - fourteen hours a day, seven days a week with only ten days off a year. They're getting thirteen cents an hour. It would take a worker in Bangladesh one hundred and nine years to earn enough money to go to NYU for one year."

"We students will not allow the mistreating of the workers, our friends here at our university. (Cheering to fade under voice)"

Recently, hundreds of students, workers and union officials at the University of California - Santa Cruz presented a petition to the UC Bargaining Committee signed by 3,600 people in support of AFSCME workers seeking a fair contract.

Rafusio Marquez has been a custodian at UCSC for eight years. He's had two back surgeries and is fighting cuts in workers wages and benefits.

[Marquez1] "I do hard work in here. Sometimes I have to do the work of two people. And they don't care if I messed up my lower back or my hand or everything. So, all the time the state is crying there is no money. There's no money for us, the hard workers, but there's money for the big sharks."

As many as 60,000 students in the Chicago area found a substitute teaching their classes this week as 500 full-time teachers at the seven Chicago City Colleges went on strike. The Cook County College Teachers Union called the strike in response to administrators efforts to increase their workload - by one class per semester and 40 additional students with no overtime pay. The Cook County College board is also seeking to increase health care costs by 400 percent and replace full-time teachers hiring more part-time faculty. Union members say they will continue to walk picket lines until they receive a fair four-year contract.