At least 60 protesters attended the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) and Research Assistants Union (RAU)’s joint May Day rally on Thursday, May 1, at 1:15 p.m. in front of the Administration Building.
May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, commemorates the struggles of the working class and its advocacy for workers’ rights throughout the world. However, in the United States, the celebration of its workers is called Labor Day, which takes place on the first Monday of September, which was intentionally established as a separate holiday to distance American labor celebrations from the radical associations of May Day.
Kaya Turan, the president of the GSEU and a fifth-year Ph.D. student studying art history and criticism, started off the event by relaying a series of chants.
Turan and those in attendance repeated the following statements: “Living wages are a right, that is why we have to fight!” “When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” “What do we need? A fair contract. When do we need it? Now!”
Afterward, he started his speech by thanking everyone who came to show support for GSEU and RAU’s May Day Rally. He stressed the importance of showing solidarity for one another, especially as the spring semester ends.
“We’re here because we know that SUNY, Stony Brook, the state of New York and any structure of power, they want us to be tired. They want us to be isolated, they want us to give up,” Turan said. “We know that we have to be more angry than we are tired,” Turan said. “What I want to do is remind all of us why we are angry [and] why we are here.”
Turan reminded the audience that the base stipend for Stony Brook Ph.D. students is $26,000, which is $10,000 lower than the very low income limit for Suffolk County for a single-person household. In Stony Brook, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,087 per month.
He continued with his speech, stating that some Ph.D. students pay upward of 90% of their income on rent alone, leaving them in an undesirable environment to be a researcher, educator and a person.
“We do the majority of instructional labor at Stony Brook and across SUNY, but we remain overworked, underpaid [and] disrespected — that makes us pretty angry,” Turan said.
He also claimed that the University will forget about GSEU once the semester ends, and more importantly, about the revocation of the 11 international students’ visas. One of GSEU’s demands to SUNY and the state of New York is to “enshrine international worker protections” in their contracts. As of Monday, April 28, those 11 students’ visas have been reinstated.
“We don’t need to live in luxury, we’re just asking for what should be the bare minimum, which is livable wages and support for our community,” Turan said.
Next was Olive Koren, president of the RAU and a fifth-year Ph.D. student studying planetary science, who questioned how Ph.D. students could strive for success without proper working conditions.
“How can we be successful when we’re expected to work over 40 hours a week on research and then another job or something else on the side? It lowers our productivity, making it take longer for us to complete our program [and continues a cycle of debt collecting],” Koren said.
Koren also pointed out how Ph.D. students aren’t able to “get their basic research done” because of this predicament they are in, often taking out loans, collecting credit card debt or dipping into their savings to continue their research.
“This academic year has been one of the worst in terms of working conditions,” Koren said. “We’re expected to produce state-of-the-art research, but we’re given no time off and no support. There’s no guaranteed sick days, no vacation time and no mental health days.”
She expressed, however, that graduate students want to perform to the best of their ability.
“We want to do great work. We want to make groundbreaking discoveries. But, we can’t do that work because we’re exhausted, unsupported and working in inhabitable spaces,” Koren said. “We’re not asking for the moon; we’re asking for fair compensation.”
After the series of speeches, the group of protesters walked through the Academic Mall, circled the Student Activities Center Circle and Frey Hall and returned to the Administration Building.
Several demonstrators, including Turan, held a large sign that read, “SUNY: LIVING WAGE NOW!” and led the rest of those in attendance. Other people held signs that read “Fair Contract Now!” “OUR LABOR RUNS SBU” and “NOT AN AVERAGE WAGE BUT A LIVING WAGE.”
They also chanted statements like “Put your workers over profit, keep our wages out [of] your pocket,” “The more they try to silence, the louder we will be” and “Living wages are a right, that is why we have to fight.”
Shortly after the end of the march, a group of pro-Palestine protesters stood in front of the fountain by the Administration Building holding two signs that read “STOP U.S. MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL” and “‘ISRAEL’ BOMBS[,] SUNY PAYS.”
One pro-Palestine demonstrator, who is also Palestinian, stressed to those still in attendance, many of whom left after the walk ended, to still fight for Palestinian rights as they have had to watch “[their] entire culture [be] obliterated.”
“Please don’t let this be the last action you attend. To make progress, we need to make gains,” they said.
Stony Brook officials wrote to The Statesman that SUNY is actively working with the state of New York, GSEU and Communications Workers of America Union to negotiate “a new contract.”
“While these ongoing discussions take place, we will not comment further,” University officials wrote.
