SLACer Leland Pan helped organize Tuesday's protest
USAS’s oldest affiliate, the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, kicked off the new school year with a rally at Bascom Hall Tuesday afternoon, with more than 100 UW-Madison teaching assistants, faculty and staff. They welcomed back former UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward by posting a list of demands on his door.
Students mobilized last semester in the fight back against corporate-backed Governor Scott Walker’s when he moved to strip collective bargaining rights for public sector employees in Wisconsin. At the same time, they didn’t let then-Chancellor Biddy Martin get away with her plan to privatize the University, and SLACers staged a sit-in in Bascom Hall with over 100 students. By the end of the school year, Chancellor Biddy Martin abandoned her privatization plan and resigned from her post at the University.
Now there’s a new Chancellor in town….right? Quite the contrary – David Ward has just been appointed Interim Chancellor of the UW-Madison. That’s right – the same David Ward that SLACers compelled to resign ten years ago, after he arrested 54 USASers and pepper sprayed them during their sit-in to demand the University disaffiliate with the corporate-backed Fair Labor Association and affiliate instead with the independent Worker Rights Consortium.
At Tuesday’s rally, students and workers taped demands on Ward’s new office door, demanding benefits and wage increases for TA’s, many of whom are supporting families and receiving as little as $12,000 a year; as well as stronger student voice in University decision making.
“What we found was we could eventually get [Ward] to do the right thing if we made him do the right thing,” Ben Manski, a veteran SLACer who occupied Ward’s office more than a decade ago to demand WRC affiliation, said. “I have confidence [students] will make him do the right thing this year.”
This year, SLACers will continue to fight alongside campus worker unions to defy the corporate agenda to devastate worker power and to privatize the University.
In February, SLAC will host the 15th National USAS Winter Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the anniversary of the student-ignited capitol occupation, to celebrate a decade and a half of student -worker solidarity and victories, and to train a new generation of student labor activists.
