At noon today, Tuesday May 12, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 200United and more than a half-dozen campus activist groups held another Day of Action in front of Main Building at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.  Workers, students, faculty, and staff rose in support of “respect, dignity, and peace on campus for all workers,” in addition to the bread and butter issues of “summer employment” and “job security.”  College activists have coalesced around these core worker issues and a broader social justice agenda delivered to Vassar President Catherine Bond Hill on May 8, 2009 and attached to this press release.

The job security rally on May Day began at noon, but reverberated across the central campus for the rest of the afternoon.  Chanting squads of students, activists, and off-duty workers appeared spontaneously for the rest of the day.  In fact, the action attracted interest and was well received by media outlets in the Lower Hudson region.

Local 200United represents workers at more than twenty colleges and universities in Upstate New York.  “Our members have a vested interest in building alliances that will help us weather storms like the current economic decline,” said SEIU 200United Vice President Mike Lonigro, bargaining representative for Vassar’s unionized workforce.  “We cannot allow colleges and universities that are the equivalent of major corporations, to build a strategy of crisis management on the backs of their workers and other vulnerable members of the community.”

“Layoffs and the elimination of inter-session employment are short-term and short-sighted fixes,” said Vassar’s SEIU Chairman Joe Maio.  Local 200United is convinced that a more responsible and reasoned approach will produce not only a more orderly business model, but a campus community whose values are more closely akin to the environment suggested by the list of demands delivered to President Hill on May 8 and attached to this release.