We, the undersigned students, workers, colleagues, and community supporters of Student Workers of Columbia have attached our names to this open letter to stand with higher ed unions across the country and call on billionaires to stop interfering with campus labor organizing.

Recently, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) filed a nuisance ULP against UAW 2710, Student Workers of Columbia (SWC). The charge attempts to use contract articles that SWC members are debating bringing to the bargaining table as a thin excuse to try to eliminate student worker unions in private colleges and universities.

The National Right to Work Committee was founded in 1955 to undermine labor rights by propagating “right to work” laws. These laws, which make “union shops” illegal, are meant to weaken, and ultimately, destroy unions. NRTW is allied with a consortium of libertarian and right-wing groups funded by the Koch brothers to undermine workers’ rights and fight provisions like minimum wage and social security. 

Some of the positions taken by the Kochs, who fund NRTW, include the elimination of all taxes, repeal of social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and an end to all government programs David Koch’s party platform called “aid to the poor.”

Back in 2016, National Right to Work filed a legal brief attempting to block the NLRB from recognizing our union. They lost, and Columbia has been forced to bargain with our union ever since. The NLRB decision also paved the way for student workers unions nationwide.

Now they have turned their focus to trying to repeal that very same Columbia decision, which forces Columbia to recognize us as a union.

SWC is one of several higher ed unions targeted by National Right to Work. In July, a PhD candidate at Cornell worked with the National Right to Work Foundation to file a similar charge against the student workers union. Charges at other campuses are sure to follow.

National Right to Work’s new strategy of targeting higher ed unions is part of the MAGA attack on labor and higher education. Charges like these are part of the anti-union plan laid out in Project 2025, which includes recommendations to decertify unions (p. 167) and passage of “right to work” laws that prohibit collective bargaining agreements from requiring workers at unionized workplaces to pay member dues (p. 605).

We must not let Trump or his allies use boogeymen like immigration, crime, or speech in support of Palestinian liberation as a smokescreen to dismantle the institutions that undergird democratic civic culture.

We have signed our names because we believe that democracy cannot survive billionaire attacks unless workers of all stripes stand together in solidarity with our unions.

To the Kochs and other billionaires and millionaires attempting to dismantle labor and higher education: get out!

Sincerely,

[names]