LETTER to provost doyle

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Dear Provost Doyle,

As the elected leadership of Local 6516 and as workers at Brown University, we insist that you reaffirm your current commitment to workers on our campus. We make this demand a week after the second inauguration of President Trump.  

The record is undeniable. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is “an independent federal agency vested with the power to safeguard employees' rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative.”1 Yet, the previous Trump administration undermined the agency’s charge by stacking the board against workers and workers’ rights. Here are just a few ways that Trump’s NLRB stripped workers of their rights across the country:

1. They revoked the Department of Education’s previously negotiated union contract and illegally imposed an anti-union directive, stripping 3,900 workers of all previously negotiated rights and protections.2

2. They rescinded the Department of Labor’s “persuader rule,” which required companies to disclose anti-union legal activities.3,4 

3. They oversaw a rise in outsourcing, including the highest rate of outsourcing by federal contractors in a decade.5

4. They proposed $400 million budget cuts that would slash the Trade Adjustment Program for those who lose their jobs to imports over the next decade.6

5. They made workplaces more dangerous by rolling back critical federal safety regulations such as cutting federal workplace safety inspectors to their lowest level in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) history.7
   

With Trump’s most recent rhetoric, labor protections may erode even more drastically under his second administration.8 The previous Trump-appointed NLRB wanted to repeal Columbia University, 364 NLRB No. 90 (2016), an important precedent in support of graduate and undergraduate unionization.9,10 The next one will likely try to go through with it. We also know that President Trump made it clear that his mass deportation plans will start on day one of his tenure, threatening the legal status of many of our members.11

Our demand is for Brown University to continue to recognize all the workers represented by Local 6516 as workers beyond the contracts that are currently in place or being bargained. This means continuing to bargain in good faith so that workers have an avenue to shape their contracts in real ways. It also means protecting our non-citizen fellow workers as immigration procedures impede their abilities to work and contribute to our academic community. If Brown continues to recognize our status as workers of this campus, we can continue to make Brown the vibrant academic and research institution it is.

These commitments would reaffirm Brown’s commitment to the safety and well-being of Local 6516 workers on campus. In particular, this commitment conveys to our members with the most precarity – from our queer members, to our black and brown members, to our non-citizen members, to our disabled members, to our low-income members, to our parents and caretakers – that Brown stands with them in the challenging times to come.

For our fellow workers from the Local 6516 leadership, 

AFT Local 6516
Graduate Labor Organization of Brown University
Brown University Postdoc Labor Organization
Teaching Assistant Labor Organization
Third World Labor Organization
Community Coordinator Labor Organization