Correction: The following quote was inaccurately attributed to Amy Hulshoff: 'We’re the ones that make the university run, we need the financial support to focus on our studies and doing the best jobs we can as students and as educators, because we really do love our university and we wanna be able to do the best job we can, and we can’t work if we can’t eat.' Samantha Higgins, not Hulshoff, said it. The error was made in editing.
As hundreds of workers and members of local union organizations gathered on Civic Plaza, the trade union anthem “Soilidarity Forever” was sung before marching in recognition of International Workers Day, which falls every year on May 1.
Among the union organizations present were the United Graduate Workers of the University of New Mexico and United Academics of UNM.
UNM graduate students Mark Campbell and Samantha Higgins were tabling with UGW-UNM, and said their union was at the May Day event to show solidarity with other workers and asking community members to call on UNM interim provost Barbara Rodriguez to support their demands for higher wages.
“Grad workers are a part of the working class community here in Albuquerque,” Campbell said. “Workers are what makes the city run, workers are what makes the world run, and so events like this are super important to show solidarity.”
UNM PhD student Amy Hulshoff expressed frustration about her minimal salary raise over seven years with an increased workload, saying that her tuition-paying undergraduate students are being “ripped off,” in her introductory art class.
“(My students) are supposedly paying the same that they would get from a tenured professor but they're getting this like, ‘half teacher,’ right?” Hulshoff said.
Higgins said more financial support is needed for graduate workers to be able to focus on their studies and do the best they can as educators.
"We’re the ones that make the university run, Higgins said. "We really do love our university and we wanna be able to do the best job we can, and we can’t work if we can’t eat.”
Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on X @paloma_chapa88
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