Thursday, 30 April 2015 - 10:16
Labor Day protesters take over new Univ. Amsterdam building
A group of students and university staff occupied yet another University of Amsterdam building on Thursday morning, a spokesperson for the UvA confirmed to NU. According to the protesters, they occupied the building in the run up to May 1st - Labor Day.
The group, calling themselves Students' 1st of May Committee, occupied the Service and Information Center on Turfdaagsterpad in Amsterdam.
In a declaration published on Tumblr, the protesters demand that the Labor Day holiday on May 1st must be reinstated, stating that it abolition of this "international day of worker solidarity is yet another sign of the university's blatant marketisation under the managers' neoliberalism". According to the protesters, the workload at the university has become so high that the staff are forced to chose between sacrificing the the quality of education or sacrificing their own well-being. They also take issue with the flex-contracts becoming the norm and state that the staff cannot be sure that their contracts will be renewed. "Academic freedom becomes subordinate to meeting management imposed targets." they write.
"We demand that university staff be treated not as labor machines, but as people; that they be given secure contracts instead of disposable ones; that they be freed of the shackles of time-efficiency and corporate interest." the protesters write.
According to NU, people from the UvA are on the way to the building to talk to the occupiers.