Action-Assembly this Wednesday 9/18 at 1:30 PM, Sample Gates
Last week, IU announced that it was laying off 50 employees from the physical plant.  They could then reapply for their old positions through a temp agency, Manpower, Inc.  This plan is an explicit effort to avoid offering them health care, as would be required through the Affordable Care Act. 

Instead, these 50 workers will be paid through a temp agency, which takes a cut out of their checks and subject them to permanent precarity, since they will lack their old contracts and guarantees.  Even worse, IU acknowledges that this measure is just a test to see whether they could apply the same approach to hundreds or thousands of other staff at IU.  Soon, we could be attending a school where all support staff, even people who've worked here for decades, could be forced to accept pay cuts and the removal of benefits, all enforced by Manpower.
 Using "financial responsibility" as a smoke screen, IU has already moved to cut the hours for all part-time employees (both students and professionals) to less than 30/week in order to deny them health benefits.  We now all have a choice whether we want to stand up for a university based on education, or accept a state of permanent austerity based on unilateral command by the administration, cut-backs, and precarity.
 The IUB student movement has called for an action assembly against these measures for next Wednesday, 9/18, 1:30 PM at Sample Gates to begin fighting back.  We'll start by sharing updates and information about these cuts and attacks, and then move to planning an immediate collective action.  Anyone can come with proposals, information, and resources, but you can expect proposals that include chalking, demonstrations, flyer-distributions, sit-ins and occupations.  Please come and share your ideas even if you can't participate in the action after.
 We need help ASAP distributing stacks of flyers about the action.  Pick up some to pass out at Boxcar Books. 
 Sources:
http://idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=94051
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/news/local/some-iu-workers-to-be-cut-sent-to-a-temp/article_1684bdd7-8aff-5904-896d-b2fd3d3b53b8.html