Graduate Students

BU Graduate Students Reach Deal End Seven-Month Strike

October 13, 2024 Diti Kohli, Portside. Resist! Boston, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Massachusetts, Strikes, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Boston University and its graduate student union have agreed on terms for a new contract that would raise the graduate students’ pay, benefits, and job protections and end the longest such strike in American history. The agreement, announced jointly on Friday afternoon, concludes seven months of sparring between the administration and the union that represents 3,000 graduate students. Many teach classes, grade papers, and conduct research, and argued the school severely underpaid them for essential work. Now the first-of-its-kind contract includes provisions to raise the annual stipend PhD workers receive to at least $45,000, or $20 an hour for graduate students, which would be as much as a 60 percent bump for the lowest paid PhD students.

How Tens Of Thousands Of Graduate Workers Are Organizing

May 30, 2024 Valentina Luketa, Labor Notes. Organize! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s the biggest organizing wave the U.S. labor movement has seen in decades. Graduate workers are unionizing in huge numbers, winning drive after drive with 90 percent support or more. What’s more, the workers are in the driver’s seat of these campaigns, with little help from union staff. Most union organizing these days relies on a staff-heavy approach that’s tough to scale up. But the grad worker upsurge offers a sketch of a worker-led model that could help reverse labor’s decline. The United Electrical Workers (UE) alone has organized close to 30,000 graduate workers over the past year and a half. We’ve won elections at eight major universities, including MIT and the University of Minnesota.

Johns Hopkins Graduate Student-Workers Picket, Negotiations Stall

February 28, 2024 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. Resist! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Johns Hopkins, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

One year ago, graduate student-workers at Johns Hopkins University overwhelmingly voted to unionize under the banner of Teachers and Researchers United (TRU-UE), which is affiliated with United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. While workers had much to celebrate with their historic union election victory, bargaining a first contract with the university administration has been another story. On February 20, fed up with what workers say have been disrespectful and insufficient offers from the university administration, TRU-UE members held practice pickets on campus to show the administration what’s in store if more progress is not made at the bargaining table soon.

Laney Graduate Students Vote To Unionize

November 30, 2023 Ilah Ross, Portside. Organize! Georgia, Graduate Students, Higher Education, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Laney Graduate School students have voted to unionize after years of advocacy, making Emory University the first private university to have a graduate-worker union in Georgia and the second in the South. EmoryUnite! is now officially recognized as a union under the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), meaning Emory administration is required to enter negotiations with graduate students. EmoryUnite! announced the results in a Nov. 28 Instagram post. In total, 909 students (92.6%) voted in favor of unionization while 73 students (7.4%) voted against unionization during the election on Oct. 17 and 18, according to the post. Of the approximately 1,700 Laney Ph.D. students eligible to vote in the election, 982 (57.8%) participated.

Cornell Graduate Students United Wins Unionization Election

November 13, 2023 Jonathan Mong and Matthew Kiviat, Portside. Organize! Graduate Students, Higher Education, New York (NY), Unions, Worker Rights

Cornell graduate students have won their unionization election by a vote of 1,873 to 80, and will federate as Cornell Graduate Students United — an organization fighting for the rights of graduate workers — under the national United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America union. 128 ballots were challenged, but not counted because they would not have determined the outcome of the election. Voting occurred on the Ithaca campus between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8, as well as on Nov. 6 at the Geneva campus and at New York City’s Cornell Tech campus. Of the 3,175 eligible voters, 1,953 voted in the election.

University Of Maine Graduate Students Win Union Recognition

October 5, 2023 Christopher Burns , Portside. Organize! Education, Graduate Students, Maine, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Maine Labor Relations Board last week certified the Maine Graduate Workers Union-UAW after an independent arbitrator determined it had a majority support among graduate workers, according to the Maine AFL-CIO. The university system said in August it would recognize the union and began bargaining if an independent analysis found it had a majority support. The graduate workers union will represent about 1,000 graduate assistants, research assistants and teaching assistants who make up a large percentage of the teaching and research workforce across the system’s seven campuses, according to the Maine AFL-CIO, which announced the certification on Friday afternoon.

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