The previous two years have seen a contemporary wave of graduate employee militancy marked by daring strikes, new organizing drives and whopping union election victories. Certainly, the six largest union filings with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board in 2022 have been all for graduate employee unions.
Amid this surge, one union is displaying up a shocking quantity: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Staff of America, or the “UE.” Graduate employee union drives affiliated with the UE have popped up at Indiana College Bloomington, Massachusetts Institute of Expertise, College of Chicago, Johns Hopkins College, Dartmouth School, Northwestern College, Princeton College, College of Minnesota, Stanford College, and elsewhere.
With round 35,000 members, the UE isn’t a huge union. It was as soon as the third-largest — and arguably probably the most left-wing and democratic — member of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, with round a half-million members in core industries, till it fell sufferer to postwar anti-communist purges, raids from different unions and plant shutdowns. However the union revived itself by the Nineties. Famously, UE staff on the Republic Home windows & Doorways manufacturing unit in Chicago occupied their plant in 2008, and as we speak the union boasts a variety of affiliated locals throughout sectors and industries from California to Vermont.
Why is the UE — which prides itself on being an impartial, member-driven union — proving to be a magnet for graduate staff proper now? Truthout spoke to some UE organizers and members on the forefront of its graduate campaigns to listen to what they needed to say about their ongoing successes.
Key to the UE’s attraction for graduate staff has been its respect for native autonomy, its emphasis on rank-and-file democracy, its confidence in member-driven campaigns, its give attention to facilitating worker-to-worker solidarity, and its old style, militant organizing playbook that has shortly confirmed itself in apply. Certainly, it’s not completely correct to say that the UE has organized hundreds of graduate staff; somewhat, hundreds of graduate staff have organized themselves, with UE affiliation serving as a automobile that facilitates, connects and strengthens these efforts.
“We stand in distinction to what we consider as a staff-led mannequin,” mentioned Valentina Luketa, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at Indiana College Bloomington and the UE’s nationwide coordinator for larger schooling. “We lean closely on staff and massive organizing committees led by staff. All of our election successes have been the results of our graduate staff organizing themselves to signal playing cards and to make it to the polls.”
“The UE Was Encouraging Us, ‘Simply Go for It’”
Whereas graduate staff have been unionizing for many years, the previous few years have seen a brand new organizing surge spurred on by a number of components. The COVID-19 pandemic threw graduate staff right into a interval of disaster and uncertainty. Essential choices over their working situations — from compensation to office security — have been managed by opaque and top-down administrative whims. The sense of insecurity was worse for worldwide college students, who make up an enormous chunk of the bigger graduate employee inhabitants.
This disaster second intersected with a shifting generational temper amongst graduate staff that was formed by the post-2008 realities of financial precarity and extra open to union militancy. The examples of the Amazon Labor Union and Starbucks Staff United have been inspiring, and Bernie Sanders’s main runs and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests broadened a way of chance.
Crucially, with the educational job market in perpetual disaster underneath a neoliberal larger schooling system that more and more depends on low-paid adjunct labor, there was a rising sense of the necessity to win good jobs by collective energy now. A inexperienced mild to unionize additionally got here from the Nationwide Labor Relations Board in March 2021, when it upheld the collective bargaining rights of graduate college students at non-public universities.
Graduate staff had organized with the UE earlier than — for instance, within the late Nineties on the University of Iowa — however this new context set the stage for breakthroughs in 2021 and 2022 that paved the best way for the UE’s emergence as a graduate organizing powerhouse.
Whereas graduate staff have been unionizing for many years, the previous few years have seen a brand new organizing surge.
One pivotal growth got here at Indiana College Bloomington. In 2017, graduate staff there formed the Indiana Graduate Staff Coalition to battle for points like a residing wage and a waiver for necessary student fees. They later developed a relationship with the UE and, in late 2021, affiliated with them with the intent of formally unionizing.
Indiana is a right-to-work state, and Indiana graduate staff that Truthout spoke with mentioned different unions suggested them to attend for higher situations to try to unionize. However the UE inspired them to battle for his or her union now regardless of the authorized obstacles, and it supplied to assist.
“The UE was very a lot encouraging us, ‘simply go for it’,” mentioned Anne Kavalerchik, a fourth-year Ph.D. scholar in sociology and informatics at Indiana and former undertaking workers organizer with the UE.
The Indiana graduate staff started a card campaign within the fall of 2021 and waged a two-month strike for union recognition in March and April 2022. Whereas the college has but to acknowledge the union, the employees have received major gains in pay and different areas.
Extra importantly, their battle cast a cadre of steeled organizers who may cross on their classes to the rising wave of UE-affiliated organizing drives.
One other key battle across the similar time got here at MIT. By December 2021, a majority of MIT graduate staff had signed union playing cards to arrange an NLRB vote. In April 2022, MIT grad college students voted by a 2-to-1 margin for the union.
This was an enormous win: MIT is among the world’s most prestigious universities and a significant STEM faculty. Graduate unions traditionally have had harder instances organizing the sciences, however at MIT lots of the union militants wore lab coats and crunched math equations.
A “Strong Infrastructure for Employee-to-Employee Exchanges and Coaching”
Round this time, in late 2021 and all through 2022, as UE-affiliated graduate staff from Indiana and MIT to New Mexico and Iowa have been connecting with one another, and as curiosity from new faculties was beginning to are available, a crucial mass was rising for one thing larger.
“That was the start throughout the UE of constructing a nationwide effort by graduate staff throughout the UE’s infrastructure to prepare us throughout trade, with the intention to not solely enhance our working situations, however to reclaim the tutorial missions of those establishments,” mentioned Luketa.
The UE launched its Graduate Employee Organizing Committee (GWOC), which Luketa describes as a “strong infrastructure for worker-to-worker exchanges and coaching” that has been “the important thing to our success.” She mentioned the GWOC is the place the UE has “completely different campaigns speaking on to different campaigns to switch data” round every little thing from profitable elections to bargaining robust contracts.
The GWOC displays the UE’s bigger organizing philosophy that’s interesting to a rising variety of graduate staff: common members, with help from the UE nationwide workplace, driving the lifetime of their union, increasing their collective motion by worker-to-worker organizing and assist.
By way of the GWOC, over Slack and Zoom conferences, graduate staff throughout establishments share recommendation and assets, arrange trainings, coordinate attendance at rallies and enlist marketing campaign assist. Kavalerchik says a meetup of UE graduate staff from a number of universities on the June 2022 Labor Notes convention was useful in solidifying the UE organizer community.
“We’ve continued that right into a community of organizers the place each marketing campaign has a fairly robust connection to all the opposite campaigns to make it very easy to prepare,” she mentioned.
Whereas the UE nationwide workplace provides authorized and organizing recommendation constructed up over a long time, and supplies on-the-ground workers assist, its graduate efforts relaxation upon the employees themselves, who are sometimes already extremely organized after they join with the UE.
“The UE mannequin isn’t discovering a marketing campaign after which having staffers paratroop in simply to win an election,” mentioned Kavalerchik. “The UE mannequin is one the place the employees are doing the exhausting organizing, the mobilizing work of increase their unions, after which UE is there to assist in no matter methods it may possibly.”
“Inform Us Methods to Fish and Then We’ll Go and Fish”
Whereas locations like Indiana and MIT have been within the warmth of their struggles, graduate staff at different faculties have been taking a rising curiosity within the UE.
College of Chicago graduate staff had been organizing themselves for years as UChicago Graduate Students United (GSU) earlier than affiliating with the UE in August 2022. An enormous a part of the UE’s attraction was the assist it may provide whereas respecting the GSU’s historical past and autonomy.
“Having folks come and seek the advice of and advise us on greatest practices is what we wished,” mentioned Andrew Seber, a sixth-year historical past Ph.D. scholar at UChicago and a UE workers organizer. “We have been like, ‘Okay, inform us the right way to fish after which we’ll go and fish.’”
1000’s of pro-union graduate staff who’ve skilled organizing drives will disperse into a whole bunch of different workplaces, bringing their union consciousness with them.
Seber mentioned organizers from Indiana and elsewhere got here to assist and handed on essential methods like “the right way to do a profitable walkthrough,” the place union members who work in particular buildings and flooring commonly stroll by the workplaces and labs of their coworkers to speak about what the union’s doing.
These walkthroughs turned “the core of our mannequin” for organizing, mentioned Seber, rooting the union within the area the place folks labored and conserving the marketing campaign on the high of everybody’s thoughts. The walkthroughs created tight knit, granular buildings of assist for the union that served as antidotes to the administration’s anti-union techniques. “There are some buildings on the College of Chicago that you simply stroll into and it’s like, the Graduate Pupil Union runs this constructing, and there’s no query about that,” mentioned Seber.
Ways like these additionally helped UChicago GSU construct a robust base amongst STEM graduate staff. “Individuals within the labs are working 40- to 60-plus hours every week,” he mentioned. “They’ve completely full-time jobs.” This was essential for the union. “You’re not going to have a reputable strike with out STEM,” mentioned Seber. “There’s no marketing campaign with out them. But additionally, they deserve a union simply as a lot as everyone else.”
The UE marketing campaign at College of Chicago culminated in March 2023, when graduate staff won their union with a 92 p.c pro-union vote, with 1,696 voting “sure” towards 155 “no” votes. They’re now beginning to negotiate their first contract.
“The Demonstrated Success of Campaigns Elsewhere”
At Princeton College, graduate staff have been organizing for years by Princeton Graduate College students United (PGSU), which fashioned in 2016. In 2021, PGSU affiliated with the UE, and a majority of graduate staff have now signed union playing cards.
Gaby Nair, a third-year Ph.D. scholar in politics, mentioned a variety of grievances through the onset of the pandemic, particularly the dearth of transparency round college decision-making, intensified assist for a union amongst graduate staff at Princeton. This got here on high of points like mounting housing prices and the dearth of a impartial grievance process for graduate labor, all at an establishment with a $35.8 billion endowment whose governance excluded graduate staff and different stakeholders.
Nair says Princeton graduate staff reached out to a couple unions, however the UE held probably the most attraction for her. “The worker-led mannequin was actually persuasive for me personally,” she mentioned.
Nair says Princeton graduate staff largely spoke to different UE-affiliated grads of their preliminary discussions exploring affiliation with the union. The instance of UE-affiliated graduate staff at MIT — a peer establishment with many worldwide college students and a STEM focus — was influential.
“It felt like this marketing campaign, their technique, was actually going to contain connecting grads to different grads and drawing on the data of grad staff,” she mentioned.
This grad-to-grad assist has borne out at Princeton and past and has been central to the success of UE-affiliated graduate employee unions. Johns Hopkins grads joined Princeton grads at their union rally; Northwestern and College of Chicago grads supported one another’s card campaigns and attended one another’s victory events; they, in flip, each helped the Johns Hopkins grads; staff from the Indiana marketing campaign have supported and workers rising campaigns elsewhere. The listing goes on.
Luketa stresses that the traces of assist — assist with cellphone banking or passing on suggestions and techniques over Slack, for instance — are all the time moving into all instructions, sustaining a vibrant net of worker-led solidarity. “There was crossing paths of the entire campaigns concurrently on the similar time,” she mentioned. “Actually everyone helps everyone.”
Nair mentioned that, greater than something, the continuing victories for graduate staff throughout the U.S. have helped increase the dedication of many Princeton grads to win their union.
“I believe probably the most helpful factor for the marketing campaign at Princeton has been the current success of campaigns elsewhere,” she mentioned. “That has been actually a robust message in normalizing and making very constructive grad employee unionization throughout the nation. The UE has been an integral a part of that just lately, clearly — not the one union concerned within the current wave, however one which’s concerned in fairly massive victories.”
“We Have a Larger Crucial Right here”
Kavalerchik stresses that the UE’s current success in organizing graduate staff isn’t due to any secret trick, however the results of devoted, worker-led organizing.
The UE isn’t simply combating to assist graduate staff acquire extra energy and higher working situations. It’s hoping to remodel academia altogether.
“We’re simply working actually, actually exhausting with a tried-and-true technique, and ensuring that each single employee is talked to and each single piece is roofed,” she mentioned.
Extra broadly, the surge in grad employee unionization by the UE and different unions guarantees to have bigger results on the labor motion and progressive politics. The brand new graduate unions are massive and militant. They’re usually positioned in main cities from Chicago to Boston to Baltimore, and their examples may encourage others close by and anchor solidarity efforts. Furthermore, hundreds of pro-union graduate staff who’ve skilled organizing drives will disperse into a whole bunch of different workplaces, bringing their union consciousness with them.
For now, the UE isn’t simply combating to assist graduate staff acquire extra energy and higher working situations. It’s hoping to remodel academia altogether.
“There was a really robust sensibility inside all our campaigns that our universities have been surrendered to neoliberal logic that places income first and schooling, college students, tutorial staff, and different campus staff second,” mentioned Luketa.
“Inside the UE, we have now an even bigger crucial right here: to reclaim the tutorial mission of all of our establishments.”
