GEO’s response to MERC’s decision to order a hearing

For immediate release:

The Graduate Employees Organization is pleased by today’s Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) decision to order a hearing—expected to takeplace in January 2012–in the case of GEO’s election petition for Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) at the University of Michigan.

“We’re gratified that we’re going to have the opportunity to prove that the GSRAs are employees with the right to vote,” said GEO President Samantha Montgomery, a graduate student in psychology and women’s studies.

GEO filed an election petition—with signed membership cards from a majority of GSRAs—in April 2011.

“We just want the right to vote,” said Christie Toth, a GSRA in the Sweetland Center for Writing at UM. “It’s up to employees whether to form a union.”

GEO, an affiliate of AFT Michigan, is the labor union representing approximately 1800 graduate teaching and staff assistants at UM. GEO is the second-oldest graduate employee union in the United States, having won its first contract in 1975