Grad Workers Walk Out of Bargaining Session over HR’s Response to Latest U-M Sexual Harassment Scandal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

News from Graduate Employees’ Organization 3550

June 23, 2023

Grad Workers Walk Out of Bargaining Session over HR’s Response to Latest U-M Sexual Harassment Scandal

ANN ARBOR— On Friday, June 23, graduate workers walked out of a bargaining session with the University of Michigan’s Human Resources (HR), after HR refused to take responsibility for the latest sexual harassment scandal involving Professor Robert Stephenson’s abuse of two graduate students, reported on by the Michigan Daily on June 7. During negotiations, Garima Singh, Co-Chair of GEO’s Feminist Caucus, recounted the harrowing details of the case, in which the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX office (ECRT) dismissed, minimized, and misinterpreted evidence against Stephenson to find that he had not violated University policy. HR hid behind technicalities in an attempt to justify their proposal on harassment protections, which would not have protected Stephenson’s survivors. With multiple harassment survivors in the room, graduate workers grew frustrated with HR’s refusal to work with graduate students to solve the harassment crisis and voted to walk out. According to GEO President Jared Eno, “graduate workers walked out today because we are fed up with HR’s prioritization of arbitrary rules and procedures over the real-life experiences of workers—which only mirrors the institutional betrayals perpetrated by ECRT.”

Protecting graduate workers from harassment and discrimination remains one of the primary issues driving the graduate worker strike that began on March 29th.  Graduate workers at the University of Michigan, organized through the Graduate Employees Organization, AFT-MI local 3550, have proposed expanding an existing Transitional Funding Program (TFP) within the College of Literature, Sciences, and Arts (LSA) to cover all graduate workers at the University and to provide financial stability to any grad student transitioning out of an unhealthy and/or abusive relationship with a supervisor. HR wishes to exclude most graduate students from the TFP, and has insisted on a mandatory reporting requirement despite research by experts on harassment and discrimination at UM and nationally showing that reporting processes can be not only fruitless but actively retraumatizing for victims. As the ECRT’s mishandling of Stephenson’s case demonstrates, survivors should have the power to choose whether they want to file a formal report or not. 

During the bargaining session, HR’s representatives minimized ECRT’s mishandling of the Stephenson harassment scandal and continued to claim that graduate workers should trust ECRT. They similarly insisted on excluding most graduate workers from the TFP, even though they could not deny that Michigan labor law allows the extension of these protections to workers beyond the bargaining unit. The GEO contract currently contains numerous benefits—such as healthcare and a childcare subsidy—which apply to all graduate workers, not just those in the bargaining unit. 

Evelyn Smith, GEO’s lead negotiator, states: “GEO came to the table today to solve problems. HR offered excuses and red tape. Our members have to decide whether it’s worth our time to continue negotiating with university administrators who are more concerned with technicalities than the safety of their workers.”

###