Background: The following is the text of the GEO press release responding to the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s announcement that it will file a motion to prevent GSRAs from holding an election to decide whether they wish to unionize.
July 28, 2011
For Immediate Release
The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) stands with Graduate Student Research Assistants in support of the University of Michigan Regents’ decision to recognize the right of 2,100 employees to choose whether or not they wish to be represented by the existing graduate union. As Andrea Jokisaari, a current GSRA from Materials Science and Engineering, states: “We just want the freedom to vote.†The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s recent filing with the Michigan Employment Relations Committee is an attempt to circumvent a democratic decision-making process already underway.
The Regents are democratically elected and empowered to direct the policy of the University of Michigan under Article 8 of the state constitution. Their majority decision on May 19th to allow research assistants to vote on whether they wanted to be represented by a union recognized GSRAs’ rights as workers under Michigan law. GEO affirms this decision and actively supports research assistants who are seeking the right to be represented by a union.
The Mackinac Center is an outside party to the process of GSRAs determining their union representation status. Given the Center’s history of attacking the right of public employees to bargain collectively and the freedom of academic inquiry, it is questionable that the Center’s actions are in the best interest of any student, faculty member or employee of the University of Michigan.
The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) is the labor union representing Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) and Graduate Student Staff Assistants (GSSAs) at the University of Michigan. Graduate employees founded GEO in 1970, making GEO one of the oldest graduate employee unions in the United States.
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