Letter from the GSRA Steering Committee: RA Unions at Other Universities

Dear GSRA colleagues,

In this week’s update, we’ll explore how being a part of a union is already working for graduate research assistants at other universities across the country.

There have been successful organizing drives by research assistants at many other public institutions with very high research activity, including the University of Washington, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Rutgers University, and the University of Iowa.

At these institutions, research assistants have negotiated guaranteed cost-of-living wage increases, improved health care benefits, increased security in their appointments and the availability of paid leave.

These organizing drives haven’t always been easy. Research assistants at the State University of New York-Stony Brook Research Foundation, who first organized in late 2008, initially faced opposition from the university administration, which hired professional union-busters in an attempt to prevent GSRAs there from voting to form a union. Despite this, writes Adam Jacobs, a graduate student research assistant there, our colleagues at Stony Brook “[won] the vote for unionization by a substantial margin.”

(Read more from Adam’s letter and here from an RA in the Rutgers union after the break.)

“So far, I’ve only seen benefits from having a graduate student union on campus,” he continues.  Stony Brook research assistants are celebrating their first contract with their university, which they reached in May of 2010. Among the benefits RAs at Stony Brook negotiated for themselves, Adam explains that “we have a 2% raise in the first year. We’ve doubled dental coverage. We’ve improved vision care.”

“Organizing gives GSRAs a voice,” Adam concludes.

Like research assistants at other universities, GSRAs at the University of Michigan are interested in improving our working conditions—and are strongly committed to the research strength of the University.

“We care just as much about our university’s research prowess as faculty and administrators do,” writes Jessica Lingel, a research assistant and union member at Rutgers University. The union there, she explains, has improved relationships between faculty and students who work together to help make the university stronger; union members and administrators collaborate in their efforts to persuade the state legislature to allocate more research funds to Rutgers.

“As far as the day-to-day interactions with my advisor,” Jessica adds, “my union activities are never an issue. We have a wonderful working relationship. I have not seen an instance of the union getting between students and advisors.”

Administrators, faculty, and unionized research assistants at all of these universities want to ensure their institutions are as attractive as possible to the best faculty and graduate students—we want the same for the University of Michigan.

Yours truly,

Samantha Montgomery,

President, GEO

Psychology/Women’s Studies

Andrea Jokisaari

Chair, GSRA Steering Committee

Materials Science and Engineering