The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) is the labor union representing Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), Graduate Student Staff Assistants (GSSAs), and Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) at the University of Michigan. GEO was founded in 1970 and we won our first contract in 1975, making GEO the oldest continually running graduate employee union in the United States.
GEO is an activist, democratic, and volunteer-run organization where graduate employees come together to improve our wages and working conditions. The collective action of GEO members, organized as a union, is responsible for many of the concrete benefits that graduate employees now enjoy. Over the last 40 years, victories have included tuition waivers, health benefits, and child care waivers as well as a powerful grievance procedure to protect our rights, transparent hiring processes, and standard setting non-discrimination language. Graduate employees across the country look to GEO as an example of what can be accomplished when we work together.
GEO is Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). GEO is affiliated with AFT-Michigan, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), the Alliance of Graduate Employee Locals (AGEL), and the Coalition of Graduate Employee Locals (CGEU).