Posts tagged graduate students
Cornell Ph.D. Student’s Appeal to NLRB’s Top Prosecutor Urges Agency to End Union Control Over Graduate Students
February 18, 2026 // Case attacks Obama-era federal ruling that exposed graduate students to union boss power and forced dues
Should RAs be included in the Penn State graduate student union? University files appeal
January 27, 2026 // The Coalition of Graduate Employees at Penn State worked for years for the roughly 5,000 graduate students to vote in a union election. Graduate students previously tried to unionize in 2017-18 but were unsuccessful. Other unionization efforts have also been in the works at Penn State, including for faculty. In December the Penn State Faculty Alliance filed a petition to hold a union election for Penn State faculty. Teamsters Local 8, a labor union representing technical service workers at every Penn State campus, is also seeking to significantly expand its membership by organizing some university workers who currently fall outside of its scope.
Watson Commentary: Making the AFL-CIO great again: labor policy in 2026
January 20, 2026 // The biggest labor issue of all might be the changing composition of what remains of the union movement. Goodbye, manual-labor men; hello purple-haired they/them grad students.
Penn graduate student workers could strike next month
January 14, 2026 // Penn, the largest employer in Philadelphia, has seen a wave of student-worker organizing in recent years, including resident assistants, graduate students, postdocs and research associates, as well as training physicians in the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The region has also seen a couple other university strikes in recent years. In 2023 graduate workers at Temple University walked off the job for 42 days amid contract negotiations, and in a separate action at Rutgers University, educators, researchers, and clinicians went on strike for a week.
Penn State Graduate Students Vote in Favor of Union
November 14, 2025 // University administrators have said that they believe graduate students are primarily students, and that the do not need a union to have their concerns heard.
GET-UP announces strike authorization vote at press conference with elected officials
November 4, 2025 // GET-UP’s economic proposals have included pay increases to match a living wage, comprehensive vision and dental coverage, health insurance for dependents, childcare benefits, retirement contributions, and access to employee benefit programs. During the union’s bargaining sessions on Oct. 28, Penn provided counterproposals on various economic articles, including compensation and healthcare. In their response, according to Friedline, Penn proposed raising the minimum stipend for graduate workers from $39,425 to $43,000.
U-M graduate student research assistants seek to unionize
November 3, 2025 // Ahead of the rally, over 1,500 graduate student research assistants have signed unionization cards. They need a few hundred more to sign up to reach the mandated 30% to set a union vote.
Anonymous graduate student worker group files unfair labor practice charge against SWC-UAW
October 1, 2025 // Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression, a new group, alleges that the union is halting bargaining for issues unrelated to employment.The group filed the charge amid stalled negotiations between the University and the union for a new contract after its first contract expired on June 30. The negotiations have halted over the University’s refusal to let the union broadcast bargaining sessions over Zoom for its members or let its president Grant Miner, who the University expelled in March, attend negotiations. The parties have not met since March. The union’s bylaws state that bargaining sessions must be “made accessible to the entire membership via Zoom or an equivalent platform.” The union conducted negotiations for its first contract in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic over Zoom and argues that its members who have fled the country fearing deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, such as Ranjani Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, deserve to witness bargaining.
Columbia GRADS (Graduate Students Against Discrimination and Suppression) Hit UAW Union With Federal Labor Board Charges
September 23, 2025 // GRADS’ charges list a number of outrageous bargaining items from UAW union officials, including: “proposals to force Columbia to limit campus police, security, and NYPD from doing their jobs;” “bargain[ing] over…so-called ‘Boycott, Divest & Sanction’ policies…of the entire university;” “termination of a dual-degree program between Columbia and Tel Aviv University;” and undoing discipline for students who have been suspended for “destroy[ing] campus property and disrupt[ing] the unit’s working conditions for extended periods.” “These and similar actions constitute bad faith bargaining…and violate the duty of fair representation that respondent union owes to all represented graduate students,” the charges state.
Op-ed: Organized Labor Pushes Blue States to Protect Private University Student Workers
September 2, 2025 // Without a quorum at the NLRB, state legislation that codifies collective bargaining for private-sector employees may be key to preserving workers’ rights.