PALO ALTO, Calif. —Winning landslide recognition votes among grad student workers at top-tier universities is getting to be a habit for the independent United Electrical Workers. The latest one, on July 6: A 1,639-108 tally—94%—at Stanford University.
It’s no surprise. Prior to Stanford, UE triumphed this year alone by 90% or more at the University of Chicago, Northwestern, the University of Minnesota, and Johns Hopkins University and by at least 80% at Dartmouth.
As at other top-tier schools, management tried to beat the union and failed. Stanford’s special trick was to throw up roadblocks to delay the vote until after the school year ended, with a ban on absentee voting. The National Labor Relations Board-run election closed on May 31. The tally was reported July 6. The union threw a celebratory victory party at Manzanita Field the next night.
“The overwhelming margin of victory in this historic election…shows we have widespread support for our platform,” the union, Stanford Graduate Workers United-UE, said in a victory tweet. “Our union is enthusiastic to begin bargaining with Stanford for a fair contract, living wages, and a safe, healthy workplace where we can teach and conduct research as effectively as possible.”
Like the other top-tier schools, Stanford depends on its grad student workers, many of them employed on detailed and specific research, to help garner the state and federal funds that keep the profs busy and themselves employed. Stanford has consistently finished in the top 10 in such grants nationwide, totaling $1.1 billion in 2021-22, the latest year for which figures are available.
But at Stanford, like the other top-tier institutions, the grad student researchers aren’t well-paid. Their stipends fall far short of the cost of living. Health insurance coverage is hit-or-miss.
“Graduate workers work in labs and offices and classrooms, performing the labor that makes universities run,” UE said in announcing the Stanford win. “They do research, teach, and grade papers. Their wages are rarely sufficient to live on. Many are subjected to harassment by their supervisors, who are often also their academic advisors. All of them need a union.
“Across all of these campuses, workers have similar issues….Graduate workers are typically only paid for 20 hours per week, although they often work more, and many of the universities are located in locations with a high cost of living. Healthcare benefits are often insufficient…and there is little support for workers with families.
“They also lack grievance procedures” and are subject to faculty whims, about being rehired, at the end of every school year. Sexual harassment on the job has become a rising problem, too, UE says. Indeed, there’s a Stanford grad student’s research paper documenting its occurrence.
UE also made a conscious effort for years to have grad student workers who organized at one campus help advise colleagues at others, thru Zoom sessions about how to organize via walk-throughs and what issues are common to all. The result has been a string of wins, with the first, at the University of Iowa, long before pandemics and Zoom, in 1996. And grad student workers at another top-tier school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unionized with UE in late 2022.
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