Category: NLRB

Graduate Students Untied from American Federation of Teachers

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, NLRB, Official Statements, Recognition

We are excited to announce that our membership has voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the American Federations of Teachers (AFT) and to proceed as an independent union. This decision comes after months of research, conversations among our membership, and a bargaining session with the AFT Academics (AFTA) program lead. Moving forward as an independent union, we are committed to the pillars of base-building, direct action, political education, and mutual aid. We encourage those who are interested in building a 21st century labor movement to reach out and join us.

In January 2020, AFT announced that they were ending their campaign with Graduate Students United (GSU). GSU undertook a months-long process preparing for an affiliation vote. The Stewards Council passed a bylaw that outlined how and when the bargaining process and the referendum regarding affiliation would occur. Two research committees were formed to research GSU’s options, one on AFTA and another on an independent union, and they presented their research at the General Members Meeting on May 20, 2020. On Wednesday June 3rd, we held a 48-hour electronic vote to determine our path forward. The referendum presented membership with two options: re-affiliation with AFT through the AFT Academics program or proceeding as an independent union. GSU members voted overwhelmingly in favor of moving forward as an independent union, a decision we take very seriously.

AFTA is not a union, but a membership program geared towards connecting individuals to AFT’s national media campaigns. AFTA members pay monthly dues of $11.00, an option that would go against our promise to membership that we would never pay mandatory dues until we had a contract. Richelle Fiore, director of the AFTA project, informed our bargaining committee that AFTA’s largest membership “cluster” (as opposed to union local) at this time has only 30 members, and that AFTA did not have a concrete plan to support GSU as an organization. When we asked for our members’ dues to be invested directly back into the work of GSU, Fiore told us “that’s not how this works.” Without exception, each AFTA-affiliated graduate worker that we spoke to, across several institutions, urged us to form an independent union, citing AFTA’s obstruction and hindering of campus action and lack of financial and organizational support. Our bargaining committee is working to ensure that AFT and AFTA will not use data collected through our campaign to contact GSU members.

As an independent union, our members now have the final say in the direction of our union in terms of our goals, actions, and finances. Given the unfavorable terrain of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and our fiercely anti-union bosses, we are re-evaluating our organizing priorities and re-dedicating ourselves to the project of strategically organizing around and winning material gains on our campus and in our community. Fighting for legal recognition via the NLRB has occupied much of GSU’s organizing capacity throughout the course of our campaign with AFT. Rather than waiting for a favorable change in the composition of the NLRB, we will fight for better working conditions and union recognition through direct action.

When we say that we are building a labor movement for the 21st century, we are talking about building a movement that fights for workers despite the lack of National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protections for many workers and despite the lack of courage on the part of business unions to stand up for the so-called “unorganized.” We stand on the shoulders of giants in this regard: the legal protections of the NLRA and subsequent labor laws were hard fought victories gained through protracted labor struggles against both employers and the state throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Going forward, we will continue our fight for dignity and justice by acting in solidarity with our fellow graduate workers here and at other universities across the nation, with other workers at the University of Chicago, and with community and labor organizations across the South Side. Our active solidarity and base-building work will allow us to combat the financialization and corporatization of the university, as well as giving us the collective power to win the living and working conditions that we all deserve. We are committed to strengthening our solidarity and engagement with other unions through the University of Chicago Labor Council (UCLC) and the X-Campus Coalition of graduate workers across the nation, student-led campaigns on our campus, and social justice organizations on the South Side. Given the University of Chicago’s historical relationship to slavery, systematic destruction of black and working class communities on the South Side, and maintenance of the University of Chicago Police Department, GSU believes that the struggle for a more just and democratic campus is inextricably tied to larger struggles against police brutality and racism.

If any GSU member wishes to join AFTA and pay dues to AFT as an individual, they are more than welcome to do so. However, we urge everyone to consider contributing directly to GSU if they wish to support a union financially. Please consider joining our organizing work over the summer. We have a lot of exciting work to do, including: revising and updating our constitution, planning and establishing fundraising mechanisms, expanding our media footprint, organizing for future direct actions, continuing to grow our mutual aid work, and more. To sign up for updates on summer organizing, please fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!

In solidarity,

Graduate Students United

Housing, UCSC Strike, and More!

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campus Organizing, Newsletter, NLRB, Solidarity

Housing

We’re continuing last week’s discussion on housing this week by focusing on the ways that the neighborhoods around the University are changing, and what the University’s role is in this transformation.

As we discussed previously, over the past several years, the University has been selling off its own affordable housing occupied by graduate workers, leaving us to compete for rentals going for higher rates from private companies—sometimes the same exact units that UChicago just sold off. This, of course, affects the overall cost of housing in the area: as rents for grads increase, we can’t forget that rents for all of our neighbors are also increasing.

Of course, there’s been new housing being built over the past few years—but it hasn’t been affordable. Luxury apartment buildings have dominated: since 2015, we’ve seen Vue53 and three new towers from MAC properties: Solstice on the Park, City Hyde Park, and the new 5252 South Cornell. There’s no doubt that these apartments are not geared towards the typical grad student or renter already living in Hyde Park. Rents for a one-bedroom at City Hyde Park are over $1,800/month; over $2,000/month at Solstice on the Park; and over $2,100 at 5252.

Vue53, however, does market itself towards both grads and undergrads. Its rents are cheaper—in the range of $1,500-$1,700 per month—but still significantly above the average rental price in the neighborhood, and undoubtedly unaffordable on a grad stipend. But curiously, the University has subsidized housing at Vue53 for two years in a row, using it as overflow housing for undergrads and offering $1,500 directly to students to opt to live in the off-campus building.

It’s unclear why the University has sold off its own affordable housing only to actively promote and subsidize luxury housing that costs well above market price. But one thing is for sure: the University’s actions are contributing to increasing rents in Hyde Park, not only making housing unaffordable for grads, but also changing the neighborhood and pushing our neighbors out.

Later this week, we’ll be talking more about the University’s role in gentrification, particularly in Woodlawn around the Obama Center, and how the community has been organizing to keep housing affordable in the neighborhood.

Have a story about your experience accessing housing while at UChicago? Weigh in on the conversation on social media, or get in touch to share your story!

UCSC on strike

If you’re keeping up with graduate labor in the news, you might already know that graduate workers at UC Santa Cruz remain on strike this semester. Facing a crisis in housing costs, the union began the action in December by withholding grades in pursuit of a cost of living adjustment. In Santa Cruz, workers face an incredibly expensive housing market that they simply cannot afford on their current pay. In the past few days, the movement for a cost of living adjustment has spread to other University of California campuses as well. Picketers at UC Santa Cruz have faced threats from the administration and even violence from campus police.

As we know quite well, prestige doesn’t pay rent! Keep up with what’s going on in California through the website https://payusmoreucsc.com/ or the Twitter account @cola4all, and be sure to express your support for our colleagues in the University of California system.

Nominations

As we announced yesterday, nominations are now open for 2020–2021 Stewards and Steering officers. Visit bit.ly/GSUnoms2020 to read more about the roles of the Stewards Council and Steering Committee, and nominate yourself or a colleague by March 9.

GMM next week

The next General Members Meeting will be held next Wednesday, February 19, in the third floor lecture room of Swift Hall. This is an important meeting, as we will continue to discuss our future affiliation options.

The meeting location is wheel-chair accessible and childcare will be available. If there’s anything else we can do to help make the meeting more accessible, please let us know. In particular, if you need ASL interpretation, please contact us at gsu@riseup.net in advance of the meeting so we can hire interpreters.

NLRB

Anti-union comments submitted to the NLRB are still open for rebuttal. As we initially reported a few weeks ago, the NLRB has extended the initial rebuttal period “in order to allow sufficient time for responses to the large number of initial comments received.” We now have until February 28th!

You can set the record straight on some of these comments through AFT’s new portal at https://aftacademics.org/weareworkers/. Once again, the more unique comments we submit, the more work we create for the Board, so take just a few minutes to respond to one or two and remind them that We Are Workers!

NLRB Rebuttals, Faculty Responses to Funding Changes, and More!

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campus Organizing, Healthcare, Newsletter, NLRB

NLRB Rebuttal Period Extended

“The collective bargaining process would necessarily insert third parties, whose priorities are economic, not educational, into the learning process. This would have a potentially profound, deleterious impact on the educational relationship among the students, the faculty, and their college or university.” — American Council on Education

“The teaching is part of the training to be a professional, and is compensated as financial aid — the aid is offered to students in recruitment as financial aid, not an offer of employment.” — Anonymous (NLRB-2019-0002-0172)

These are excerpts from some anti-union comments that were submitted during the NLRB comment period that ended two weeks ago. Fortunately, there’s still time to rebut them! Earlier this week, the deadline was extended through February 28th. You can set the record straight on these comments and others through AFT’s new portal at https://aftacademics.org/weareworkers/. Once again, the more unique comments we submit, the more work we create for the Board, so take just a few minutes to respond to one or two and remind them that We Are Workers!

Faculty Also Concerned by Funding Overhaul

Last Thursday GSU hosted a funding town hall to discuss the broad changes that were made to PhD program structures in four divisions last quarter. Members got together to discuss the different ways these changes have affected them, highlighting concerns about how cap sizes would affect their department, changes in their time to degree, and more.

And it turns out we’re not the only ones who are concerned. According to a recent article in the Maroon, over 100 UChicago faculty recently signed on to a letter sent to President Zimmer and outgoing Provost Diermeier, expressing their worries about the effect of the new funding model on the University, and their concern at how it was implemented. The letter calls the new model “a purely top-down, non-consultative imposition of a comprehensive transformation of the structure and substance of academic life in this university.” It also raises concerns about how graduate programs will be able to comply with the new size caps that are being put in place: “Only by pressuring our graduate students to finish or leave in far fewer than 9 years will we be able to preserve the possibility of admitting new students, and thereby preserve the viability of our graduate programs as wholes.” The whole article and letter are worth a read and echo many of the concerns we’ve been discussing among members and on social media since October.

And as we were preparing to send this newsletter today, the Maroon published another article about the University’s response to GSU, with details from minutes of Faculty Senate meetings going back to 2017. Keep an eye out for more articles in this series, and expect a recap in next week’s newsletter.

Revisiting the Issues: Healthcare and Housing

Since we began revisiting some of the major issues identified by our bargaining survey two years ago, we’ve received many messages from members describing how they’ve been personally affected by these problems. Sadly, it seems like everyone knows someone with a negative story connected with our insurance or the Student Health Center. We’ve extended our discussion of healthcare into week four in order to give these members’ stories adequate attention.

We’d like to draw particular attention to problems with mental health services. Several studies have identified that graduate students are disproportionately faced with mental health issues. It’s self-evident that the University must prioritize mental healthcare, providing appropriate funding and resources to support our physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being.

However, as undergraduate student groups have been signalling for quite some time, the University is sorely lacking on providing those services for its students and workers. Long wait times and inaccessibility of services, including the limited hours of the Student Counseling Center, are major issues in the face of high demand. Although undergraduate groups have been leading the fight for improvements, these issues don’t just affect undergrads: graduates also depend on SCS for mental healthcare and face the same problems that impede us from receiving the care we need.

Additionally, for long-term care, SCS often relies on referrals to outside practitioners who, for graduate workers with USHIP, are paid by our insurance. It’s not unusual for graduate workers—who, again, are disproportionately faced with mental health issues due to living in precarity and the stressful nature of PhD programs—to need ongoing therapy or other services. Unfortunately, in the face of this dire need and already inadequate on-campus services, students have also reported problems with the referral process and getting insurance to pay for mental health care.

Mental healthcare, like all other forms of healthcare, isn’t a luxury; it’s an essential, and we need the University to treat it that way.

We’ll be discussing issues with housing next, so be sure to stay tuned and get in touch if you have a story you’d like to share about challenges with finding affordable housing as a graduate worker.

Transcript Changes, NLRB Rebuttals, and Healthcare

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Healthcare, NLRB, Recognition

Dean’s Response to Transcript Changes

Two weeks ago week, several of our members in Humanities were concerned to find that new courses with “PTPT” call numbers had been added to their transcripts during quarters they worked as TAs or lecturers. After the changes were pointed out on social media, the Humanities Dean of Students, Shea Wolfe, sent an email to the division explaining that the PTPT “courses” were an “unintended consequence” of an attempt to note our teaching in the University’s Academic Information System and would be removed. While we’re relieved that our altered academic records will be corrected, the Dean’s message does not allay concerns about the University’s repeated attempts to redefine our work as job training that solely benefits us—the same argument that the University has been making since we held our election in 2017.

Submit NLRB Rebuttals

The period to submit comments for a proposed change to NLRB rules ended last week, but that doesn’t mean the chance to make your voice heard has passed. Over 13,000 comments have been published and are available for rebuttal until Friday, February 28. Just like during the original comment period, AFT has created a web portal where you can submit rebuttals at https://aftacademics.org/weareworkers/. While this page looks similar to the one where you may have previously submitted an NLRB comment, this is a different part of the commenting process, so be sure to write a rebuttal even if you already submitted an original comment!

Revisiting the Issues: Healthcare

It’s week four of the quarter, and we’re talking about healthcare! Two years after our bargaining survey, which identified major healthcare issues facing our members, the administration has made no effort to improve conditions.

Most of our members don’t have vision or dental insurance because it’s not paid for as part of our funding packages and costs are too high for graduate workers to afford on our own. And the insurance that we do have is woefully inadequate: amid steadily rising premiums and deductibles, members have told stories of inaccessibility, denied coverage, and dissatisfaction. Prenatal and birth care is often denied or poorly covered, and dependent coverage is expensive.

As graduate workers, we have different needs than undergraduates, and USHIP just doesn’t cover it. If the University administration were serious about improving the lives of grads on campus, they would agree to bargain with our union on the issues like healthcare that matter to us.

Defend Our Rights to the NLRB, Member Issues Survey, and Upcoming Events

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campaigns, NLRB

Comments on NLRB Ruling

Back in the Fall, we reported that our rights were under attack from the National Labor Relations Board, which had proposed a new rule that would define us as unprotected by labor law. There was a long period in which to push back against the rule with public comments, offering what seemed like plenty of time. But the deadline is almost here. We have one day left in which to submit as many comments as possible, and we all need to swing into action.

Here’s how it works:

Because it’s a rule change, not a law, there’s no vote on this policy. BUT that does mean that it’s open to public comment. The agency is supposed to address/engage with the comments, and so if we can get thousands and thousands of people weighing in, it may help stop it, or at least slow it down.

You can submit your public comment at http://aftacademics.org/WeAreWorkers.

The federal rule-making process is different from pressuring a legislator. Anyone can submit a comment, regardless of whether they are a grad worker, a US citizen, a voter, etc. It can be in any living language, and individuals aren’t limited to one comment—so if you’ve submitted one, and you want to make another point, please do!

The one caveat is that this can’t be used as a form letter: if comments are too similar, the NLRB can lump them together and not count them as unique comments. The site may suggest text, but please delete that and write something in your own voice, even if it’s just a few lines.

There are some prompts at the link, but you needn’t use those. What you write is up to you. If you want more ideas on what to write, here are some additional prompts. After you comment, please pass the alert along to friends, colleagues, partners, and any others who might weigh in.

Please comment now.

The deadline is January 15th, one day from today. If you comment before midnight this Friday, our friends at the American Federation of Teachers in DC will print it out and hand-deliver it to the NLRB. After that, you can still comment; the site will simply redirect you so that your comment goes to the NLRB digitally.

This may not be as exciting as being on the picket line. But we need to respond to this attack however we can. If the proposed rule goes through, GSU will still fight on. But for now, let’s put up as strong an opposition to it as possible. The link, once again, is at http://aftacademics.org/weareworkers. Please make your voice heard today.

Thanks so much.

Why We Need a Union: Revisiting the Issues

In February 2018, fresh off of our recognition vote, we conducted our bargaining survey to identify the issues that were most important to our members as we fought for recognition and a contract. Two years later, despite many smokescreens from the administration, there’s much that hasn’t changed. In spite of various unenforceable admin promises and program changes meant to make it look like we’re not workers, we’re still seeing issues with healthcare, housing, pay, harassment and discrimination, and workplace safety that are going unaddressed.

This winter, we’re returning to the major issues identified by the last bargaining survey to put the spotlight on the problems affecting our members every day that we know we can only fix with a union and collective bargaining. Keep up with the newsletter and our posts on Facebook and Twitter to weigh in with your experiences as a graduate worker!

We’ll also be distributing a new survey to see what has—and hasn’t—changed for our members. Keep an eye out on your inboxes for the new survey, coming soon!

Email from the Outgoing Provost, Looking to a New One

A month ago, we received word that Provost Diermeier would be leaving this summer to become Chancellor of Vanderbilt University. At the time, we reviewed his legacy at UChicago, which has sadly been characterized by unilateralism and ongoing efforts at union-busting. The following week, he sent us an “Update on PhD Education,” which raised a number of questions. We touched on those in our December 12th newsletter, and started to explore them in depth on Facebook. Watch our social media channels for more on that email—as the most recent statement from the administration on our work, there’s lots to unpack.

Last week, we learned that Professor Ka Yee Lee, currently Vice Provost for Research, would become the new Provost on February 1. We would love for her tenure to mark a change in direction. To that end, we would recommend two simple steps that would benefit the entire university: to press pause on the harmful aspects of the Provost’s unilateral overhaul of programs, and to recognize GSU.

Upcoming General Members Meeting

The first GMM of Winter Quarter will be next Wednesday, January 15, at 6pm (location: Swift Hall, Third Floor Auditorium). As always, we do our best to make sure our meetings are accessible to all members. Please let us know your access needs. In particular, if you need ASL interpretation, please contact us at gsu@riseup.net in advance of the meeting so we can hire interpreters.

Funding Town Hall

GSU will hold a Town Hall on Thursday, Jan. 23rd, at 6pm (location TBA) for graduate students to discuss the overhaul of graduate programs that was announced last quarter by outgoing Provost Diermeier. As a reminder, these program changes include a revamp of the funding policy, as well as introducing enrollment caps in the Humanities and Social Sciences Divisions, Divinity School, and School of Social Service Administration. The Town Hall is meant for members to share how these changes affect graduate students’ work and life, and to consider ways of action in response. All members are welcome!

End of Quarter, Email from the Provost and More!

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campaigns, Newsletter, NLRB

Want to know if we’re workers? Ask a grad instructor at the end of the quarter.

Week 11 is one of the busiest times for grad instructors. Whether as TAs, lecturers, or tutors, this is often when we’re supporting students through stress and self-doubt, talking through drafts, running exam review sessions, and answering a wide range of questions—and then grading for hours on end. This is work, and while we pour effort and enthusiasm into it, no mental contortions from administrators or anyone else can deny that fact.

We’re sending love to all of our members getting through the end of the term, and particularly to those teaching this quarter. When someone tries to say that we aren’t workers, your sweat and tears this week tell a different story.

More emails from the Provost, more questions

On Monday, outgoing Provost Diermeier sent another email to faculty and grads about recent “efforts to strengthen doctoral education at the University.” The message opened with an update on the unilateral revamp of doctoral programs that he announced in October (to the surprise of students and faculty alike). In that paragraph, the Provost claimed that by the 2022-23 academic year, “we will have increased the number of funded PhD students in those schools and divisions by 15 percent over last year.” But how is this possible when the overhaul involves deep cuts to the number of doctoral students, with at least one division proposed to shrink by 25%? Is this an acknowledgement of how many of us currently work without funding, in programs designed to take well over the 5 years covered by GAI? Or is it another case of the Provost using misleading statistics?

The Provost’s email also included some nice words about issues that GSU and our allies have been raising for years. We were glad to see it, but we had serious questions about the substance. For instance:

  • Diversity: The Provost made it a point to claim that the new approach “maintains and strengthens our commitment to recruiting, supporting, and graduating diverse students.” However, this explicitly ignores the structural problems that the new framework will certainly create. By capping the number of students in programs and making admissions a “one in, one out” system, these changes incentivize departments to admit students that are a sure bet to finish their programs quickly. This will inevitably lead to a preference for students who already have Master’s degrees from familiar and highly ranked institutions. And who becomes less like to receive admission offers? Students who cannot afford to fund their own Master’s degree or go into further debt and those with degrees from less recognizable or non-U.S. institutions. Admitted students will likely become whiter and from higher-income backgrounds under this new framework, as departments play it safe to ensure their students move through their programs quickly.
  • Food “Access”: Do we even have to say that there’s something wrong at a university where any worker is paid so little that they have to rely on vouchers to local grocery stores to put food on the table? This issue arose in the Provost’s own survey over a year ago, and we’ve been highlighting it. The Provost’s email claimed that they’ve made efforts to respond to reports of food scarcity, but included no links or specific program eligibility info. for those needing help, simply telling students to write to the general email address of a university department. As our members in SSA point out, this is what some call system-level rationing: setting up hurdles to accessing a program. Is the Provost interested in addressing food insecurity among UChicago grad workers, or simply being able to say that he did something?
  • Space: The Provost reiterated that the fourth floor of the bookstore would be converted into “a dedicated graduate student space for meeting, studying, socializing, and other needs.” He wrote that the design team had “the goal of opening the space by the end of Winter Quarter.” But back on May 16, when the Provost announced this initiative, he wrote of “the changes we anticipate for the fall.” With Fall Quarter ending, it seems that the goalposts have moved, reminding us that even on an issue that the Provost chose to highlight, his commitments aren’t binding without a contract.

There was more in the email, and we could go on. But overall, it’s hard to see how the Provost believes he is strengthening graduate education when the new framework imposes completely unnecessary austerity measures. Since the Chicago Maroon reported in October that the number of graduate students in the Humanities Division was to be reduced by 25%, reports have been trickling in from departments indicating that they’ll have to significantly reduce their populations in the next three years in order to comply with the newly imposed caps. Meanwhile, UChicago’s endowment has hit $8.5 billion. Departments faced with these cuts will have to make hard choices about what kind of courses and areas of specialization they’ll be able to continue offering, and may force students at advanced stages of their degrees to finish abruptly or leave the program. Undoubtedly, important spaces of academic inquiry and the quality of departments will suffer.

We don’t need more committees that demand grad workers’ time and labor for “input” that the administration can easily sweep aside. We need a collectively bargained contract.

NLRB Comments

With slightly less than a month before the January 15th deadline, we have a lot of work to do to flood the NLRB with unique comments opposing their proposed rule that would define us as non-workers. So once you’re through the quarter—or better yet, if you want to take a ten-minute break right now—please go to http://aftacademics.org/weareworkers and submit yours. And then urge colleagues, friends, and family to do the same!

Comments can be in any (currently spoken) language, of any length, on any aspect of the proposed rule. One important note, though, is that the comments have to be unique. There’s boilerplate text on the website, but it may be best to delete that and write in your own voice. If the NLRB gets 2 or 20 or 200 comments saying the same thing, they can count it as one comment. It’s not like contacting a legislator, where, they simply count the number of calls. As little as one or two sentences in the commenter’s own voice will go far further than clicking the send button on the pre-populated text.

We have less than a month. Let’s get the comments pouring in!

NLRB (Finally) Rules: We are Workers!

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, NLRB, Recognition

Today, in a historic decision the National Labor Relations Board ruled that “student assistants working at private colleges and universities are statutory employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act.” What does this mean? This decision recognizes that as graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities we are legally entitled to collective bargaining rights. Does this mean that we are automatically on the road to an union contract? No, unionizing is still our choice to make democratically and actively, and it’s one the administration will probably continue to discourage (despite claiming to be “neither for or against”). But this does mean that as of today we enjoy the same collective bargaining rights as other employees covered by U.S. labor law, and that’s huge!

GSU issues a big congratulations to our comrades at Columbia University and the New School for taking their fight for recognition to the NLRB!

While we celebrate wholeheartedly the NLRB decision we also note that it only affirms, and gives legal status to what GSU and its counterparts at private universities have known and acted on for years: academic work is work and #WeAreWorkers. The NLRB has made the right decision in recognizing graduate students at private universities as employees, giving them legal collective bargaining rights. This is a big step forward, not just for graduate students and academic labor, but for the labor movement as a whole.

What Does This Mean Moving Forward?

This favorable NLRB decision gives us as graduate student-employees at UoC legal backing to exercise our right to unionize. We are in our full legal right to mobilize graduate student workers on campus toward building a strong democratic union that can collectively bargain to improve and more fully control our working lives.

While GSU will continue to do the work it has been doing for the past 9 years we will now be able to begin to take the necessary steps to conduct a campus-wide campaign which will allow graduate-employees at the UoC to exercise their right to collectively bargain by casting their votes for or against unionization. The process of building a card campaign has three basic steps: getting our fellow workers to sign union cards, filing for a union election with the NLRB, and voting in the election.

The next few months will be crucial as we move forward and prepare to exercise our right to organize and collectively bargain. Now is the time to get involved and there are plenty of ways to do so! Email us, ask your Departmental Organizer how you can get involved, or consider becoming a Departmental Organizer yourself! And, please be sure to vote in the upcoming referendum on our affiliation – this vote will determine which national union, if any, GSU will work with in a potential card campaign!

If you would like to become a member, please do so here.

Video: Watch GSU Members Deliver the #gradlaborcounts Petition to the NLRB

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campaigns, Events, Media, NLRB

On December 13, members of Graduate Students United delivered the #gradlaborcounts petition to the Chicago office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The delivery was preceded by a piece of street theater, in which grad student workers implored the NLRB to wake up out of its coma so that it can perform its duties of ruling on cases such that filed by grad students at New York University.

You can also see photos of the action here (link).

Remember, it’s not too late to sign the petition! The #gradlaborcounts site will be open for more signitures until the end of the year, when the NLRB will lose its quorum with board member Craig Becker’s term ending. Visit http://gradlaborcounts.org read more about the NYU case before the NLRB and to sign the petition.

Students Rally to Rouse NLRB From Near-Fatal Coma

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campaigns, NLRB

Hey team, today’s the day we visit the NLRB at its office in Chicago and call on it to wake up and do its job for us and for every worker in America today. Here’s our press release — check back later in the day for photos and video from the event!

# # #

WAKE UP, NLRB! CHICAGO GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES RALLY TO WAKE THE NLRB FROM ITS COMA,

HELP IT RECOGNIZE THAT GRAD LABOR COUNTS!

Chicago, IL, December 13, 2011 — Today at noon, Chicago-area graduate students and their supporters will demonstrate outside the Chicago branch office of the National Labor Relations Board (209 S. LaSalle St.) and present a petition calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma of inaction and recognize private university graduate student teaching and research assistants as employees with a legal right to unionize and collectively bargain.

The rally, organized by Graduate Students United, the graduate employee union at the University of Chicago, and the national Grad Labor Counts! campaign, will feature a dramatic skit in which the NLRB is presented as a comatose hospital patient to reflect its record of inaction and danger of imminent demise. The Grad Labor Counts! campaign has been endorsed by the 1.4 million-strong American Federation of Teachers and the 70,000-member American Association of University Professors.

“We’re calling for for urgent medical attention to the ailing patient from President Obama and Congress, who have the power to restore the NLRB by appointing a new member in 2012,” explained Dasha Polzik, a member of Graduate Students United and an organizer of the Grad Labor Counts! campaign

“We’re also calling on the NLRB to wake from its coma and issue a ruling on a case that has sat before it since April 2010 concerning the employee status of graduate students at private universities,” added Greg Goodman, another GSU member. Graduate student teaching and research assistants were first recognized as employees by a unanimous NLRB ruling in 2000, and then stripped of their employee status by a later Bush-era ruling in 2004

Representatives from Grad Labor Counts! will deliver a petition with over 2,700 signatures from across the country calling on the NLRB to rule on the case and recognize graduate student teaching and research assistants at private universities as employees. Details on the Grad Labor Counts! campaign and petition are available at http://gradlaborcounts.org.

Graduate Students United (AFT-AAUP) at the University of Chicago
http://uchicagogsu.org
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AFT and AAUP Announce their Support for #gradlaborcounts

by gsuweb, posted in Announcements, Campaigns, NLRB

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten announced a statement of support for GSU’s #gradlaborcounts campaign and petition today. Weingarten notes that “Graduate employees at private universities should have the same right as their counterparts at public universities to have a voice in their workplace through collective bargaining.”

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also recently announced their support for #gradlaborcounts. Referring to the National Labor Relations Board’s ruling in the Brown decision that took away the rights of  private university graduate students to collectively bargain, the AAUP release stated, “It is increasingly clear that graduate student employees deserve the right to unionize. The Obama administration and the remaining members of the NLRB must have the courage to right the 2004 ruling.”

Read AFT President Weingarten’s support here (link).

Read the statement by the AAUP here (link) 

It’s not too late to sign the petition. Visit gradlaborcounts.org and distribute widely!