phd student union

UAW 2865 is the union that represents all 36,000+ Academic Student Employees—Teaching Assistants, Graduate Student Researchers, Graduate Student Instructors, Tutors, and Readers—across the University of California system. Together, we collectively bargain for better working conditions and work together for a workplace free from racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.

For information about our 2022 contract campaign and strike, visit fairucnow.org .

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TAs, GSRs, GSIs, readers and tutors represented

BASE WAGE INCREASE SINCE 1999

As our power as a union has grown, our raises have increased exponentially.

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Uaw 4811-uc joint statement on the right to a respectful work environment in berkeley law, april joint council meeting, march eboard meeting.

An inside look at graduate student unionization

Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) organizers continue to advocate for better wages, safety and accountability for graduate student workers, following the union’s creation this summer.

It joins a growing list of unions formed by graduate student workers at American universities and also continues efforts initiated by the Graduate Student Council last year.

The SCWU follows a state-wide trend: 36,000 University of California graduate workers went on strike last year for nearly six weeks — the largest work stoppage at a higher education institution in the United States. Student workers in the California State University system also launched a unionization effort in April.

Unions work to maintain the rights of their members and provide an outlet to advocate for demands from a supervising power. They are a common way to obtain contracts and protection for workers who experience discrimination in the workplace. Outside of higher education, unions also “connect to a larger renewal of the organized labor movement,” said Colin Vanderburg, the unit representative of New York University’s workers union.

According to Kristen Jackson, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in education, a union is vital to ensuring all student workers feel like they have a voice.

“It often feels daunting when you’re an individual student having an issue,” she said. “Having a collective union that specifically navigates pushing for an increase in compensation and other various benefits… you’re strong when it’s not just you.” 

For years, graduate student workers have argued they are unable to earn an adequate living wage . They’ve also expressed concern that the University’s role as an academic institution, an employer and a landlord gives administrators control over nearly every aspect of student lives, which stifles individual advocacy efforts.

“Being in a union [means that] you get to dream up what a safe, fair and equitable Stanford looks and feels like. We get to design that,” Jackson said.

With the recent union formation, graduate students hope to build themselves up without breaking down connections with the University, said Tom Liu, a third-year physics Ph.D. student and head of the GSC Financial Committee.

“When we’re unionizing, we’re not trying to unionize against the ‘faculty’ per se because the faculty are our professors, our advisors, the people that we work with every day, and they could use this union just as much as we do,” Liu said. “We hope that this will better strengthen our relationship with our faculty members or advisors and not hurt [them].”

Although SGWU didn’t publicly launch their unionization campaign until April , union organizers and graduate students had been discussing their concerns over affordability issues “for months and years at this point,” Liu said. 

“We already knew that the vast majority of graduate students wanted this union,” he said. 

Elections were scheduled to begin for graduate students in May on whether they were in favor of representation by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) or against unionizing. The UE is a democratic labor union for workers in various sectors across the U.S., both private and public. 

The union organizers reached out to the graduate students and ensured that everybody knew the election dates and how to vote, according to Liu.

The turnout met organizers’ expectations, with approximately 51 percent of graduate students voting , though they initially struggled to get momentum for their movement.

“The primary challenge is being able to reach as many people as possible,” Liu said. “In the beginning, there were only a few people who were part of the main coordinating process. Getting that initial kick and getting it started is always going to be difficult.”

Moving forward, the SGWU has to form a bargaining committee to figure out their bargaining priorities, which can include “better pay, protection from harassment [and] grievance procedure,” Liu said. 

Following the vote to unionize, former president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in an official announcement that the University “will provide information to our community about the next steps in the bargaining process as it becomes available.”

“We expect to finish [building up the SGWU] by the start of the school year and… hope that the University will engage with us as soon as that,” Liu said.

Though only first starting to plant its roots, the SGWU has discussed diversity at length in committee meetings, according to Liu. SGWU is “looking to have as diverse a bargaining committee as possible, where we have people from every department contribute and… people from every school tell us exactly what issues they’re passionate about,” he said. 

Graduate student worker demands are vast and vary by different workplaces, Jackson said. Lab workers might feel more insecure regarding their environment’s safety while research assistants might be more concerned about inequitable wages.

“We are hoping for higher wages, better compensation for the graduate workers who can’t afford to live here… better conditions for international students, protection from harassment from people from positions of power, better health insurance and — most importantly — a say in the way that the university is run,” Liu said.

Workplace safety expands further than physical health because extensive working hours can also affect a student’s mental health, Jackson said. He added that “expectations for workers” might be set “much higher than what is required of them on paper.”

“So the students who are putting in 10 hours — maybe it’s 20 hours a week — really they’re putting in closer to 50 or 60,” she said.

The combination of unfair working hours and underpayment can leave students on a tightrope when it comes to the cost of living in Silicon Valley, which is known as one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. Many graduate workers feel like the cost of food and rent does not compare to their wages.

“Stanford is our employer, but it’s also our landlord, [especially since] most graduate students live on campus,” Jackson said. “Residential and dining enterprises continue to raise the cost of rent, and it… feels like [that’s] pacing with inflation, but our compensation is not.”

University response

Graduate student unionization efforts are often rejected or neglected by universities, even with the necessary support from students, staff and outside resources.

The Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition (IGWC), for instance, was denied recognition by Indiana University in April 2022 and went on strike in September 2022 to pressure the administration. As updated on their website , the IGWC states that, “IU administration still hasn’t recognized us. The fight for union recognition continues.”

“When university administrations resist unionization campaigns from their workers, it is because their mission differs from ours,” said Casey Patterson Ph.D. ‘23, a former SGWU lead organizer and union representative for the English department. “It shows that their goals are not related to educators’ ability to support student growth. Their goals are related to the growth of the University instead.”

According to organizers, if graduate workers are not given recognition or even the ability to unionize, this can have detrimental effects on student life and increase the impact of issues they already face.

“Without [organization] from workers and students, universities will continue to grow while the quality of student education declines, the high rates of student debt increase and the lives of university workers become less and less sustainable,” Patterson said.

Stanford originally denied SGWU’s request for voluntary recognition in an official email from former president Tessier-Lavigne and former provost Persis Drell in April. However, following the vote, the University showed support for SGWU and said they’re committed to having connections and communication with the SGWU going forward. 

“We look forward to working in good faith with SGWU. As has been our position throughout the election process, we are dedicated to the success of our graduate students and to our education and research mission. These commitments will continue to guide us,” Tessier-Lavigne and Drell said in a July message regarding union election results.

Luisa Rapport, director of communications and media relations, wrote that the University understands and appreciates the work that graduate students do to keep Stanford running, in a statement to The Daily.

“Stanford deeply values its union-represented populations and is dedicated to fostering positive relationships with all three labor unions at Stanford,” Rapport wrote. “Stanford’s graduate students make valuable contributions to the University’s teaching and research mission.”

Suhani Chadha is a high school student who participated in The Daily's 2023 High School Journalism Workshop. Zoraya King is a high school student who participated in The Daily's 2023 High School Summer Workshop.

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California State University student workers file for union

From AP News https://apnews.com/article/union-student-worker-california-state-univer…

Student workers across California State University campuses filed Monday with the state to form a union, saying it would help them advocate for better pay and working conditions. “With a union, we’ll be able to hold the university accountable for how it treats students,” said Grayce Honsa, a student and resident adviser at San Diego State University. The students looking to unionize serve as residential advisers, run mentorship programs, manage student radio stations and perform other jobs across the system’s 23 campuses. Many students are paid the minimum wage of $15.50 an hour, and in some cases, they are paid less depending on their level of experience, said Mike Roth, a spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union California. The organizers say they are behind the largest student worker unionization effort in the country. A vote has not yet been scheduled. If it is successful, the union would need to be recognized by the California Public Employment Relations Board. It follows a successful  effort  by unionized graduate student workers to reach a deal with the University of California system. In December, UC graduate students ended a 40-day strike after reaching a bargaining agreement with the university system to raise wages for workers who were paid as little as $24,000 a year.

Stanford’s Negotiations with United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local 1043, Stanford Graduate Workers Union

Stanford and United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local 1043, Stanford Graduate Workers Union (UE-SGWU) reached a tentative agreement on a first contract for graduate student workers on November 12, 2024. UE-SGWU announced on November 22 that its membership ratified the agreement.

Stanford is pleased to have reached agreement with UE-SGWU and appreciates the dedicated efforts of both bargaining committees. We look forward to a constructive working relationship with UE-SGWU. The university will be providing more information to faculty and administrative staff in the coming days and weeks about details of implementation of the contract.

Summary of Key Terms

Tentative Agreement

Negotiation Guiding Principles

• Ensuring that the university can continue to provide the highest quality educational experience for its graduate students
• Preserving the faculty-student relationship
• Safeguarding the integrity of the university’s teaching and research mission
• Maintaining the university’s academic prerogatives, including admission decisions, curriculum and degree requirements, organization of programs, evaluation of academic progress, and assignment of research and teaching assistant roles
• Fulfilling our responsibility to serve the entire university community, understanding implications of negotiated agreements on faculty, staff and other students
• Ensuring fiscal responsibility
• Ensuring the university remains a leader in higher education, including by continuing to attract the best graduate students

Negotiation Updates

More From Forbes

As grad student unionizing effort grows, universities raise stipends, benefits.

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The University of Pennsylvania has recently announced it will make its largest ever increase in ... [+] stipends for its Ph.D. students.

Just one month after 48,000 academic employees at the University of California’s (UC) ten campuses walked off their jobs in the nation’s largest higher education strike ever , the ramifications are beginning to be felt at other institutions.

The national fallout from the UC strike is now a ripple. It soon may become a wave. Graduate students are intensifying their unionization efforts and making new demands for better compensation at other universities across the nation. For their part, several institutions have recently announced they will boost stipends for their graduate assistants, perhaps in hopes of preventing picket lines and work slowdowns on their own campuses.

At UC, the strike has entered its fifth week for some academic workers. While about 12,000 postdoctoral employees and academic researchers reached an agreement with the university last week for higher salaries and additional benefits and are returning to work, 36,000 graduate assistants remained on strike, demanding significant pay increases, bigger child-care subsidies and other benefits.

The University of California and the United Auto Workers, which represents the graduate assistants, have entered into private mediation , which now appears to have yielded a tentative agreement .

The UC strike, along with a recent walkout by adjunct faculty at the New School in New York City, suggests the possible start of a new era of union activism on American campuses.

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Earlier this year, graduate student workers at Indiana Universit y in Bloomington went on strike to demand the university recognize them as a union. Although the school refused to do so, it did meet many of the other major demands made by the students.

This week, graduate assistants at the University of Texas staged a day-long “grade-in,” a rally intended to bring attention to their complaints about low pay and poor working conditions. Texas law prohibits state employees, including university employees, from collective bargaining or organizing a work stoppage. The students used the “grade-in” as an alternative way of protesting their compensation.

According to reporting in the Austin American -Statesman , “Students and other supporters chanted and rallied outside the UT Tower, calling for higher pay while holding signs that read “Pay grad workers a living wage” and “Academia isn’t a calling. It’s a job,” among others. After the brief rally Tuesday morning they sat in the lobby of UT’s Life Science Library and worked and graded papers until 5 p.m.”

At Yale University , graduate students are currently conducting an election to form a union. “It's a really exciting moment, not only for our campaign but also in the history of grad organizing at Yale," said Abigail Field s, a a graduate educator in the French department and union organizer. "There's been a wave of graduate worker unionization over the past few years. Grad workers at our peer institutions, Harvard and Colombia won contracts last year."

Earlier this month, Boston University graduate students voted overwhelmingly to unionize , joining Service Employees International Union Local 509. According to the union, the vote was 1,414 to 28 in favor.

Florida State University graduate assistants recently rallied to dramatize their complaints over poor pay, the rights of international students, high healthcare premiums and required student fees among graduate workers.

Unionizing activities are also underway at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University.

Recognizing the still small, but growing, unionization movement and the fact that grad students are being hit hard by inflated housing and food costs, several research universities have decided to make significant increases to their graduate student stipends.

The University of Pennsylvania recently announced that it will raise its minimum Ph.D. stipend to $38,000 , beginning in the 2023-24 academic year. The increase will be the largest one-time increment to graduate stipends in Penn’s history.

“Our doctoral students are at the heart of our mission of research and education across a wide range of academic areas,” said Interim Provost Beth A. Winkelstein. “This one-time increase recognizes the unique pressures they currently face, especially in the wake of delays to research and hiring that many experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also help to ensure that Penn remains competitive in recruiting exceptional scholars in our Graduate Groups.”

Duke University gave all its active Ph.D. students a $1,000 one-time payment in October of this year. In addition, it’s increasing its full-year Ph.D. stipend for the 2023-2024 academic to $38,600, an 11.4% bump over the current $34,660.

Other universities recently announcing substantial increases to their graduate student stipends include the University of North Carolina , Rice University and the University of Buffalo .

With universities offering better compensation either as concession or a preemptive strategy to address graduate student demands, momentum for the unionization of academic workers is almost sure to pick up steam. While the full implications of the University of California strike are still unfolding, we may be seeing the beginning of a new period of campus activism with labor organizing as a prominent feature.

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