Graduate students across the country are voting to unionize and securing pay increases from their colleges — a movement that got a major boost from the recently settled strike that disrupted finals across the University of California system.
The UC strike, which included grad students, postdocs, and academic researchers, was the largest in American higher-ed history. Under their new contracts, graduate teaching assistants will soon each receive a minimum of $34,000 for part-time work, and postdocs will each receive a minimum of $70,000 for full-time work. UC-system officials said the salaries would make their students and postdocs among the best paid in the country.
As the UC strike dragged on for weeks, several other universities offered salary increases or one-time payouts to grad students and postdocs. At some colleges, graduate students took steps to unionize.
People in higher education are forming unions at rates that are higher than most industries, said William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College in the City University of New York.
“Our data shows that, in the past 10 years, there has been more than a 50-percent growth in the unionization of graduate assistants and research assistants,” Herbert said.
While the UC strike helped supercharge those efforts, grad-student unions have been steadily growing at public colleges for decades, Herbert said. At private colleges, grad students couldn’t unionize from 2004 to 2016 because of a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board.
“Particularly in the private sector, there has been a long stem of pent-up demand for unionization,” Herbert said.
This is absolutely a moment for grad-worker organizing and just for labor in general.
In the past month, students at both Yale University and Boston University have voted to unionize. At Northwestern University, graduate workers are voting this week on whether to unionize. Sara Bowden, co-chair of the Northwestern University Graduate Workers, cast a vote in favor of the union on Tuesday.
“This is absolutely a moment for grad-worker organizing and just for labor in general,” Bowden said. “This really does feel like the start of a new chapter.”
At the University of Southern California, a coalition of grad students called the Graduate Student Worker Organizing Committee filed for a union election with the NLRB on December 14. About 60 percent of eligible grad-student workers signed union-authorization cards, according to The Daily Trojan.
In Texas, collective bargaining and unionization are illegal for state employees. Graduate workers at the University of Texas at Austin held a “grade-in” on campus in December — to draw attention to what they described as “low wages” while continuing to perform their duties, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Graduate students currently receive a minimum stipend of $19,570.
Staying Competitive
In recent months, some colleges decided to increase stipends voluntarily, often citing the need to stay competitive in the market for graduate students.
‘What happens is that unionization in one setting creates a sort of competition,” Herbert said. “As benefits improve through collective bargaining, other institutions are going to have to match it to be able to attract people to participate in their graduate program.”
At the University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. students were notified in December that the minimum stipend would be raised to $38,000 from about $30,000, which the university said was the largest single pay increase ever.
Ludwig Zhao, chair of the Graduate and Professional Student Association’s Research Council and a Ph.D. candidate, said advocacy for a higher stipend began several years ago, especially after other Ivy League universities raised stipends. December’s announcement will help make Philadelphia more livable for Penn’s graduate students, Zhao said, particularly amid rising inflation.
Zhao said grad students were now looking to ensure that the university commits to increasing stipends yearly to adjust for inflation, as well as to addressing other key issues for graduate students, such as health insurance and mental-health care.
“It’s not just a one-time thing,” Zhao said. “It’s more than [giving] money to us to support us financially — it’s more like well-rounded support.”
In December the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, said it would raise minimum Ph.D. stipends from $20,000 to $23,000 for 10-month appointments, and $29,000 for 12-month appointments. The grad students, part of a union for all SUNY graduate and teaching assistants, had been campaigning for stipends to be increased to at least $22,000 since November 2021 — a challenge because the state’s Taylor Law forbids public employees like them to strike.
James Holstun, a professor of English at the university, said that while the higher stipends were a step in the right direction, he felt the move was overdue.
Graduate students still aren’t making a living wage for the area, Holstun said. An adult with no children in the Buffalo region needs to make at least $35,461 before taxes annually to make a living wage, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator.
Holstun said stipend raises are important not only because of their monetary value, but also because they give students the financial freedom to focus solely on their studies.
“Money is time for our graduate students, and they’re not being respected in this way,” he said.
Holstun said the University of California strike was proof that students can make a difference.
