Grad worker union calls on U leadership to engage in first-contract talks

On the Twin Cities campus, picketing graduate workers marched from Northrup Mall to McNamara Alumni Center, where the U’s Board of Regents was meeting.

As their union’s bargaining team met in mediation with the University of Minnesota on Sept. 13, graduate workers held informational picketing on three campuses, escalating a first-contract campaign that just entered its second year.

On the Twin Cities campus, picketers with the UMN Graduate Labor Union (UMN-GLU) marched from a gathering spot along the Northrup Mall to McNamara Alumni Center, where the Board of Regents was meeting.

Bargaining committee member Sam Boland, pursuing his doctorate in biomedical engineering at the U, said union members wanted to “bring the fight” to decision-makers with the power to move their contract talks forward.

So far, those administrators have kept the process at arm’s length, Boland said, sending representatives to negotiations on their behalf.

“Ultimately, everything they do has to get approved by this upper echelon of administration at the U who aren’t even in the room,” he added, calling it “a point of frustration through this yearlong process.”

Graduate workers only recently received the U’s financial proposal, and union members at the picket said it falls well short of the livable wages they are demanding.

The U’s proposal also does not provide relief from student fees that teaching and research assistants are forced to pay back to their employer “for the privilege of working here,” mathematics Ph.D. candidate David DeMark said. The fees vary but are especially high for international student workers, who often pay over $1,000 per year, according to the UMN-GLU.

To complicate matters, university administrators and graduate workers have clashed over the implications of a new law that allows academic employees known as “fellows” to join the graduate workers’ bargaining unit.

Fellows’ work, Boland said, “is completely indistinguishable” from that of the teaching and research assistants already included in the bargaining unit, which is why the union successfully lobbied state lawmakers to amend the Public Employees Labor Relations Act (PELRA) during the last state legislative session.

“The university has, more or less, chosen to ignore that,” Boland said. “It’s never happened before where, during contract negotiations, a bargaining unit was significantly expanded. They’re not really sure how to proceed.”

Although Boland acknowledged that the issue may likely end up decided in court, the UMN-GLU plans to continue putting pressure on the U to accept fellows in the bargaining unit, both at the bargaining table and, with support from lawmakers who drafted the new law, outside negotiations.

The U can also expect more contract actions on its campuses unless it ramps up the urgency toward reaching a first contract with graduate workers, many of whom have been in the fight for a collective bargaining agreement for three years or longer.

DeMark, who uses they/them pronouns, began organizing in support of the union in 2021, and they have grown tired of waiting for a “contract we can enforce, a stewardship system and a grievance procedure.”

“At the moment, we are subject to the whims of U of M policy, the whims of individual administrators,” DeMark added. “We don’t have anything we can use to hold them to their own policies even.

“I am hopeful that we can get a contract that’s fair for everyone, but I do not anticipate we are going to be able to do that without further escalation.”

Does that mean a strike?

“We really hope the key decision-makers at the university, including the Board of Regents, know this isn’t going away,” Boland said. “We’re standing together, and we’re willing to show the university how much they rely on us if we’re forced to do that.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor