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WHY GRADUATE EMPLOYEE UNIONS? Since the Teaching Assistants Association won their first contract with the University of Wisconsin in 1969, graduate student employees have been organizing, forming unions, and negotiating with their employers. There are now twenty-three unions -- comprising 30 official collective bargaining agents -- bargaining contracts covering graduate employees on more than 60 campuses; more than half of them have been recognized since 1990. There are currently campaigns on many campuses, as well as several unions fighting in states that do not yet recognize their right to union representation. Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Research Assistants (RAs) are a crucial part of the higher education workforce. At major research universities, they teach up to 40% of undergraduate class hours and provide the technical expertise for ground-breaking research in fields ranging from developmental psychology to mechanical engineering. They form unions for the same reason as other workers: they want a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Unionized workers meet with their employers as equals to negotiate wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. They take pride in their work, bargaining for training and professional development; and they work for social justice, addressing discrimination and accessibility to education. If, in some distant time, graduate school was an apprenticeship and a Ph.D. was a ticket to a secure lifetime career, that time has gone the way of hula-hoops and backyard bomb shelters. In the past 25 years, it has become more difficult to complete a graduate degree: it takes longer (up to ten years on average in some fields) and more people drop out. (The national completion rate in Ph.D. programs is about 50% -- compared to 90% in professional degree programs.) Disciplines across the board have become more complex, demanding a detailed proficiency in theories, research methods, and technologies that were unheard of only a few years ago. Prospective employers demand publications and postdoctorate positions as prerequisites. At the same time, public support for public education has diminished and universities, turning to corporate models to maintain their bottom lines, have come to depend increasingly on Teaching Assistants and non-tenure-track adjuncts to teach undergraduate courses for a fraction of the salaries of their tenured colleagues. Teaching Assistants do more teaching while they're in graduate school, and they face poorer job prospects when they finish. For graduate students working hard to pay off undergraduate debt, prepare for a career, and support themselves & their families, the respect, higher wages, better benefits, and greater security of a union contract make the difference in their present and future professional lives. At the same time, the United States is witnessing the rebirth of labor movement in which professional employees are joining workers of all kinds to assert their dignity and power in the face of downsizing, casualization, and the infiltration of the profit-motive into the professional world. Graduate employee unionists are proud to be a part of this growing social movement, affiliating with a wide range of international unions and uniting with industrial workers, healthcare workers, K-12 teachers, telecommunication workers, restaurant employees, custodians, and others in the fight for justice on the job. For example, much national media attention regarding graduate employee unions has focused on the ongoing struggle between the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO) and Yale University. In many respects, this is because an elite private ivy league school naturally garners more publicity than a workaday campus like SUNY--Buffalo or the University of Kansas. In large part, however, the story at Yale that draws the New York Times is that graduate students -- even Yale graduate students -- have found in the labor movement a place as meaningful -- and sometimes more so -- than the university. This is not romanticism; through unions, graduate employees have for 30 years been claiming the value of their work in the classroom and the research lab -- while universities have too often faltered in asserting the importance of education and knowledge. WHAT HAVE GRADUATE EMPLOYEES GAINED THROUGH UNIONIZING? These are the contractual benefits. Graduate employees who are active in their unions also gain a sense of community, solidarity, and empowerment in their lives. They take part in vibrant democratic organizations. They develop connections not only outside their own departments and disciplines, but in their communities and in the national labor movement. WHICH SCHOOLS HAVE RECOGNIZED UNIONS? This is a historical list of the twenty-three recognized graduate employee unions in the USA. See the Contact List for a list that includes active campaigns in the USA and unions in Canada.

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