University of New Mexico graduate student workers are organizing a union called United Graduate Workers of UNM, with the support of UNM Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA), as was announced to all graduate students via email on Monday.
Pay, benefits and working conditions, all of which would presumably be the focus of union contract negotiations, “are of material importance to the ability of our graduate and professional students to access a high-quality education, maintain good standing in their graduate programs and complete their degrees in a reasonable timeframe,” the GPSA email said.
During a special GPSA council meeting on Oct. 17, elected council representatives from departments across campus voted unanimously to support the unionization effort, according to the email.
“Protecting and advocating for graduate students is the objective of GPSA. Even though we were able to achieve and advocate for a lot of things in the past few years, unfortunately securing better wages for our graduate student employees was not one of them,” GPSA President Naguru Nikhileshwara ‘Nikhil’ Reddy said.
In the email sent out Monday, GPSA encouraged graduate workers to sign union cards and get involved in the unionization effort by helping sign up other workers in their departments.
Several hundred union cards have been signed thus far, according to chemistry and chemical biology graduate student and organizer Emigdio Turner.
“More (graduate workers) are joining the union on a daily basis as graduate employees are having conversations with one another about organizing across departments,” Turner said.
There are 3,750 graduate students enrolled at UNM this semester, as well as 669 additional graduate students in the Anderson School of Management, according to a fall 2020 enrollment report.
After a majority of graduate workers at UNM have signed a union card, they can petition the Public Employee Labor Relations Board for recognition of their union and their status as employees who have a legal right to organize.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled in 2016 that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities are school employees, clearing the way for them to join or form unions that administrators must recognize.
Debates about the role and rights of graduate students have grown over the years as more New Mexico universities rely on low-paid adjuncts and graduate students, rather than tenure track professors, to teach more than 60% of undergraduate classes, according to Ballotpedia.
Natalia Toscano, a Chicano Studies PhD student said that teaching assistants are limited in how many classes they are allowed to teach and most do not make enough money to cover their basic costs.
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“Last year I earned $17,000 working at .75 F.T.E (30 hours per week). My colleague Axel Gonzalez made $14,903 working at .5 F.T.E (20 hours per week),” Toscano said.
MIT calculated the cost of living in ABQ for a single adult with no children to be $23,213 a year.
After gaining recognition from the board, the University administration would be legally obligated to recognize the union and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
United Graduate Workers of UNM are affiliating with the national union United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) because they’re one of the most democratic unions in the country, American studies PhD student and organizer Axel Gonzalez said. All members will vote on major decisions, like contract negotiations and officer elections.
UE represents employees who work in electrical manufacturing, metalworking and plastics, but in recent years it has also branched out to represent co-op workers, teachers, clerical workers, graduate instructors, graduate researchers, scientists, librarians and day care workers.
According to its website, its members “maintain city and county roads, drive school buses, conduct research in university laboratories, treat waste water and engage in hundreds of other occupations.”
UE will be providing a wide range of resources and support to those students who join the union, including education “to empower us to take control of the whole process and build an active and educated union and membership,” Gonzalez said during last week’s town hall, where the unionization effort was discussed.
Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and has been updated with additional information about pay rates that came in after the initial publication.
Bella Davis is a senior reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @bladvs
