Only 12 hours away from an impending strike, the graduate workers of Stanford University secured a strong tentative agreement on their historic first contract. The members of UE Local 1043, the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU), ratified this contract on November 22, 2024 with over 85 percent voting in favor.
During UE’s 78th convention, rank-and-file delegates passed the resolution “For Jobs, Peace, and a Pro-Worker Foreign Policy.” It calls on the union at all levels to inform and engage members about the need to change U.S. foreign policy to promote diplomacy, democracy, and workers’ rights. It further directs members to promote involvement in labor-based efforts to effectively create that change. Over the past year, Local 667 and Local 1186 have both put that resolution into action.
The UE General Executive Board, which consists of 16 elected rank-and-file members from the union’s two geographic regions, along with the three elected national officers, met on January 30 and 31. The board heard reports on UE’s organizational, political action, education and international solidarity work, and made plans for the 2025 UE National Convention, which will be held in Chicago in August.
More than 60 members from 22 UE locals participated in the third edition of the union’s “Building Union Power” workshop series in November and December. The four-part workshop guides members through the process of building winning campaigns while simultaneously using those campaigns to develop new leaders.
As a union representing tens of thousands of academic workers, we are in a struggle against a decades-long effort to undermine the education and research mission of higher education. Administrators are abandoning the stated core values of their universities and instead joining with their investors to transform robust academic institutions into profit-making enterprises. This model rests on the labor of overworked and underpaid graduate workers who provide undergraduate instruction and bring in billions of dollars in research funding.
Over the weekend of October 5, 2024, Johns Hopkins graduate workers, members of UE Local 197-Teachers and Researchers United, were alarmed to find that five AI smart surveillance towers had been surreptitiously installed across the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) campus in Baltimore, Maryland.
After a petition and a march on the boss, the members of UE Local 115, who work at the Refresco bottling plant, convinced their employer to abandon a confusing vacation request policy.
Last year, many members complained that the vacation request form was unnecessarily confusing. Initially, corporate representatives agreed that the company would not use the form any more. However, plant management published the same form this year.
Three workers in North Carolina died last year after being exposed to high temperatures while working. Alongside unions and advocates, UE Local 150 members are pushing for new safety policies to prevent future deaths. Members participated in rallies on December 8, 9, and 10 to urge state officials to finalize the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed standards for Heat Illness and Injury Prevention.
As public-sector workers, the members of UE Local 150, North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, who work for cities, state hospitals, and public universities across the state know that decisions made by the state legislature affect, and in some cases set, their wages, benefits and working conditions. Recently, the right-wing Republican supermajority in the state General Assembly lowered income tax for the wealthy, which pulls billions of dollars from the state budget that funds wage increases for state workers and other vital public services.
Over the past month, UE locals have settled first contracts covering thousands of graduate workers at Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, bringing the total number of graduate workers brought under first contract in 2024 to approximately 15,000.
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