Seven UE graduate worker locals gathered together for a Graduate Workers Organizing Committee (GWOC) lunch meeting hosted by Local 1466, the United Graduate Workers of New Mexico, on April 13 during the UE Western Regional Conference.
In this meeting, members of COGS - Local 896 (University of Iowa), UGW – Local 1466 (University of New Mexico), NMSU GWU – Local 1498 (New Mexico State University), GSU – Local 1103 (University of Chicago), UMN-GLU – Local 1105 (University of Minnesota), SGWU – Local 1043 (Stanford University), and NUGW – Local 1122 (Northwestern University) met to discuss the common issues across our communities and to strategize on ways to build our power.
Each local discussed their focus within their current organizing, as well as the issues they have found to be most galvanizing for their membership in recent weeks. Many of the locals in attendance at this meeting were in the process of bargaining with their university or had just ended bargaining with their university. In this meeting, we were able to celebrate the successes that we had achieved in the past year and to share advice and suggestions for common issues we were all facing, such as bargaining unit involvement.
Due to the transient nature of graduate school workers, most people will only be in our respective units for two to five years, and union membership involvement and engagement is often a unique challenge. Almost every one of the grad locals described turnover and increasing organizing capacity as persisting issues; as a result, we spent much of our meeting discussing strategies for building up engagement and involvement.
Together, we discussed walkthroughs as one of our most powerful tools for engaging and reaching membership. These one-on-one conversations help to reach members who may be unaware of the graduate union on campus, or who may have reservations about signing a dues card or becoming involved with the graduate union. This is especially true for alleviating the fears of our international student workers; this group is one of the most vulnerable of all the graduate workers, and many fear reprisal as a consequence of becoming active in the union.
We also discussed how developing different tiers of involvement with our locals or actions have proved successful for increasing engagement within our bargaining units. We know that many graduate workers must work a second or even third job in order to make the ends meet, which means many people do not feel like they have the time to come out to an in-person action; including multiple means for engaging with the current campaign occurring on campus allows for more members to get involved and invested in the work of their local. For example, Local 1105 invited members of their bargaining unit to Zoom into their bargaining session with the university administration. By offering this opportunity to their members, the organizers at UMN were able to galvanize their members into a successful email campaign due to their university’s actions during their bargaining session.
The UE Western Regional Graduate Worker Meet Up was a critical opportunity for graduate locals to network with one another and to problem-solve the unique challenges faced by graduate workers.