At nearly 3am on November 25, 2024, after more than 30 hours spent bargaining over two days, graduate workers at the University of Minnesota reached a tentative agreement with university administration on their collective bargaining agreement. Bargaining committee members were left exhausted after a grueling two days of mediation, but held their heads high with the knowledge that the local’s first contract made significant strides toward securing dignity for all graduate workers and addressing the most urgent needs of union members. Within two weeks, the contract was overwhelmingly ratified by members, and officially went into effect on January 21, 2025 after ratification by the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
Since the Covid-19 shutdown of 2020, the University of Minnesota Graduate Labor Union (GLU-UE Local 1105) has been organizing around higher pay and lower fees; comprehensive benefits; transparency and security on the job; anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, and employment grievance procedures; and increased support for international graduate workers. Local 1105 won recognition in the Spring of 2023 and began bargaining later that September. GLU-UE represents more than 4,500 workers across three campuses in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth, Minnesota. The bargaining unit is made up of graduate assistants ranging from graduate instructors and teaching assistants in the liberal arts, to laboratory research assistants in the sciences and engineering, to research project assistants in public affairs. GLU represents all graduate students holding a graduate assistantship, regardless of immigration or citizenship status. Improving the rights and benefits for international students, who compose roughly 25 percent of the bargaining unit, was a major focus of Local 1105’s first contract campaign.
Reflecting on the contract bargaining process, Abaki Beck, a PhD student in Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration, and a member of the Local 1105 bargaining committee, said, “Even though I grew up with union parents, I really had no idea what to expect in the bargaining process. While it was a ton of work to take on while I was also working and taking classes, I left the bargaining experience feeling empowered. This contract was a long, long time coming — grad workers at the [University of Minnesota] have been trying to organize a union for decades.
“Our labor is in many ways the foundation of both undergraduate instruction and academic research at this institution and this contract is a recognition of those contributions. Of course, we will need to continue to organize and ensure that the contract is upheld, but I’m proud of the work we did as a committee and all the organizing of our colleagues to get a solid first contract,” said Beck.
Contract wins
In early November of 2024, Local 1105 members made it clear that they would not accept a contract without immediate raises upon ratification and relief from gratuitous fees charged to graduate assistants each semester. The three-year contract ratified by GLU members contains significant wins towards these priorities and lays a strong foundation for organizing fights to come. Contract highlights include:
- Raising the minimum hourly wage from $22/hour to $27/hour;
- Immediate raises of 2-5 percent for all workers above the pay floor, followed by minimum 3.5% annual raises for all workers;
- Full coverage of the the international student and scholar services fee and 50 percent coverage of the student services fee — a semesterly benefit of more than $500 for the most vulnerable workers;
- 85 percent healthcare premium coverage for dependents;
- Enshrining a high standard of reproductive and gender confirmation care in the local’s healthcare plan;
- Paid time off and retaliation protections for international workers traveling for visa and immigration proceedings;
- Grievable respectful workplace standards to protect graduate workers from abusive supervisors; and
- Guaranteed appointment security for the duration of the semester, ending the practice of graduate assistants losing their positions without cause only weeks into the semester.
Members were quick to ratify the contract and share their joy in the newfound protections, while also acknowledging the need for future organizing. “We are so happy to have a contract,” said Sarah Wahby, a PhD student in Public Policy who hails from Egypt. For Jacob Frost, a PhD student in Music Composition, the contract’s targeted approach to assisting grad workers most in need was its biggest win. “I got involved in the union to support my disadvantaged colleagues, whether because of economics or life circumstances, or health, and I feel that the contract we [won] serves the most vulnerable and creates more equity among the grad workforce,” said Frost.
In light of recent executive orders from the Trump administration, others pointed out crucial contract wins in the area of healthcare and nondiscrimination. “[The contract] protects trans grad workers’ access to healthcare, which is especially important right now,” said Keira Mac Neill, a bargaining committee member and PhD student in History who researches labor history in the queer and trans communities as part of her work as a graduate assistant.
Contract Campaign
In order to gain these hard-fought wins, union members across the University of Minnesota system employed a variety of tactics. In October of 2023, hundreds of workers showed up to work and class wearing custom buttons highlighting workplace issues such as discipline and discharge, international workers rights, job security, and job transparency. The local ratified its pay, student fees, and benefits bargaining platform by adopting it as a petition and having a majority of the bargaining unit across all departments sign on. This showed the employer that a majority of graduate workers across all disciplines were willing to take action in order to achieve these demands. Over the course of the campaign, actions like petitions, the button day, an hour-long picket and then a full-day informational picket that resulted from thousands of organizing conversations between workers translated to real wins at the bargaining table.
Throughout the bargaining process, graduate fellows at the University of Minnesota, graduate assistants who are supported by fellowships awarded specifically to the graduate assistant and not through grants awarded to labs or departments, had organized for recognition that they were rightfully a part of the graduate assistant bargaining unit, but the university, much like most other unionized colleges and universities, refused to allow fellows representation by GLU-UE. During the summer of 2024, a new state law came into effect recognizing fellows as bargaining unit members. For months, the University refused to recognize the law as changing the employment status of fellows, first using the excuse of an internal audit, and then claiming that (despite the law defining them as such) no graduate fellows were employees. Then, the University pulled a novel, never-before-seen legal maneuver by asking the state mediation service to clarify a statutorily-defined bargaining unit in order to halt all bargaining indefinitely — a move which would have postponed fee relief, pay raises, and needed workplace protections by months or years.
In response, GLU-UE notified the university of their intent to hold a strike authorization vote to force the employer’s bargaining team back to the table. The day before the strike authorization vote, the union and the employer agreed to a memorandum of understanding that withdrew their legal filing and resumed bargaining. Over the remaining weeks of the campaign, Local 1105 continued to collect strike commitments internally while the bargaining committee proceeded through state-mandated mediation. Hours before the next scheduled authorization vote on November 23, the union reached a tentative agreement with the university after the employer finally agreed to include fee relief and guaranteed raises for every graduate worker in the contract.
Next Steps
The members of this union are quickly moving to consolidate the local by writing a constitution, electing an executive board, and recruiting a group of stewards who can enforce a contract. Local 1105 is just getting started and looks forward to organizing around a new set of wins in the next series of contract bargaining in 2027.
The UE Local 1105 bargaining committee consisted of Jake Kundert, Johnathas Severo Forte, Abaki Beck, Amy Harbourne, Eva Nelson, Sam Boland, Alison Barkhymer, Briana Beeman, Casey Wouters, Ciarra Whindleton, Daniel Banegas, David Munkvold, Allison Harpel, Jon Smith, Keira Mac Neill, Lucas Myers, Malcolm Grossman, Noah Wexler, Phoebe Keyes, Shelby Wren, and Anshu Patel. They were assisted by UE Staff Coordinator J Burger and UE Field Organizer Alex Provan.