The University of Pittsburgh’s graduate student workers narrowly declined unionization in 2019, but this week’s overwhelming vote has the Oakland campus riding a wave of higher ed organizing.

By Maddy Franklin

Public Source

Nov 22, 2024 – Throughout the week, more than 1,000 graduate student workers at the University of Pittsburgh made their way to a nondescript ballroom in the O’Hara Student Center to vote on whether to unionize.

Supporters sought everything from more transparency on the part of university administration to pay equity, better vacation time and health insurance.

The line outside the ballroom stretched, at times, down the stairs of the center. “People are so excited … I’ve never seen engineers this excited,” said Lauren Wewer, a materials science and engineering Ph.D. student and organizer at Pitt.

On Friday, organizers announced the results: a 1033-28 vote to unionize with the United Steelworkers [USW]. The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board had not yet confirmed the vote count as of mid-afternoon.

With this win, Pitt grad student workers become the latest employees to undergo a successful union bid at a U.S. higher education institution, continuing an upward trend in the sector’s organizing activity over the last few years. They also join faculty and staff at the university which unionized with the USW in 2021 and September, respectively.

Pat Healy, an information science Ph.D. student at Pitt, said the wide margin of support reflected in the vote, “aligns with how most of the grad union votes [in the country] have gone the last couple of years.”
Healy has been organizing at the university since 2019, which was the last time grad student workers attempted to unionize. Then, the pro-union students lost by fewer than 40 votes. For them, the impact of this year’s vote stretches beyond Pitt’s campus.

“I’m happy for the movement [and] looking forward to some other grad unions popping up, I’m sure inspired by us, because that always happens,” Healy said.

After Thanksgiving, they said organizers will begin setting up for bargaining with Pitt’s administration.

In a statement after the vote count, the university said, “While first contract negotiations can be complex, please know that we will come to the table in good faith and be there to support all graduate students throughout and beyond the process.”

Immediately following the loss in 2019, any efforts to restart conversations about unionizing would meet with “a kind of extreme hesitancy,” Healy said, blaming “a lack of understanding of what a union was.”

This year felt different, Healy said. There are likely a few reasons why.

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A wave of change

From 2021 to 2023, nearly 64,000 U.S. grad student workers joined unions. By comparison, only 20,394 students unionized from 2013 through 2020. Today, four in 10 grad student employees belong to labor groups.

This trend was, experts say, driven in part by the pandemic and by the administration change from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2021, which ushered in a National Labor Relations Board more amenable to organizers.

Adrienne Eaton, professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, noticed COVID-19-driven layoffs and research funding losses on campus in New Jersey that eventually led to a faculty and grad student strike last year. She describes this time as an “active moment” in American higher ed, with students advocating for change across the board at universities and colleges. And with grad students, there’s another factor at play: “The faltering job market in academia.”

“A high percentage of students no longer [are] confident that they have a future as tenure-track professors, in particular, or potentially as academic faculty at all,” Eaton said. “So, I think it really changes the way that graduate students look at their assistantships that they get.”