{"id":973240,"date":"2023-01-28T16:28:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T16:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/01\/university-of-chicago-united-electrical-workers-graduate-student-union-recognition-vote\/"},"modified":"2023-01-30T12:12:54","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T12:12:54","slug":"university-of-chicago-graduate-workers-are-trying-to-unionize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/01\/28\/university-of-chicago-graduate-workers-are-trying-to-unionize\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Chicago Graduate Workers Are Trying to Unionize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Following recent victories at Yale and Northwestern, graduate student workers at the University of Chicago are voting on whether to unionize at the end of the month. We spoke with workers there about the history of their effort and what they think is next.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n University of Chicago graduate student workers after submitting a petition for union recognition to the National Labor Relations Board. December 1, 2022. (UChicago GSU - UE \/ Twitter)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

On January 31 and February 1, graduate student workers at the University of Chicago will vote on whether to unionize with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). This will be UChicago grad workers\u2019 second attempt at winning union recognition through a National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) process; though workers voted to unionize by a large margin in 2017, the university refused to voluntarily recognize the union, and the union withdrew its petition before the NLRB in fear of an adverse ruling by the conservative Trump-era labor board.<\/p>\n

The vote comes on the heels of a union election victory by grad student workers at nearby Northwestern University<\/a> in Evanston, Illinois, who also unionized with UE, as well as another win by grad workers at Yale University<\/a> unionizing with Local 33 UNITE HERE. Jacobin<\/em>\u2019s Sara Wexler spoke with UChicago worker-organizers about the history of their unionization effort and what they think is coming next.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

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Sara Wexler<\/dt>\n \n

Can you tell me when and how the organizing around the union started?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

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Brianna Suslovic<\/dt>\n \n

The most recent effort, in terms of launching our card campaign, really picked up steam over the summer. We spent a lot of spring and the early months of 2022 building relationships and trust and power. After a lot of that work was done, we felt prepared to start a card campaign. So we launched that on the first day of our fall quarter 2022, got a huge amount of cards on the first day, and from there haven\u2019t stopped since we decided to file for an election, after the university declined to voluntarily recognize us back in November.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

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Sara Wexler<\/dt>\n \n

Did the organizing happen mostly through in-person conversations? Was any of it online?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n <\/dl>\n \n

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Neomi Rao<\/dt>\n \n

People have been trying to organize a union on this campus since 2007. So it\u2019s been a long, long fight. We went through this whole process in 2017, where we affiliated with AFT [the American Federation of Teachers] and then did a vote for recognition, and we won by a two-to-one margin. At that time, there was a conservative NLRB because of Donald Trump\u2019s administration, so the university refused to recognize the results of that election. We didn\u2019t have the option to pursue the federal NLRB route to recognition, because there was a wide understanding at that time that, if we were to do that, there was a good chance that the NLRB would rule that grad students aren\u2019t workers and would set a bad precedent. So we, Harvard, and some other unions withdrew petitions to the NLRB to avoid that.<\/p>\n

Then the union at the time sought voluntary recognition from the university, and the university just stonewalled and refused to recognize us. So there was a strike in 2019 for voluntary recognition. It was a three-day strike; it was really powerful. I was a masters student at the time, but I was on the picket line. The university still didn\u2019t recognize that or respond directly in any way.<\/p>\n