Note: The publishing of this article was delayed due to a technical error.
Last week, graduate student workers voted in favor of joining the Graduate Student Workers Organizing Committee-United Auto Workers (GSWOC-UAW).
GSWOC was created to protect the rights of graduate student workers and help them overcome issues such as high housing costs, low pay and poor health care. As of Friday, the group officially joined United Auto Workers, one of the most well-known labor unions that represents workers both in the United States and Canada.
“We are so energized by this resounding vote in favor of our union,” said Stepp Mayes, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering. “The support for our union keeps growing stronger, and we will be bringing this solidarity and energy to the bargaining table.”
“We are confident that our union will be good for us and good for USC, and we look forward to meeting them at the table soon to bargain a contract that makes us all stronger,” Mayes added.
According to the GSWOC website, the goal of the election was to secure the right to collectively bargain with the USC administration. Given that graduate students voted to form a union, elected graduate student worker representatives will be able to negotiate with USC administration over pay, benefits and workplace protections.
The decision to unionize passed with a 93% supermajority vote, according to the tally by the National Labor Relations Board.
“The mobilization that has created the [union] is something that is going to have a positive and long-term impact on [graduate workers’] experience of working at USC,” Kritika Pandey, a fourth-year Ph.d. student active in the organization, said. “Now we have these safe spaces, we have these groups of people that we talk to keep in touch with and definitely makes me at least feel less isolated and much more supported.”
The vote to unionize will affect 3,000 graduate student workers, according to a press release. Along with several other California schools, including the University of California schools, the “yes” vote for USC graduate student union workers means that they could receive benefits through bargaining.
“We have specific goals like getting a living wage, getting better health benefits, getting support for international students in terms of visa and immigration issues,” Pandey said. “But we also have a larger goal of being a part of the larger student worker movement that’s happening in the U.S. right now to create academic spaces that actually embody principles of social justice and equity.”
According to Pandey and Mayes, the next step for the organization is democratically electing a bargaining team. The bargaining team will be elected by the union and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with USC administration.
The organization will also focus on setting up events and sending out surveys to narrow down bargaining demands.
“The goal is the same thing [as the UC schools], to continue to make improvements and have good contracts, we want this to have like a cultural change at USC,” Mayes said. “I love working here, but sometimes it can be a place where there’s a lack of support for each other, and I think that this can be part of the general shift to workers really caring about each other and supporting each other and feeling supported by the administration.”
Mark Woodall, a doctorate candidate in physics at UC Merced, prioritizes proper working conditions for graduate student workers as part of his duties as chair of the UAW campus unit.
“In other jobs you are still being treated appropriately as an employee,” Woodall said. “That is what we view as being the necessary condition for U.S. workers and just really for graduate workers everywhere.”
Woodall views USC’s overwhelmingly one-sided election results as something that represents a bigger issue for student workers across the country.
“I think it is important to note that USC is not the only organization that is seeing these kinds of lopsided voting results,” Woodall said. “I think what it tells you is that there is a very urgent need nationwide at universities everywhere to solve these work imbalances.”
With the results of this election, graduate students at USC can now begin efforts to improve their working experience.