In response to our letter, administrators claimed the Graduate Assistant Healthcare Committee is “reviewing ways to enhance health insurance for graduate assistants in a collaborative, deliberate and comprehensive manner.” In reality, they included a few GSO representatives at the table and hosted listening sessions. Graduate workers need a union, which would give us the power to democratically negotiate our working conditions through a federally-protected process called collective bargaining.

As it stands, the administration can make closed-door changes to our individual and family healthcare, wages and other working conditions. Collective bargaining guarantees that administrations can’t change our contracts without all our input. With a union, we would decide what we want in our contracts, and then vote to accept or reject proposed contracts.

Graduate union contracts have secured resources for international students, childcare, mental health services and procedures for addressing racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia. NYU’s grad worker union contract guarantees over 90 percent of healthcare premiums are covered by the university. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s grad worker union contract includes a grievance procedure for microaggressions, discrimination and harassment.

Arguments against unionization often hinge on what ifs. What if undergraduate tuition is raised? What if it affects graduate student funding? These things are already happening: Syracuse recently raised undergraduate costs of attendance to over $70,000. Graduate workers in at least five departments have lost stipends, pushed to hourly pay. Many have lost tuition waivers and healthcare benefits. Collective bargaining provides real decision-making power to fight university corporatization.

The proposed healthcare changes don’t just affect grad workers. Forcing us off employee health plans could raise the cost of healthcare for faculty who teach us and staff who keep campus clean, offices running, prepare food, maintain buildings and grounds, provide library support and perform other essential labor.

We deserve the power to democratically shape our working conditions. Learning about changes to our healthcare through a mass email is detrimental to our mental and physical health and our ability to teach and mentor students, conduct research and live dignified lives.

We urge the GSO to vote no to shifting graduate workers to the student health plan. We reiterate our demand for the choice between the employee and student plan, as we work to unionize and collectively bargain for free healthcare for all graduate workers.

We encourage folks to join our effort by connecting at info@syracusegradsunited.org, or through our website or Facebook.

Sincerely,

Syracuse Graduate Employees United Organizing Committee

Published on April 2, 2018 at 9:22 pm