Solidarity Statement with GSU Graduate Student Unionization Effort, November 2023
All graduate students have the right to organize to collectively strengthen their ability to fight for just wages, better health insurance, and a humane standard of working conditions. Graduate students today live in a perfect storm of exorbitant tuition, unaffordable housing (where housing can be found), rising health care costs and no longer having access to childcare on campus. This is an untenable situation that the UVM administration has not addressed. In fact, instead of meeting the legitimate needs of graduate students honestly and directly, the UVM administration's response is a classic example of paternalistic tactics meant to disrupt organizing efforts. Graduate students are adults and workers, and, in those capacities, have the right to organize and the responsibility to do so if their wages, benefits, and working conditions are insufficient. We have seen this before. Previous UVM administrations have responded similarly over the past twenty years or so. Around the country, administrators have been making the same move since at least the 1990s, at other universities where graduate-student workers are now unionized, often after decades of patient struggle.
UVM’s faculty union, United Academics, stands in solidarity with UVM graduate student workers who are currently doing the work of organizing their own union. We not only strongly support the graduate student organizing efforts, we are here to help. One of the core principles of unions is solidarity with working people everywhere, and this solidarity makes us all stronger. Our faculty union has a partnership with UVM’s staff union, in which we share information, learn from one another, and show up to support when needed. We look forward to expanding this coalition with a graduate student union and will continue to show our support throughout their process.
Faculty and all:
• Please share this information with your graduate students.
• And if you are interested in helping more, members of the organizing committee would love to connect with you and discuss some of their needs at this point (getting lists and information, among other things).
Below is their contact information, and attached is a flyer that can be distributed:
• UVM Graduate Students United – UAW 2322: uvmgsu@uaw2322.org, https://linktr.ee/uvmgsu •