In-person elections on whether graduate workers should be represented by the United Steelworkers will take place Nov. 18, 19 and 21, according to the University’s website on graduate student unionization.
The exact location and times of the election have not yet been approved by the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, which has not issued its formal direction of election yet, the USW said.
The union organizing committee filed what it said was a “supermajority” of authorization cards with the PLRB on Jan. 31. The 10-month gap between filing for an election and actually holding one is the shortest so far on campus. Faculty waited 2.5 years, while staff, who just voted to join the USW, waited just over a year between filing and election.
Changes last fall to grad student workers’ health insurance, which brought dramatic increases in deductibles and co-pays, “was a huge catalyst for our movement,” Alison Mahoney, a member of the union organizing committee and a Ph.D. student in theatre arts, told the University Times in September. “With grads sort of seeing how precarious we are and how subject to the whims of the administration our current situation is without a (union) contract.”
She also cited a need for better pay and an improved grievance procedure for grad workers who face harassment or unsafe working conditions as issues the union hopes to address.
The grad worker bargaining unit has about 2,000 people, according to the USW. All teaching assistants, teaching fellows, graduate student researchers and graduate student assistants are eligible to be in the union. Unfunded grad students, grads on external fellowships, and grads on training grants are ineligible because they are not directly employed by the University.
Pitt submitted a list of eligible grad workers to the PLRB in September. The University has said that it “respects graduate students’ agency and self-determination to undertake a unionization effort.”
This is in sharp contrast to the last campaign to form a grad union with the USW, which began in February 2017. At that time, the University took an active position against graduate student workers unionizing.
An election was held in April 2019 and union organizers fell short of the majority needed by 37 votes. The union later claimed that the University used unfair labor practices during the election. The PLRB ultimately decided nearly two years later that these practices did not sway the election outcome.
— Susan Jones
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