Our contracts have vastly improved the working conditions for Grad employees at UMass

Graduate students at UMass-Amherst began building a union as early as 1976. This unionization effort was halted in 1979, however, when the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission (MLRC) ruled that graduate students were primarily students, not employees, and hence could not form a union. Their status as public employees denied, the campaign for grad employee unionization at UMass remained in limbo for almost a decade.

The campaign was revived again in 1987, when the Grad Student Senate decided to help form an autonomous group to address graduate student needs in the workplace. This group became known as the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO). In the fall of 1988, GEO began to organize graduate employees, staged a number of actions and demonstrations, and produced literature in order to gain support for unionization. By the spring, over 50% of eligible employees had signed a union card and agreed to contribute $1 a week to the campaign.

In the fall of 1989, GEO participated in a student-led class boycott to protest budget cuts at the University. The week-long strike helped GEO increase its membership to a majority of graduate employees. Its majority status in place, GEO asked to meet with the administration to discuss gaining recognition and to deal with two immediate issues: mid-year fee increases and cuts in the number of TAs. A series of organized actions and teach-ins in the administration building, demonstrations, a one- day strike, civil disobedience, and a threat of grade-withholding resulted in the waiver of the curriculum fee for graduate employees, an interim agreement protecting students from arbitrary layoffs and pay cuts, and the right to a union election among graduate employees on the campus in the fall of 1990.

In November 1990, graduate employees voted in favor of unionization and to have GEO represent them in contract negotiations with the UMass-Amherst Administration. They also voted to become members of the United Auto Workers (UAW). After a ten-day strike in November 1991, the first contract took effect. During the strike, GEO won arbitration and a waiver of 79% of individual and family health insurance. The relationship with the UAW had paid off - the University came back to the bargaining table to negotiate with the striking grad students after the UAW announced they would be eligible for strike pay.

The second contract in 1994 brought further gains - augmented health benefits, an almost $2000 per year stipend increase, a full tuition waiver, standards for fair workloads, more firm sexual harassment policies, and better teacher orientations and training.

GEO contracts and activism have continued to increase living standards for grad students at UMass. In 2000, we won a dental plan for graduate employees, and after a hard-fought 2 year campaign, we finally won union recognition for instructors in the Division of Continuing Education in 2002. The contract GEO negotiated for Con Ed instructors has brought these employees health benefits, reimbursement for cancelled courses, and a 30% wage increase.

In recent years, GEO has been increasingly involved in state politics, as budget-cutting policies set in Boston have had an ever more tangible impact on both our contracts and the university as a whole. In both 2002 and 2003, we were instrumental in organizing buses to Boston which carried hundreds of students and workers to the state capitol to protest cuts to the University and the de-funding of our contracts.

A few things our contract negotiations have gotten graduate students over the course of GEO's history:
· a more than doubling of the minimum grad employee stipend (1991-2004 contracts)
· free health insurance, including mental health (1991, 1994)
· a grievance procedure (1991)
· tuition/fee waivers (1994)
· a reasonable workload (grad students in some departments had to teach two classes
as part of their appointment, whereas now they teach one) (1994)
· increasing ALANAA recruitment and retention funding (1996, 2000, and 2002)
· child care (1996, 2000)
· more clear sexual harassment policies (1994, 2002)
· a dental plan (2000) with no fee to enroll (2002)
· union representation for Continuing Education instructors, and a contract granting them health care, course cancellation reimbursements, and significant wage increases (2002)

Longer History