Mike has written a few pieces about undergrads and grad students at universities either trying to unionize or threatening to unionize.
Princeton is jumping ahead of the curve:
After a two-week union campaign, Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU) announced that the University will raise some graduate student stipends by $5,000 in the 2023–2024 academic year. In an attachment to a recent memo sent out to the graduate student body, the University confirmed that the annual stipend rate for the 2023–2024 academic year will be between $47,880 and $50,400. Current graduate stipends range from $38,000 to $42,000. The raise comes as the University has expressed “concerns” with the unionization drive to the graduate student body, and after 1,600 graduate workers, a majority, signed union cards.According to an email obtained by The Daily Princetonian from the PGSU sent to graduate students, the group hopes more support is to come. In addition to the raise, the union is pursuing guaranteed affordable housing through graduation, improvements to the grievance procedure, more support for international students, better healthcare, funded childcare, improvements to workplace safety, among other causes.“This is the first of our union wins, but it’s not enough,” the PGSU organizing committee wrote in an email to graduate students. “We need a union for graduate workers that will allow us to bargain a legally binding contract.”This news comes after over 150 graduate students, undergraduates, and post-graduate fellows rallied with PGSU on Wednesday, Feb. 15 to demand fair wages and more affordable housing from the University and the Graduate Student Government (GSG) voted to release a message of support for PGSU. Graduate students formed the PGSU in 2016.
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