UVM graduate students form a union to bargain for better pay and benefits: where things stand

Last week, University of Vermont graduate students voted 373-9 to form a union in an election involving nearly two-thirds of the students in the bargaining unit. Among the top priorities for the students will be better pay and health care benefits, which currently don't cover vision or dental.

"I'm personally excited not just about increased pay but the health benefits," said Neil Traft, a second-year doctoral student in the complex systems and data science program. "A huge thing for me is dental and vision. I need work done on my wisdom teeth. I wear glasses and contacts. It will affect me directly."

Traft said he has to pay out of pocket for whatever he needs for his eyes and teeth, and has been "kicking the wisdom teeth down the road as a result, which I know I shouldn't do."

UVM Graduate Students United is Local 2322 of the parent union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW).

UVM reserves the right to appeal the composition of the bargaining unit

UVM spokesman Adam White responded in an email to the union vote, saying UVM expects to meet with United Auto Workers leaders in the coming weeks to begin the bargaining process.

"While the legal process will proceed in the hopes of resolving important and novel questions about the student bargaining unit, UVM expects to meet with United Auto Workers leaders in the coming weeks to begin the bargaining process," White said. "In the meantime the university remains committed to ensuring every graduate student is supported for success and looks forward to continuing to work with all students, faculty, and staff to achieve this end."

Asked a follow-up question about the "important and novel questions about the student bargaining unit," White said there are "procedural legal steps" that must occur, including the formal certification of the election by the Vermont Labor Relations Board, which he expects to happen in the next several days.

More: University of Vermont graduate student workers push for union with supermajority support

"Following certification, the university will evaluate its options to appeal the labor board's determination about the composition of the bargaining unit," White said.

White declined to specify what the basis of an appeal might be, saying, "We won't comment on our legal arguments outside of the venues with the authority to decide those questions."

Pay for grad students needs to increase to at least $40,000, say union members

Of the approximately 1,650 graduate students at UVM, about 650 work for the university, dividing their weeks between 20 hours of study and 20 hours of work, which can include teaching, research and grant writing. Master's students are paid a yearly stipend of $27,850 and doctoral students are paid $32,000.

Bailey Kretzler, a doctoral student in the department of plant and soil science, said yearly stipends for graduate students need to be increased to at least $40,000, based on the livable wage for Burlington.

"No one should be below livable wage, that's our belief as a union at least," Kretzler said. "We are doing essential work, teaching students that bring tuition into this university. We are conducting research that wins the university notoriety. We are critical members of the ecosystem. Without us, it would be a very different landscape."

University administration told union organizers they were crazy and would fail

Baxter Worthing, a doctoral student in the plant biology department, said the effort to organize a union dragged out for nearly four years, and was opposed by the university administration.

"Every step of this whole thing we had the administration trying to convince us we were crazy for even considering unionization," Worthing said. "For a while they tried to tell us we weren't allowed to (form a union). When it became clear we could, they said, 'No parent union will want you, no one will join.'"

Worthing said he and his fellow graduate students didn't believe what the administration was telling them, but "that rhetoric was in the back of our heads."

"To win an election was final confirmation we were right the whole time," Worthing said. "The stuff the university was saying was completely untrue and meant to get us to give up."

The deck was stacked against the Graduate Student Senate, says student

It became clear graduate students needed a union by how ineffective the Graduate Student Senate was in negotiations with the university administration, according to Worthing. The administration said in a letter last year the best model for addressing graduate student issues is not unions but instead the Graduate Student Senate, which acts as a platform for the voices of graduate students.

"The deck was absolutely stacked, they had all the power in the negotiating process," Worthing said. "Their effort to prevent us from unionizing was them holding on to that stacked deck as long as possible."

The university administration referred to the Senate as part of a "shared governance" with the university, but it wasn't that at all, according to Worthing.

"In 2020, those in the Senate noticed the same issues we asked the university to change year after year kept coming up," Worthing said. "If there were truly shared governance, a truly democratic system, we would have made progress on some of those issues."

Next up: form an election committee to elect a bargaining committee

The next step for the graduate students in the union is to form an elections committee that will organize the election of a bargaining committee to negotiate with the university for their first collective bargaining agreement, according to Kretzler.

"It's a little difficult to say when the committee will be in place," Kretzler said on Wednesday. "We're hoping we can actually appoint our elections committee today. Hopefully once we have the elections committee, we'll have a clearer timeline of when we'll have our bargaining committee."

Kretzler said she's considering nominating herself for the bargaining committee.

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DanDambrosioVT.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: UVM graduate students vote to form a union to bargain with university