Inside AFT: Brown University grad workers win right to union vote

by | Jun 30, 2018 | Contract Negotiations

The labor union for graduate employees at Brown University, Stand Up for Graduate Student Employees, won the right to vote for official recognition when it signed an agreement with university administrators on June 21. The pact—among the first of its kind—creates formal procedures, voter eligibility guidelines and a dispute resolution mechanism to help guide the election and the collective bargaining process for 1,400 graduate teaching and research assistants on campus. The arrangement operates outside the scope of the Trump National Labor Relations Board and comes after graduate workers at Georgetown University inked a similar agreement in April. If SUGSE wins the election, the union will negotiate one of the first collective bargaining agreements for graduate employees at a private university in the United States.