Committee endorses Syracuse Graduate Employees United union drive

By Gabe Stern, writer for The Daily Orange | Published on March 21, 2018

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Photo by Kai Nguyen, Photo Editor

The Employment Issues Committee of the Graduate Student Organization officially endorsed Syracuse Graduate Employees United in their efforts to unionize at Wednesday night’s meeting.

A report that the Employment Issues Committee presented to the GSO senate was the first time the group has extensively discussed unionization efforts this semester.

Ben Sadlek, Adrianne Traub and Hunter Thompson, who presented the report, emphasized that a possible graduate employee union would have contractual power, collective bargaining and “meaningful accountability to administration,” in an extent that the GSO cannot currently exercise.

“This goes into a deeper debate,” Sadlek said during the senate meeting. “The argument for a union in general is that there’s a legal mechanism that we have more bargaining power (over SU administration).”

Patrick Oberle, a representative from SGEU, said during the meeting that he hopes a union will not only increase bargaining power regarding graduate health care and stipends, but also working conditions as a whole. If enacted, a graduate student union would represent all graduate employees and fellows who have a W2 at the end of the year, Oberle said.

New York University was used as an example of an institution that successfully unionized and improved the working conditions for graduate employees during the presentation. NYU most recently recognized a graduate student union in 2013.

As a result, NYU graduate students received an increase in graduate stipends by nearly 40 percent, and a large majority of their healthcare was covered by the university. Both of these issues are well-known concerns that Syracuse graduate employees have.

SGEU is also “pursuing voluntary recognition,” according to the committee report. This would involve lobbying the SU administration to recognize a graduate union independently.

Last meeting, the GSO senate cautiously debated whether unionization efforts were worth formally discussing. In a stark contrast, the topic was openly discussed on the senate floor Wednesday.

“We are definitely talking about it and that’s not something we’ve done in a while,” said Jack Wilson, the GSO’s president.

Healthcare options

Wilson reported that GSO has made “significant progress” in discussing graduate healthcare options since the last senate meeting in mid-February.

In private discussions with the university’s health insurance committee, it was guaranteed that all of the money the SU administration could potentially save from a new healthcare plan will go directly to graduate employees and fellows, Wilson said. Dental and vision plans will also be included in the new health insurance plan if it’s passed, and it would have a monthly payable plan.

Most significantly, the health insurance committee guaranteed that any health insurance plan that’s chosen will have the extension of family members, Wilson said.

Still, extensive negotiation has to be done before a decision is made on the future of graduate student healthcare, Wilson said.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” said Rikki Sargent, vice president of internal affairs for the GSO. “(But) nothing is done yet.”

Other business:

• A member from the university’s Student Association will now be present at all GSO senate meetings, and a member from the GSO will now attend SA meetings. This is in hopes to provide transparency between the two organizations after a misunderstanding about a meeting that discussed the future of Student Legal Services. Wilson said the university has “backed off” its original stance on possibly defunding the legal services. The independent service will remain intact for now, Wilson said. Wilson added that the organization will continue discussing SLS.

• The senate unanimously voted to stand in solidarity with the SUNY-ESF Graduate Student Association, which expressed support for a non-renewal of Wheeler’s contract in a statement released Tuesday morning. Wheeler announced on Wednesday his intention to resign by the end of June amid rising tensions between faculty and administrators at the college.