UR declines private election agreement with graduate union

The University of Rochester has decided against a private election agreement with the Graduate Labor Union. Now, the GLU is calling on its members to sign a strike pledge.

In total, there are 1,700 graduate students across UR schools, including the Medical Center. A union would help them address issues of pay, workload, benefits and support, its organizers contend. The GLU maintains that once a majority of its members pledge to strike, the union will make plans.

“At a time of great uncertainty around federal research funding and immigration laws, the graduate body cannot afford to be unorganized,” says Keelin Quirk, a mechanical engineering doctoral candidate and member of GLU’s organizing committee. “The majority of the graduate workers here are paid via federal research grants and are not U.S. citizens, so we are reliant on our university administrators to work to protect us. Our president and provost trying to block our unionization to avoid negotiating with us as they make these financial decisions does not inspire confidence. We are ready to do whatever it takes to win a union election.”

The GLU and UR have been in talks for over a year to finalize an agreement for a union election mediated by a private, independent arbitrator rather than the National Labor Relations Board. SEIU Local 200United would represent these students if they elected to unionize. Last December, UR tentatively agreed to include doctoral students previously excluded from the bargaining unit.

“When the University and SEIU began negotiations for a private election agreement about one year ago, the University believed it made sense, notwithstanding the significant departure from the University’s practice of insisting on (NLRB) supervised elections as the mechanism employees should use in the event they seek to be represented by a union,” UR said in a statement.

Roughly a month ago, the university was evaluating the impact of the decision in Vanderbilt University v. National Labor Relations Board. Vanderbilt was granted a preliminary injunction in the case that halted the university from having to overturn data integral to the unionization process on the grounds that the disclosures would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.  

In a letter to students obtained by the Rochester Beacon, a lawyer retained by UR noted that the university had “serious concerns about entering into an agreement where the University could be seen as facilitating the dissemination of protected student data to a third party.” 

The disclosure of student data is not the only reason that UR backed out of the agreement. The current political climate, given the Trump administration’s directives on research funding and its scrutiny of the Department of Education, made it challenging for UR to agree to a private election, the letter says. 

“The sudden, sweeping and still unclear shifts in the federal government’s support for the University’s missions of research and education and, potentially, patient care,” UR’s statement reads, in part. “The federal government has already significantly altered its approach to supporting science, and the University is operating in new, uncharted territory.”

UR also said the NLRB offers graduate students the same process used by other groups to pursue union recognition without a private election agreement.

While it wasn’t unexpected, Quirk is disappointed by UR’s decision.

“I hate to think that the productive negotiations we had with our administrators in November and December were a delay tactic so that they could block our union once Trump was inaugurated. The timing of the decision looks bad to me,” Quirk says.

Details of a potential strike are forthcoming. GLU is working on building community support both on and off campus. It already has statements of support from a few lawmakers, several hundred faculty, and the undergraduate Students’ Association.

“With sufficient pressure from the community, we hope that the University of Rochester administration will still make the right decision and avert a strike,” Quirk says.

Smriti Jacob is Rochester Beacon managing editor. 

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