About 1,000 University of Maryland community members formed picket lines and marched across campus Wednesday to call for collective bargaining rights for graduate student workers.
The Graduate Labor Union, a campus organization that advocates for collective bargaining rights for graduate workers, organized the event. Students spent an hour calling on this university’s administration and the University System of Maryland to recognize their right to unionize.
“The university is not recognizing our union, and we’re gonna keep escalating, and we’re gonna keep growing, and we’re gonna keep organizing until they do,” GLU organizer and oceanic and atmospheric science doctoral student Joseph Knisely said.
Collective bargaining would allow graduate student workers to negotiate with this university for a union contract and on working conditions, including stipends and hours.
Maryland law does not require this university to recognize graduate student workers’ collective bargaining rights. The Maryland General Assembly has introduced legislation to grant graduate student workers the right to unionize every session since 2017.
[UMD faculty members urge state legislators to pass collective bargaining bill]
The “Practice Picket” began at four different locations across campus — HJ Patterson Hall, Tawes Plaza, Regents Drive Garage and just outside the Iribe Center. All four groups eventually converged on McKeldin Mall.
Throughout the picket, participants carried signs and banners with messages written in support of collective bargaining, including one that read “Recognition Now.”
This university’s administration works with student organizations including the Graduate Student Government and Graduate Assistant Advisory Council to “identify student concerns and work to find common ground in advancing improvements,” this university wrote in a statement to The Diamondback on Wednesday.
Sora Cullen-Baratloo, a GLU organizer, said this university isn’t listening to what graduate students want.
“They keep talking down to us, ignoring the fact that we’re workers,” the computer science doctoral student said. “They keep saying, like, ‘Oh, we know what’s best for you.’ But really, we know what’s best for us, and what we want is a union.”
More than 60 percent of graduate student workers have already signed a union authorization card, according to GLU’s website.
In January, administrators from this university and the university system testified to the Maryland General Assembly against a bill that would grant collective bargaining rights to graduate student workers, The Diamondback previously reported.
University system chancellor Jay Perman told the Maryland Senate finance committee in January he believes graduate assistants and postdoctoral associates are students first.
“Let me be clear: We consider graduate assistants and postdoctoral associates, yes, students, first and foremost,” Perman said at the January Senate finance committee meeting. “Their duties tightly align with their training as scholars and instructors and advance their work as both.”
Perman added that nothing should come between the relationship between students and faculty.
Minimum stipends for graduate assistants range from $26,304 for a master’s student in a full 9 month assistantship to $36,446 for doctoral candidates in a full 12 month assistantship, according to an April 2024 memo from graduate school dean Stephen Roth.
[Hundreds of UMD graduate students rally for collective bargaining rights]
GLU organizer Ariel Balaban told The Diamondback before the event that when she first began her behavioral and community health doctoral program at this university, it was “immediately evident” that the graduate workers were overworked and underpaid.
“We’re expected to research how to alleviate health disparities in other communities when there are clearly so many health disparities within our community just as graduate workers,” Balaban said.
Physics doctoral student Nadav Shaibe said the picket was the first Graduate Labor Union event he had attended. He ended up leading chants in front of one of the picket lines, he said.
Shaibe said collective bargaining rights for graduate student workers are especially important because of the new presidential administration. Research funding and government programs for graduate students are in “real danger,” he said.
“A lot of people are now going to be very worried about their future security,” Shaibe said.
Biophysics doctoral student Joshua Lucker said collective bargaining rights could help students facing issues including healthcare coverage, as well as housing and food insecurity.
Graduate workers who are happier will be more productive, Lucker added.
“We need a union in order to get better benefits, get better rights,” Lucker said. “Once we get those adequate conditions, we will be happy workers.”
Junior staff writer Anastasia Merkulova contributed to this story.
