Before the coronavirus pandemic, there seemed little chance they would get anywhere. Contract and collective bargaining negotiations had been dragging on for years at the few universities that would entertain them; other schools refused to recognize graduate worker unions at all. The Trump administration’s National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, had approved a policy change effectively denying graduate workers at private universities the automatic right to unionize. Graduate teaching assistants in California who staged a wildcat strike were summarily fired at the beginning of March.
But quietly, and overshadowed by everything else that has been happening, graduate students in the last few months have won surprising victories that are the culmination of decades of effort. They and others chalk this up, at least in part, to universities’ need for their labor in what promises to be a tumultuous fall.
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Amid pandemic, graduate student workers are winning long-sought contracts
