Where we stand on graduate student unionization

Highlights

• A hearing is being held this week to determine the composition of a proposed graduate student union at MIT, as well as the mechanics of an election.
• MIT maintains that 900 graduate students on full MIT fellowships are students only: Unlike those who work as RAs or TAs, fellows are not required to provide specific services, or work on specific research projects, in order to maintain their funding.
• Drawing the boundaries of a bargaining unit is essential to forming a union; the UE has already excluded more than 2,000 MIT graduate students from its proposed union.
• Unionization would swap a collaborative, flexible model serving all graduate students for a rigid approach involving a third party that will represent only a portion of our graduate student body.
• When the time comes for MIT’s graduate students to vote, it will be essential that you do so after critically weighing all sides of this important decision.

To MIT graduate students,

Beginning tomorrow, representatives of MIT and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) will begin participating in a hearing at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). These proceedings, which required MIT to provide the UE and the NLRB with certain information about our graduate students, will ultimately determine the composition of a proposed graduate student union at MIT, as well as the mechanics of an election that we hope can be held this spring.

We want to take this opportunity to reiterate what we shared with you earlier this month: MIT’s senior leaders do not believe that a graduate student union is the best path forward for current and future graduate students. Here are a few key reasons why:

• Unionization would likely force a cumbersome one-size-fits-all approach on a graduate student community that is anything but monolithic: In MIT’s case, there are 108 distinct graduate programs, and 7,000 unique graduate students. Our current inclusive, collaborative, flexible model is more responsive to students’ needs; unionization would impose a bureaucratic process that inserts a third party into negotiations that focus on mandatory bargaining items, such as stipends and work hours.
• Collective bargaining is a process that can be slow-moving, and it’s often contentious. In fact, in all cases involving graduate student unions at private universities, one to four years have elapsed between a unionization vote and a ratified first contract. In many cases, strikes along the way have interrupted students’ progress toward their degrees.
• While neither unions nor employers can ever predict what provisions will be in a final collective bargaining agreement, it’s important to compare what union organizers state they can deliver during a campaign with what they ultimately produce in a contract. If you review recent agreements at other institutions with graduate student unions, what’s included in the final contract is often considerably less than the unions’ stated goals. It is a bargaining process.

Last Thursday, students involved in the unionization effort authored an op-ed in The Tech questioning MIT’s position that 900 graduate students on full MIT fellowships should not be included in the UE’s proposed bargaining unit. This critical topic will be a focus of this week’s hearing.

We encourage you to learn more about our position by reading our full statement – which notes that the UE itself has already excluded more than 2,000 MIT graduate students from its proposed union. It also outlines the similarities and differences among RAs, TAs, and fellows; explains how students on MIT fellowships are most akin to the students that the UE has already excluded; and highlights how students – especially international students – may lose some of the benefits of fellowships if fellows are included in a bargaining unit.

While we await the outcome of this week’s hearing, we urge you to take the time to carefully consider the full positions of MIT's leadership, the MIT graduate students who are opposed to the UE, and the MIT graduate students who are working with the UE. When the time comes later this spring for MIT’s graduate students to vote, it will be essential that you do so after critically weighing all sides of this important decision.

Sincerely,

Melissa Nobles
Chancellor

Ian A. Waitz
Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education