New resource could help more grad student and other higher ed unions win big protections

A new directory is out that could help anyone in a grad student or higher education union write contracts. It brings together information about nearly all unionized groups in the U.S. in the last few years that represent undergrad and grad students, postdocs and faculty. It also has links to most of the contracts that unions and administration have agreed to, providing handy templates and guidance for other union leaders.

I was excited to cover this resource for Science magazine, which was created by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College in NYC. You can read all about it in my story, which is in the Careers section.

I’ve been following the area of higher ed union organizing since the spring because I got curious how the growing number of unions might affect science. A big takeaway, as leaders have said, is that unions negotiating for higher salaries means research will become more expensive. Labs will get smaller and less research will get done.

I do worry about less science happening because it could mean fewer solutions for fixing society’s biggest challenges (disease, climate change, etc). But also, if I were a scientist working away at solutions and I felt I was underpaid, I’d want to unionize too! (And shouldn’t Congress put more funding toward research anyway!)

There’s a host of other reasons, too, that are spurring grad students—and postdocs—to unionize in growing numbers. Stronger protections against sexual harassment and discrimination! More accommodations for researchers with disabilities! More (or any) access to childcare and family benefits!

My Science story didn’t really get get much into these benefits. But I spoke with a researcher who worked on the directory, and who has had her eye on higher ed unions for the last four decades, back in the spring and she told me that she’s been struck by the number of recent union contracts that include protections beyond the boilerplate: “The University shall not discriminate…” Some unions have negotiated for—and won—rights for grad students who experience harassment to switch advisors or offices.

That researcher said it would probably take about five years to find what outcomes these protections have, such as whether they lead to more grad student satisfaction with the process for investigating a sexual harassment complaint.

But one thing seems sure: The National Center’s directory could lead to many more higher ed contracts with stronger harassment and other protections. The leaders of grad student and postdoc unions I spoke with (four in all) told me they relied heavily on what had been written in other collective bargaining agreements to decide what to include in their contract draft. (They also talked a lot with other researchers at their school to find out what protections they wanted.) But it can be hard to find contracts online. With the directory, they’ll have the bulk of grad student union contracts at their fingertips (55 in the latest directory, more than double the National Center’s last directory in 2020).

During contract negotiations, union leaders can point to protections—for example, against workplace bullying—that are in union contracts at other schools—especially rival schools— to justify why they should offer similar, or slightly better, protections.

One grad student union leader told me they also wanted to know when a protection they wanted to include was *not* in another other union contracts. In that case, they would know they needed to fight even harder to win the precedent-setting right.

The directory can now be accessed as a pdf. At some point, the National Center team hopes to make it available as an interactive website where users can search for specific terms associated with the protections they want to include in their contract draft.

I think there is a lot of potential for this directory. My question is how many leaders will make use of it. There are now about 150,000 grad student researchers in the U.S.—up from about 64,000 in 2012 (133% increase). And these grad student groups managed to win unprecedented rights—such as around sexual harassment investigations and disability accommodations—without a directory such as this one. But many more researchers could (and probably will) still unionize, and it is exciting to think what protections they may win with this resource on their side.