A group of University of Alaska graduate student employees took a step this week to form the state’s first student worker union.
with the university system that defines who is eligible to vote on becoming a union, certifies them as a bargaining unit and triggers a union election in the fall.
“We’re confident that with broad accessibility and inclusivity in the vote, that the vote would show that we have overwhelming support from the graduate student community for this union,” she said. “The reason we want to unionize is to be able to bring our issues to the university and have a way to have some power to get the issues addressed, which is currently not something we have.”
Unionization is a crucial step towards achieving bargaining power over their own worker contracts, Schiffmiller said. “Our focus has really been on trying to make sure that, whatever the unit looked like, it was functional, it was able to be administered effectively and also compliant with Alaska law,” he said.The agreement is that graduate student researchers, teachers, assistants and fellows will be able to vote to unionize and later — were a union to form — on union matters, such as priorities, contracts and potential strikes.
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