Unionization process has left out marginalized graduate students

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I am pro-union, but I still have many concerns about the graduate workers’ unionization efforts at Syracuse University. In fact, I was one of the active Syracuse Graduate Employees United members between 2018-2020. I believed that having a union was the right thing to do, and the only way to protect marginalized graduate workers’ rights. However, I gradually realized that what was being proposed by the union drive would only protect the most privileged group of graduate workers, not those who are at the bottom of the food chain.

I had my first exposure to unionization efforts in 2016 when I was pursuing my master’s degree at Syracuse University. Several graduate workers started organizing toward unionization in the fall of that year, largely motivated by SU’s plan to move graduate workers off the university’s employee health insurance plan to the student plan. The move did happen, which further disadvantaged graduate workers who needed regular access to health care and other medical needs. The unionizing effort then became an even more urgent matter. In November 2017, a group of graduate workers officially announced the union drive under the name Syracuse Graduate Employees United in affiliation with Service Employees International Union.

I became involved with SGEU after the health insurance debate. I was drawn to the movement because I was facing some uncertainties with my own employment at the time, as I was on an hourly-paid contract. I wanted to raise awareness on the issues faced by graduate workers who were on contracts like mine.

It was at SGEU’s meeting that I was able to connect with other graduate workers and learned what a typical assistantship contract looks like. For instance, a full graduate teaching assistantship contract comes with a minimum stipend of $16,980 and tuition scholarships.

This is vastly different from being on an hourly contract or partial teaching assistantship. I came to SU as a Fulbright scholar, which covered partial costs of my attendance for the first two years of my studies. I was on an hourly contract with SU, which did not come with tuition remission — I was paid at $18 an hour for 20 hours a week. In my third year, I received a one-time scholarship from the school to cover the remaining six-credit tuition remission through a partial assistantship contract, which enabled me to complete my degree. However, the journey to secure funding throughout my time then was not easy, and I was lucky that I had Fulbright and support from the school to cover the costs.

I knew I had to do my part in preventing this from becoming the norm in other departments and to improve the situation for the affected students. Having a labor union to represent and protect graduate student employees seemed to be one of the possible solutions to the problem, but only if we prioritized the hourly workers and those with partial assistantship. Collective power only works when we put the most disadvantaged workers’ needs in the forefront.

SGEU’s main priority was to raise awareness of the unionization efforts to graduate student employees across SU by doing one-on-one conversations and collecting signed union cards. While support from American graduate student employees was easily distinguishable — either they support or don’t — I noticed that it was a lot more difficult to find solidarity and to communicate with international students.

Representation of international students among the organizing committee was far and few between. To reach more international students, SGEU organized various events, specifically to address their concerns, like a teach-in on immigration and visa statuses. However, one of my major concerns as an international student myself is how striking, for example, would be jeopardizing my student visa when I am not maintaining a full-time active student status. As a first generation student from a working class background, I also wouldn’t be able to afford tuition should a situation like at Temple University, in which the university withheld tuition and healthcare benefits for striking graduate employees, happen to us.

I continued to participate and attend meetings, even after I completed my master’s degree and started my Ph.D. in a different department. I eventually stopped attending SGEU meetings after feeling disappointed in the unionization efforts overall after a period of time. Fast forward a few years later, and SGEU resumed the unionization efforts and picked up momentum in the 2022-23 academic year. I was not approached to join the meetings, although I spoke with a few of the organizers who are also my colleagues and peers. I explained my reasoning and concerns on the union drive, and was told they would be brought up with SGEU.

At this point, many of the SGEU members had joined the Graduate Student Organization in various positions of power: as senators, committee chairs and e-board members. I myself was serving as a university senator between 2019 and 2022. To their credit, I think SGEU is doing a good job in advocating and educating graduate students about the union and other employment issues. For example, the advocacy meeting report prepared by the Graduate Employment Issues Committee is very well written and provides detailed analysis of the current budget model of the university, titled Responsibility Center Management.

I brought up equity concerns on RCM during the University Senate meeting on April 21, 2021. Not all graduate workers have the privilege to take on the risks — such as striking — that come with unionization. This group includes, but is not limited to, immigrants and financially-disadvantaged, marginalized workers, particularly first generation and international students.

As I had to leave Syracuse for my research in early 2023, I wasn’t able to continue to serve the student body as a senator. However, the recent move to impeach the GSO president because of her advocacy for students’ concerns is deeply disturbing for me to witness. She was advocating on the behalf of graduate students who have concerns about unionizations and the implications, including myself. Losing her is a big loss for us, especially those whose voices are from the margin. GSO is supposed to be the space for open debate and accessible to all graduate students at SU to express their opinions. Unfortunately, I no longer feel that this is the case with the recent events.

At a union orientation meeting on Tuesday, SGEU said there could be two separate “bargaining units,” namely the graduate students on stipend and the hourly workers. Representatives from SGEU also said the organization will vote on the formation of the bargaining unit for stipend workers this spring, and maintain a focus on collecting union authorization cards from hourly workers. The representatives also said SGEU’s intention is to form one union at the end of the unionization process for both groups.

How are we to build true solidarity if the stipend workers form a union first, not the hourly workers? bell hooks, an author and social activist, said, “Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.”

If we want justice, we need to prioritize all the hourly-paid graduate workers and ensure the protection of the number of full-time graduate assistantship contracts, so that we continue to make space for those who have been historically marginalized and excluded in higher education. And above all, we must do it with love, complex accounting and integrity.

Shiila Seok Wun Au Yong is a Doctoral fellow in Cultural Foundations of Education. They can be reached at sauyong@syr.edu.