By SUSAN JONES
Graduate student workers on Oct. 2 kicked off a card-signing campaign in the hopes of forming a union. A similar effort in 2018-19 reached the election stage, but union organizers fell short by 37 votes.
The current organizing effort follows an outcry by grad student workers earlier this semester over changes in their health insurance that brought higher deductibles and co-pays.
On Sept. 1, a group of graduate workers delivered a petition, signed by nearly 1,300 people, to the provost’s office addressed to Chancellor Joan Gabel, calling on Pitt’s administration to immediately reinstate the previous health benefit plan and “reallocate any funds the administration planned to spend on costly anti-union campaigns to help offset costs of supporting the health of its workers.”
In response to the complaints, the University has created the Pitt Student Health Insurance Medical Hardship Assistance Fund to “assist students enrolled in the Pitt Student Health Insurance Plan who face financial hardships due to medical costs,” and interim Provost Joe McCarthy has created a task force to look at future health insurance coverage for all students.
The Pitt News reported on the card-signing event Oct. 2 at the Cathedral of Learning, where Alison Mahoney, a fourth-year theater arts graduate student, said: “By signing your union card today, you tell the Pitt administration that they cannot make any more changes to our working conditions without consulting us first.”
Getting 30 percent of those in the bargaining unit to sign authorization cards for an election is just the first step in the group’s attempt to join the United Steelworkers. The signature cards are valid for one year, by which time they need to be turned in to the Pennsylvania Labor Relation Board to rule on whether an election can take place.
One of the big issue in previous unionization efforts at Pitt has been who is in the bargaining unit. This led to a long delay for the faculty union between filing for an election and one actually taking place in fall 2021.
A Pitt grad union website says all teaching assistants, teaching fellows, graduate student researchers and graduate student assistants are eligible to be in the union. Unfunded grad students, grads on external fellowships, and grads on training grants are ineligible because they are not directly employed by the University. The University said that approximately 2,200 graduate students have fall 2023 appointments as either a teaching assistant, graduate student assistant or a graduate student researcher.
The last campaign to form a grad union began in February 2017, and an election was held in April 2019. The union organizers fell short of the majority needed by 37 votes. The union later claimed that the University used unfair labor practices during the election. The PLRB ultimately decided nearly two years later that these practices did not sway the outcome of the election.
Pitt has had no comment on the recent grad student organizing efforts. The University has taken positions on the faculty and staff union elections that it respects the rights of workers to decide, but struck a different note in 2018 on graduate students.
A Pitt website set up in 2018 about graduate student unionization made the University’s position very clear: “The University is not in favor of graduate student unionization because we do not believe that having a graduate student union would help us provide the best educational opportunities for our students.”
The USW also represents Pitt’s faculty union, which is negotiating its first contract now, and staff workers, who on June 5 filed for a union election with the PLRB and are awaiting a ruling.
Human Resources Vice Chancellor James Gallaher said earlier this year about a possible staff union: “We have a long history of working effectively with unions and respect the right of our employees to decide whether or not to choose a union.”
The staff union organizers filed an unfair labor practices charge in June against the University alleging, among other things, that employees who are not supervisors were forced to attend mandatory meetings that spread an anti-union message.
Gabel said just before she took over as chancellor in July, “I think the unions and unionization is a reflection of different stakeholder groups wanting things to be done differently. And I think it’s incumbent on us to meet people individually and as groups where they are.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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