Student researchers marched against rent hikes alongside other renters in UC-San Diego graduate housing on March 19. The lack of affordable housing and skyrocketing cost of living is a major issue for graduate student researchers throughout the University of California system. Photo: Alli Carlisle, UAW Local 2865
Graduate student employees have fought for decades to form unions. In the 51 years since teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin won the first graduate worker contract in the nation, our right to unionize has been only intermittently protected by the National Labor Relations Board, depending on which party sits in the Oval Office.
The end of the Trump era and Biden’s promise to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen” have meant a changing of the guard at the NLRB, opening a path to unionization for hundreds of thousands of graduate student workers at private universities.