Northwestern University Graduate Workers have finalized an agreement with the University to set its union election for Jan. 10 and 11, the organization announced last Tuesday. The election results will determine whether the National Labor Relations Board will certify the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America as NUGW’s collective bargaining representative. After not.
Northwestern will not voluntarily recognize the NU Graduate Workers union with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America until graduate students conduct a union election, Provost Kathleen Hagerty told NUGW on Monday. Last Thursday, graduate workers marched across campus, delivering a letter to Hagerty demanding the University voluntarily recognize its union by 5.
When Ph.D. student Sarah Peko-Spicer came to Northwestern in 2015, she worried about finding community as one of two Black graduate students in the statistics department. But the transition was not as difficult as she had anticipated, Peko-Spicer said.
“I remember finding this really thriving community of Black graduate students who were well supported by The Graduate School,” she said. “Many of us felt like TGS was a place that was really highlighting the successes of historically excluded students and constantly making space to celebrate them.”
Peko-Spicer attributed this environment, in part, to the work of former dean Dwight McBride, who left TGS in 2017 to become Emory University’s provost. Teresa Woodruff succeeded McBride, before leaving to become provost at Michigan State University. Dean Kelly Mayo, who has been at NU since 1985, then took over as interim dean and was appointed to the post permanently as of May 1. For some graduate student activists, his appoint