Service & Solidarity Spotlight: St. Louis University Graduate Workers Vote to Join UAW

Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.

Late last week, St. Louis University graduate students overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining the United Autoworkers (UAW).

The Graduate Workers of St. Louis University Union-UAW (GWSLUU-UAW) unit covers more than 500 people who work for the school as teaching and research assistants. This landslide victory came right before the National Labor Relations Board reported Monday that more than 50,000 students who work at U.S. universities have unionized during the past two years, proving that this win is part of a much larger national effort to organize increasingly precarious higher education institutions. Members cite the need for better working conditions and increased pay as core motivators, saying that before the organizing effort, graduate workers had not received a raise in more than a decade. Concerns around uncertainty in science funding and unstable regulation of visas were also issues that spurred the campaign.

“This feels like the greatest achievement of our lives,” said Zach Davis, a doctoral candidate in American studies. “For the first time in this university’s history, grad workers will have a seat at the table in all decisions that affect them. There will no longer be any conversations about us in which we are not an active participant and so long as this union is around, that is not going to change.”