Nearly a year and a half after earning union certification, graduate student workers are still negotiating with the university, leading some union members to weigh a strike.
Following a surge of organizing in 2022 and 2023, Graduate Employees of Northeastern University- United Auto Workers, or GENU-UAW, won its certification after a vote in September 2023. The union then announced its bargaining committee and has been in negotiations with the university since.
President Donald Trump’s second administration has complicated union negotiations nationwide after it fired a National Labor Relations Board member Jan. 27. The Trump administration has also cut funding for research and threatened visas — a blow to higher education institutions.
Northeastern’s Senior Director of Labor Operations and Senior Labor Counsel Scott Merrill, who is the lead negotiator for the university, wrote he does not comment on pending labor negotiations in response to a request for comment from The Huntington News.
After 21 bargaining sessions with Merrill and other representatives from the university, Sarah Gillespie, a computer science doctoral student and member of GENU-UAW’s bargaining committee, said the union is growing increasingly frustrated, prompting some members to push internally for a graduate worker strike. To approve a strike, the unit members must propose it, then its bargaining committee must authorize a full GENU-UAW strike vote. If the union votes overwhelmingly in favor — or a two-thirds majority vote — union leadership would be empowered to call a strike.
Gillespie said many international graduate student workers, or GSWs, may be hesitant to mobilize in support of the union because of uncertainty surrounding visas. On March 9, the State Department revoked the visa and green card of former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who helped to lead the university’s pro-Palestinian encampment in April 2024.
“Our international student worker community brings so much value to the university, to each other,” Gillespie said. “And I feel sad that the Trump administration has made it so that they’re scared to organize for better working conditions and worry that that might affect their visa or their job potential when it is just as legal for them to organize as domestic students.”
More than 64% of Northeastern’s graduate students are international, and international students make up 65% of GENU-UAW’s bargaining unit, according to GENU-UAW’s March 11 bargaining update. The union advocated enshrining equal protections for international GSWs, “regardless of a GSW’s citizenship and immigration or documentation status” into their contract, while the university’s Dec. 20, 2024 proposal argued that this clause is unnecessary.
Moreover, the union wrote that “The University shall not permit any federal immigration agent to enter University property,” to which the university responded in a comment, “Federal law requires site visits by federal immigration authorities. We cannot agree to violate federal law.”
In a March 11 union counter-proposal, the language was altered to “The University shall not permit any federal immigration agent to enter private University property, except as required by lawful subpoena or lawful order.”
The university did not respond to request for comment from The News.
Also on the bargaining table are protections for transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming individuals. In an August 2024 proposal on the Prohibition Against Discrimination and Harassment, the union wrote, “The university and the union share a commitment to support transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming members of the campus community with navigating the policies and practices of the University during a gender transition, as well as to assist University.”
The university’s Feb. 15 counter-proposal used different language, saying it will commit to protecting students from discrimination due to their “gender identity or expression.” The university wrote that it would update name and gender information at the request of a GSW, “consistent with applicable law and federal funding requirements.”
Gillespie said this counter-proposal confused union members, as the university’s proposal does not state any specific protections for transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming students, nor does it refer to these groups by name.
The university has also pushed back or rejected issues that are considered standard in union negotiations, Gillespie said, in graduate worker negotiations, including the successorship clause, which ensures the union would stay in place if Northeastern’s leadership or ownership changed. The university rejected an article about job postings that would lay out rules for how Northeastern fills positions that are protected by the union; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student union contracts contain similar articles.
The university and union have not yet agreed on economic proposals, such as compensation and insurance benefits for union members. The union proposed Aug. 26, 2024 a minimum annual stipend of $60,000 and a minimum hourly pay of $57.69.
“The Union admitted that its $60,000 stipend number was based upon an MIT wage calculator that produced cost of living estimates for full-time employees who work 40 hours per week in the Boston area,” Northeastern wrote following the Aug. 26 bargaining session. “The University pointed out that stipended PhDs are limited to 20 hours of work per week, which meant the minimum Northeastern PhD stipend of $40,000 was far above the $30,000 MIT calculator equivalent for 20 hours and worth $82,000 annually based on a 40-hour week.”
The university’s proposal Nov. 18, 2024 lists a minimum stipend of $43,000 and a guaranteed hourly wage of $18. The university agreed to provide health insurance, including dental insurance, exclusively for full-time graduate students, whereas the union’s proposal would also guarantee health insurance to GSWs on co-op.
“When I’ve talked to UAW staff being like, ‘Can I get a sanity check? This feels really tough. How are we doing compared to other unions, in your experience?’ This is my first union,” Gillespie said. “They say that Northeastern is one of the toughest employers they’ve worked with in the higher education realm.”
Campus editor Zoe MacDiarmid contributed reporting.
