Press Release: 2022-09-13

SEIU Local 509 and Boston University Graduate Workers announce campaign to form Graduate Workers Union

SEIU Local 509 and Boston University Graduate Workers announce campaign to form Graduate Workers Union

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 12, 2022

Boston, MA – Today, SEIU 509 and Boston University graduate student workers announced their campaign to form a union. If successful, approximately 3,000 student workers would become part of SEIU Local 509, a union of human service providers, educators, and graduate student workers with nearly 20,000 members statewide.

This campaign is part of a larger national movement that has been building worker power at universities across the country, from Columbia University and University of Michigan to Brandeis, Harvard, and Tufts here in Massachusetts. SEIU Local 509 currently represents graduate student workers at Brandeis and Tufts, as well as adjunct faculty and lecturers at Boston University.

“The role of graduate student workers at universities is crucial to creating supportive, high-quality learning and teaching conditions,” says Peter MacKinnon, President of SEIU 509. “Boston University graduate student workers conduct research, teach classes, grade exams and mentor undergraduate students. Like every worker, they deserve fair pay and working conditions. We are committed to fighting for graduate workers to have a voice at the table and creating more equitable conditions at BU.”

In the fall of 2021, the university announced that their endowment had grown to $3.35 billion, a 40% increase since 2020. This was an historic high for the university, according to BU’s Chief Investment Office. BU recently announced President Brown’s retirement, noting that the school’s endowment has more than quadrupled during his 17 years at BU. Brown’s total compensation in 2020 was over $2 million. Meanwhile, some graduate students are struggling to afford groceries and other basic necessities.

“We’re unionizing because our labor as graduate workers is essential to the university,” says Jordan Pickard, a graduate worker in BU’s English department. “BU is a well-resourced institution in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Rather than providing the living wages and supportive benefits that graduate workers need, BU lists instructions on how to access services like food pantries on its website. It is an insult to workers and, together as a union, we will fight to win a living wage.”

Graduate workers have identified some key issues in the workplace. Workers will fight for:

Living wages

Workload protections

Improvements to health care coverage and costs

Support for international students

Better housing and living conditions

“I have had to work multiple jobs in order to have a sustainable income that can pay my bills,” says Greer Hamilton, a graduate worker at BU’s school of Social Work. “My school has talked a lot about the importance of diversity, but by offering a $29,000 stipend for 8 months, they are not creating a structure to support the people they’re claiming to care about. For me, fighting for a union is about being able to change our working conditions and build relationships and power as workers.”