SUNY Graduate Employees Unionize

A nine-year battle for recognition was finally concluded in December when graduate student employees at the State University of New York voted overwhelmingly to unionize. Certification of the Graduate Student Employees Union, local 1188 of the Communication Workers of America, has created the largest grad employee union in the nation. The GSEU is also the first union to successfully unionize an entire state university system.

With turnout surpassing 60% of its 3,900+ membership in the mail-in ballot, GSEU received 1,936 votes in favor of certification; 338 students voted against unionizing, and 129 ballots were contested (thrown away due to failure to sign in the proper place, additional marking placed on the ballot, etc.) by SUNY. The margin of victory (over 85% “yes” votes) represents the largest union victory in New York State for all of 1992.

SUNY, which had fought the GSEU’s efforts to gain certification since 1984, when a petition seeking recognition before the state’s Public Employment Relations Board was first filed, has now pledged itself to good-faith negotiations and tried to put a brave face on its failure to prevent grad employees from unionizing. SUNY once compared grad employees to NYS prison workers, stating in court that because employment was secondary to workers’ status as students (or prisoners), recognition could not be granted. SUNY appealed a unanimous October 1991 PERB decision granting Public employee status to grad employees, only to have its appeal dismissed in July 1992 by a unanimous five-justice panel of the New York State Supreme Court, which paved the way for the certification election.

GSEU organizers, working primarily at the four SUNY centers in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Stony Brook, signed up more than 2,300 members of the bargaining unit before the election. SUNY failed to provide accurate addresses for hundreds of members, and while GSEU did its best to submit address corrections to PERB prior to the election, several hundred members never received ballots.

GSEU now begins the process of negotiating a contract for SUNY’s teaching and graduate assistants (TA’s and GA’s). Research assistants (RA’s) are not currently part of the bargaining unit, as SUNY argues that they are private employees, since SUNY has set up the Research Foundation, a separate corporation, to administer paychecks to RA’s. GSEU is committed to seeking recognition for RA’s, and has begun a pledge drive. Once 30% of SUNY’s approximately 2,000 RA’s sign authorization cards, a petition seeking Public employee status will be filed. Though this will be a tougher nut to crack, given that RA’s are not paid off state payroll, GSEU is optimistic that PERB will see that it matters more where an employee works, and who that employee works for, than how much that employee is paid in determining public employee status.

For more information about GSEU and its organizing effort contact:

Marianthi Lianos, GSEU vice-president: h (516) 928-4087 o (516) 632- 7892

George Bidermann, GSEU organizer at Stony Brook, (516) 331-3076

Jean Rousseau (516) 689-8510 and e-mail: ROUSSEAU@sbchm1.sunysb.edu

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