NU DISCOURAGES GRADUATE STUDENTS FROM FORMING A UNION

W rapping up a meeting at the end of a typical work day, doctoral candidate in network science

Adina Gitomer noticed a new email from Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan. The subject line read “Important Information About Graduate Student Union Efforts.” But, Gitomer said, the information in question was extremely one-sided.

Plans to unionize have been brewing among Northeastern graduate students for years, and so have the university’s attempts to stop them. The National Labor Relations Board only granted private university workers the right to form a union in early 2016, and a majority of Northeastern graduate students subsequently signed cards by 2017. Students then announced their majority and implored the university to voluntarily recognize their union.

Student workers felt this year was an inflection point. Buoyed by a wave of graduate student unionizations across the country, Gitomer said that grad students finally see their window of opportunity — the perfect time to achieve higher stipends, improved healthcare and better harassment and discrimination protections, among other demands.

In the Jan. 19 email from the Office of the Provost, Madigan delineated considerations graduate student workers should make before signing union cards and voting in a union election. The considerations enumerated were exclusively downsides. When asked for comment on Northeastern’s stance on graduate unionization, spokesperson Marirose Sartoretto forwarded Madigan’s email.

By Ella Hutnick | News Correspondent

“Involving a third party in your education impedes the flexibility and creativity that creates unique individualized experiences,” the email reads.

Madigan closed the email with a website link with information and resources that would “help students assess the pros and cons of graduate student unionization.”

The webpage’s content parallels the email in that it presents as factual, organized under subheadings such as “Understanding the Basic Issues,” “Points of View” and “Frequently Asked Questions,” even though all the information disclosed steers readers away from unionization.

Just hours after receiving the email, Gitomer made her way to a shared Google Doc. Staring into the bluish glow of her Macbook, she watched as at least 20 cursors flitted about the page, leaving lines of impassioned text in their wake. Behind each cursor was another graduate student worker, typing away at their own laptops in a concerted effort to compose a response to the provost’s email.