Frequently Asked Questions

We are negotiating for many rights and protections for graduate student workers, and we unionized and are guided by bargaining goals which can be seen in the box below:

GSU’s demands come directly from our organizing efforts. When you sign a union card you say: 

• YES to a universal minimum stipend at a living wage
• YES to protections for international students
• YES to addressing the housing crisis
• YES to high quality healthcare
• YES to accessible childcare for working parents
• YES to enforceable workplace rights and protections
• YES to a robust grievance procedure

YES to a permanent end to the “comprehensive fee”

Labor unions need information about their members in order to effectively and actively represent the needs and interests of those members. Typically, employers are required to provide this information to unions by federal labor law. However, UVM maintains that they cannot comply with these laws because we are graduate students; therefore, our information cannot be disclosed without prior written consent due to the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA). 

This is a distortion of the facts, to say the least. GSU is not a corporation, it is a labor union. FERPA largely applies to your educational record—things like your grades and your class schedule. None of this will ever be disclosed to any organizer or representative unless you yourself personally provide that information. GSU is interested in information about your work and working conditions, including contact information, data about appointments and reappointments, the number of assistantships in different departments, and other information vital to bargaining our first contract. We need this information to uphold your rights in the workplace, and to keep you informed about what’s going on in our first contract campaign.

This is why we ask all GSU members to take 3 minutes and click on the qualtrics link in the email from HR Partners titled, “UVM Graduate Students United – FERPA CONSENT TO RELEASE INFORMATION FOR PURPOSES OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING” to fill out your release of FERPA protected information.

The process of negotiations between a group of workers, working through a union, and the employer, over various terms of employment such as wages, benefits, leave, and working conditions. We are currently engaged in collective bargaining with the Administration over our first GSU contract!

Good faith bargaining means both parties need to to approach negotiations with a sincere desire to reach an agreement, and to sign any agreement that is ultimately reached and ratified. Labor law requires the administration and union to negotiate in good faith.

No! This is a common fear-mongering narrative that many University administrations have used to try to turn graduate student workers away from union organizing. It has no merit. We are interested in raising the minimum standards for stipends and negotiating a living wage for our members that allows graduate student workers to live in Chittenden county without hardships such as food and rent insecurity. In other words, GSU does not intend to and will not propose a maximum wage. The GSU membership is not asking for it and we, as the Bargaining Committee, would not recommend you vote for a contract that includes it.

No. In fact, we are looking to strengthen the way that UVM guarantees people funding through our union contract by holding the Administration accountable to what they promise in offer letters. We believe that increased security for funding that graduate workers are promised is healthy for UVM.

Yes! There are many ways you get a say in your contract. These include but are not limited to:

• signing a union card and filling out the bargaining survey!
• attending a membership meeting and making your voice heard!
• joining a working group to work on a part of the contract that is important to you!
• emailing the GSU Bargaining Committee to ask questions and let us know how our union can improve you and your coworkers’ working conditions!

We will win this contract together. Having a supermajority of union support and input in negotiations will help build the power necessary to win a fair contract.

Your say=better pay!

We, the graduate student workers, are the union! The union is not a third party. 

Graduate Students United has been led by and for graduate student workers since its genesis in 2020. Our affiliation with United Auto Workers (UAW) 2322 began in the spring of 2023 after careful deliberations and consensus and following more than two years of organizing by graduate students like me and you.

We are the graduate student workers of UVM, and we are the UAW. This effort is graduate student-led, and our affiliation with UAW provides us with organizational support and legal resources. We join thousands of other graduate student workers in the UAW, which has a robust history of wins in the higher ed sector. 

After reviewing and meeting with several affiliate unions, the GSU Organizing Committee voted to affiliate with the UAW. The UAW is an International Union: United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. UAW is one of the largest and most diverse unions in North America, with members in virtually every sector of the economy. UAW-affiliated graduate student unions include: UMASS (Amherst, Boston, & Lowell), NYU, the University of California system, Columbia, and many others. GSU’s Organizing Committee voted to work with UAW Local 2322 specifically because UAW 2322 has demonstrated their effectiveness in organizing at other peer universities, including at UMass Amherst and Goddard College. We are specifically excited to work with UAW 2322 because we are gaining graduate sister unions in GEO at Umass Amherst, and GWU at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

A graduate student union gives us the legal right to bargain collectively with the UVM administration and it requires them to negotiate with us in good faith. It is no secret to any graduate student that our stipends do not constitute a livable wage in Chittenden County. Asking your departments or advisors for a raise individually does not guarantee results. With a union, we gain the right to negotiate for better wages and benefits together by exercising our collective power. Further, once we have a negotiated contract, the administration will be bound by it and cannot make changes without negotiating with GSU. 

We are seeking representation for all Masters and PhD students who are currently employed as graduate teaching assistants, graduate research assistants, graduate assistants, pre-doctoral trainees/fellows, and all other graduate workers doing academic work. If you are a graduate student working in an academic position at UVM, we are seeking to represent you in the union.

GSU is a democratic body. We vote on all major issues and decisions that we make, including who will represent us at the bargaining table when we win our union election. We will also welcome all union members to attend and take part in negotiations. Any agreement reached with the university will be put to a vote by the membership.

We can win the things we deserve in bargaining. GSU has  the legal right and opportunity to bargain for stipend increases, better benefits, and more. The administration is legally required to meet us at the bargaining table to negotiate these terms. In the long run, this makes graduate school a safer, more accessible, and more just place for graduate students. 

Starting during our union election drive, the administration began trying to pit faculty and graduate students against one another, but our faculty are among our strongest allies. Throughout our union drive, we have had immense support from advisors, professors, and other members of the UVM faculty. When we learned of an email sent to all UVM faculty that alleged a union may have an adverse effect on the graduate student-faculty relationship we reached out to our allies and unionized faculty at United Academics. They shared the following words of solidarity:

All graduate students have the right to organize to collectively strengthen their ability to fight for just wages, better health insurance, and a humane standard of working conditions. Graduate students today live in a perfect storm of exorbitant tuition, unaffordable housing (where housing can be found), rising health care costs and no longer having access to childcare on campus. This is an untenable situation that the UVM administration has not addressed. In fact, instead of meeting the legitimate needs of graduate students honestly and directly, the UVM administration’s response is a classic example of paternalistic tactics meant to disrupt organizing efforts. Graduate students are adults and workers, and, in those capacities, have the right to organize and the responsibility to do so if their wages, benefits, and working conditions are insufficient. We have seen this before. Previous UVM administrations have responded similarly over the past twenty years or so.  Around the country, administrators have been making the same move since at least the 1990s, at other universities where graduate-student workers are now unionized, often after decades of patient struggle. 

UVM’s faculty union, United Academics, stands in solidarity with UVM graduate student workers who are currently doing the work of organizing their own union. We not only strongly support the graduate student organizing efforts, we are here to help. One of the core principles of unions is solidarity with working people everywhere, and this solidarity makes us all stronger. Our faculty union has a partnership with UVM’s staff union, in which we share information, learn from one another, and show up to support when needed. We look forward to expanding this coalition with a graduate student union and will continue to show our support throughout their process.

Graduate Students United (GSU) will collaborate with and support the Graduate Student Senate (GSS). GSU and GSS have an established and strong working relationship. In fact, the unionization movement at UVM actually started within GSS in 2019, when a committee was formed to explore the possibility of unionizing. This committee was formed out of frustration with stipends lagging behind the rising cost of living in Burlington, despite GSS requests for cost-of-living increases in previous semesters. 

In fall of 2021, GSS passed a resolution in support of a graduate student unionization. The administration has repeatedly skirted accountability, despite diligent efforts by GSS Senators (including Senators who are also leaders within GSU) to improve conditions for graduate students campus-wide. GSS can request increases to stipends and improvements to benefits, but stipend levels and benefit packages are currently set by committees that meet behind closed doors and contain one or no graduate students. Year after year, the suggestions made by GSS have been ignored or distorted by these committees. For example, GSS has repeatedly requested that stipends be set based on the Vermont Basic Needs Budget for a single individual living alone. However, the administration has ignored these requests, insisting that $807 per month is enough for rent in Burlington. Ironically, UVM plans to charge significantly more than this estimate for rent in their own graduate student housing at Catamount Run. Therefore, while GSS is an open and democratic forum, the way GSS is treated by the UVM administration is not democratic.

Graduate student senates and graduate student unions coexist at other universities, and the same will be true at UVM. Many of the students involved with GSU are or have been involved with GSS, and these connections will make it even easier for GSS and GSU to work together to advocate for the needs of all graduate students at UVM.

Union dues provide resources such as legal representation. All union members pay dues as a way to provide support to each other. There will be no union dues or fees until we negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that is satisfactory to us. When the contract goes into effect, UAW 2322 dues are set at a flat rate of 2% of each paycheck with a one-time initiation fee of $20.

Retaliation is against the law and we would not accept any such retaliation or attack from the university, and we would follow in the footsteps of other unions, such as the UVM Staff Union, to fight against retaliation. The best way for us to protect ourselves against retaliation is to be well-organized and show our strength in numbers.

Not only will international graduate workers be represented, but unions are a powerful tool to support international graduate students. Many of the ways in which unions benefit all of us are also ways in which they benefit international students, for example, by providing representation and advocacy, collective bargaining, wage increases, better healthcare and benefits, workplace safety, protection from retaliation, legal assistance, educational advocacy, and addressing discrimination. GSU-UAW is prioritizing international graduate student issues in our organizing efforts. Here are some examples we can turn to:

GSWOC-UAW historic Tentative Agreement on an article to protect international Graduate Student Workers (GSWs)

HGSU-UAW International Student Worker Assistance Fund

GEO-UAW (our sister unit in Local 2322) Successful Campaign to Stop Discriminatory International Student ‘Fee’

International students and scholars have always faced challenges and precarity on account of our status as visa holders. Since the start of 2025, the federal government has taken a series of actions that have increased these challenges and created substantial concern and uncertainty for international scholars. By working together through our union, international scholars have the ability to respond to these attacks and shape federal policy around immigration and other important issues. See the questions below for guidance on your rights and protections as an international scholar. In the event that you are experiencing an unexpected change in immigration status or any other immigration-related emergency, please call this number: 888-416-2110.

Every worker in the US, regardless of immigration status, has the same legal right to join and participate in a union. See this informational page from the U.S. State Department for more information. No academic union members have ever reported any complications arising from their immigration status and being part of a union.

In fact, international workers hold many of the leadership positions in UAW Academic Worker unions across the country. Through our unions, international workers have negotiated additional rights and protections we otherwise would not have, including protections against discrimination of any kind and unjust discipline that could impact our visa status.

International workers have the same free speech rights as domestic workers. It is against the law for any worker in the United States, international or domestic, to face legal repercussions for exercising free speech. To the extent that the Trump administration tries to weaponize speech the UAW and its civil rights sister organizations stand ready to defend 1^st Amendment rights of our members.

Our union has set up a hotline to quickly refer members facing an immigration emergency to legal resources. In the event that you are experiencing an unexpected change in immigration status or any other immigration-related emergency, please call this number: 888-416-2110. You will be referred to an immigration attorney who has agreed to assist UAW academic workers and with whom you can have a legally privileged conversation about details of your situation.

Academic workers in other units of the UAW  have won the right to be compensated for any loss of pay due to issues with work authorization processing, guaranteed leave to attend immigration hearings, right to be afforded a process to seek re-employment if they temporarily lose work authorization, and have the option to bargain additional protections with their employers if immigration laws change. International workers have also won the right to have employers notify union representatives if they learn of an immigration investigation being conducted against a member of the bargaining unit.

UAW represents over 100,000 workers in higher education, including tens of thousands of international scholars. This gives international scholars a powerful voice in setting national policy, which we used to oppose attacks on immigrants during the first Trump administration.In 2017, the UAW International filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court challenging the Trump administration’s travel ban, as academic workers, including international scholars, rallied at airports around California to protest the ban. In 2018, international workers in California and Washington worked with Congressional Representatives Judy Chu and Pramila Jayapal on a Dear Colleague letter demanding that Secretary of State Pompeo restore the validity period of Chinese international students’ entry visas from 12 months back to 60 months. In 2020, UAW academic workers mobilized against a proposed rule by ICE to shorten visa stays for international scholars; thousands of public comments were submitted, including by the President of the UAW International. 

The first Trump administration attempted to slash federal research funding in every budget it submitted to Congress. In response, UAW academic workers, including many international scholars, successfully rallied and lobbied to keep funding at fair levels.

This year, UAW has joined multiple lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General, the ACLU and other organizations to restore Federal research funding. On April 4th, a Massachusetts judge issued permanent injunctions halting some of the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze or cut funding.

Yes. Academic workers have defeated Trump’s attacks before and we can do it again. By working together through our union, academic workers have a strong political voice to lobby legislators and shape policy, as well as the ability to mount legal challenges to unlawful actions by the administration. In order for these efforts to succeed, it is critical that as many academic workers as possible demonstrate our support for research funding and fair immigration policy, by joining as union members and coming together for peaceful rallies, such as the Kill the Cuts day of action that UAW members organized on April 8.

All student employees, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to engage in activity with their co-workers concerning their working conditions, form a union, and collectively bargain with our universities. It is illegal for an employer to retaliate against any student employees for exercising their rights.

Arrests at peaceful union sanctioned rallies are extremely rare, unless individuals have chosen in advance to intentionally participate in planned civil disobedience.

Regardless of your visa, residency, or family status, once in the US you have the same due process rights as a domestic scholar, which means you cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without the chance to defend yourself in fair legal proceedings. Additionally, you have the right to a lawyer to assist you and the right to remain silent if questioned by law enforcement.