The Michigan State University Graduate Employee Union was formed in 2001 to legally protect the rights of graduate students working as teaching assistants. Now, they’re trying to secure the same protections for graduate research assistants.
They are doing this through the Graduate Researcher Union Drive. Their goal is to have a union contract for graduate research assistants within a year.
Although it became legal for GRAs to unionize in February 2024, there are still many steps that go into securing a contract.
Union steward Lauren Hennenfent says that the union has initiated the process through the Graduate Researcher Union Drive, which asks GRAs to sign their union card.
“When you sign a union card, all you are saying is, yes, I want to join the union and I support this,” Hennenfent said. “We will not pull dues until we have a contract.”
Just over 50% of GRAs need to sign their union card for the campaign to result in a contract. Staff organizer Lamont Stephens says that getting this number of people would allow them to gain recognition and protection through the state.
“When we reach that 51% threshold, we would actually go through our recognition with the Michigan Employee Relations Commission,” Stephens said. “That’s an independent body who we can go to that would then verify our cards.”
The GEU has chosen to follow this route instead of the alternative, voluntary recognition from MSU, because of conflicts between MSU and other unions on campus.
“Given the fights that have already been happening on campus like with the Union for Tenured System Faculty and the UNTF MSU extension bargaining, we’ve learned that MSU has been fighting tooth and nail against voluntary recognition,” Stephens said.
Stephens says that the GEU has not faced this kind of retaliation.
Without a union contract, GRAs are only able to join the union as associates, meaning that they have some union benefits without legal protection through collective bargaining rights.
“The biggest benefit that comes with having a union is the guaranteed right to show up at a university level and be represented in negotiations through collective bargaining,” Hennenfent said. “With collective bargaining, for instance, if I use the teaching assistant union contract as a reference, they have achieved guaranteed pay raises for teaching assistants.”
Hennenfent feels that this protection is especially important for healthcare.
“I joined the GEU because I want to ensure that no matter how graduate students are funded, whether that is through a teaching assistant or that is through being a research assistant, they have access to protected healthcare,” Hennenfent said.
Healthcare access saved Hennenfent from a lot of panic after being diagnosed with melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, while working toward her doctoral degree.
“Because of the healthcare that MSU provided me, I was able to seek a primary care physician and then see a specialist and I got an early diagnosis,” Hennenfent said. “I was able to get the treatment that I needed and return back to work.”
GRAs currently have healthcare through the GEU, but it is unprotected. For TAs, healthcare access is protected by a contract.
“There was no healthcare before the Graduate Employee Union got it for teaching assistants and then MSU automatically grandfathered research assistants in,” Hennenfent said. “Because we don’t have a contract right now, that’s not guaranteed.”
Obtaining union contracts has been a point of contention within local government since long before the formation of the GEU; Stephens says it was being debated as far back as the 1970s.
“It really started back with the University of Michigan, actually, and various research organizing drives that happened throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Stephens said. “There was significant pushback at the state level and there were a variety of court cases.”
This contention is what originally led to GRAs being left out of the union.
“When the GEU formed in 2001, it was in a bit of a gray area, where there was a recent ruling that had gotten struck down and would’ve allowed RAs to unionize, but because of that lack of clarity, I don’t think there was a lot of energy to pursue it,” Stephens said.
Stephens, working as their staff organizer, is the only paid employee of the GEU. He was inspired to work for the union by his time in school.
“I went to Waverly locally and went to undergrad for a bit at MSU, and especially getting to know everyone at MSU, knowing my teachers, it really drew me to the union,” Stephens said.
While he attended MSU, Stephens saw the union as an “inspiring force.”
“They were really a part of the community at that time and really led a lot of fights that I really believed in and really encouraged me to explore kind of what I wanted to do with my life,” Stephens said. “So when I saw a job opening up here, I was like, ‘This is it, I’ve got to do it.’”
Stephens says that although the work can be difficult, working with the union members makes it all worth it.
“These people are phenomenal and they want better,” Stephens said. “That’s why I think this [research assistant] campaign is so important because I’ve seen the effect that the GEU has had on TAs, and RAs deserve exactly that same thing.”
Both Stephens and Hennenfent emphasize that the union is fighting to improve the lives of GRAs in a way that will also benefit the university.
“It doesn’t mean that we are fighting Michigan State or anything like that,” Hennenfent said. “We are trying to reach a mutually beneficial contract that makes sure that research assistants are legally taken care of.”
