NYU’s graduate student union began negotiating its next contract with administrators on Monday, urging them to amend the university’s hiring practices for teaching and research assistants and increase transparency with employees.
The nine-member bargaining committee for GSOC-UAW — which represents over 2,000 graduate student workers — proposed that when departments are hiring TAs or RAs, they prioritize internal applicants before resorting to other candidates. The group also said NYU should disclose why applicants were rejected from a position within five business days, if the applicant requests that information. Like in GSOC’s current contract, administrators also must ensure job postings are known and accessible, especially to graduate students within the respective department.
June West, a third-year Ph.D. candidate who sits on the union’s bargaining committee, told WSN that although this meeting only focused on one proposal, GSOC aims to prioritize establishing protections for noncitizen student workers in future sessions. The objective was part of the union’s initial bargaining goals in March, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student visas and political speech on college campuses.
In later meetings with NYU, the committee will bargain for higher hourly wages and indirect compensation such as housing stipends, OMNY cards for public transportation and a guarantor program — which is currently offered at some departments but is not standardized. West said that the compensation negotiated when the contract was ratified in 2021 does not accurately reflect the increased rent prices today.
“NYU and its governing body has gotten incredibly wealthy over this time. Linda Mills is taking home at least $1.3 million per year and the university is paying out over $33 million in executive compensation,” West said. “Meanwhile, GSOC members’ rents are going up and we’re moving further and further away from campus.”
The meeting, which commenced at 3:30 p.m and lasted an hour and a half, saw three representatives from the local and international union and 17 observers in-person and over Zoom. Committee members spoke with approximately 18 administrators, led by Howard Pripas, a lead negotiator in NYU’s Human Resources department.
“Our graduate student employees make important contributions to the life of the university,” NYU spokesperson Joseph Tirella said in a statement to WSN. “We will continue to negotiate in good faith with members of the bargaining unit in order to reach a fair contract.”
Ahead of the meeting, GSOC conducted surveys and held town halls to assess members’ demands and ratify the bargaining goals established in March after. The two parties scheduled their next bargaining for June 1, and will meet biweekly over the summer to continue discussions ahead of GSOC leading up to the contract’s expiration in August.
The union began campaigning for improved health care benefits earlier this year, hoping to lower out-of-pocket costs for “high-quality” dental and vision care. Committee members will also advocate to include STEM Research Assistants in the new contract, who West said NYU “specifically carved out” during the last contract’s negotiation sessions.
“There’s no recognized union for them, and this disincentivizes research among people from STEM fields and artificially weakens the power of our union,” West said. “They’re the same people — one semester they’re teaching, the next semester they’re a research assistant. Some some months they get benefits and some months they don’t get benefits, and that not tenable”
Last month, graduate researchers in STEM departments launched a campaign demanding to be unionized GSOC members, garnering at least 100 signatures in under a week. In October, members staged a study-in at Bobst Library, demanding a meeting with administrators, who they said dismissed their contractual protections during disciplinary hearings last year.
“Among the bargaining committee and the observers in the room, spirits were really high — we’ve been working toward this moment for almost two years,” West said. “We’ve been doing research, talking to members, doing outreach and having events. It’s all really been leading up to these negotiations.”
Update, 5/5: This article was updated to include a statement from a university spokesperson.
Contact Leena Ahmed at [email protected].