Dear Colleagues,

PhD student workers across programs and departments have pledged to build a better university for all of us here at Duke. We have pledged to form a union – one that will win a contract that protects all of us. The first step is for PhD students to sign cards authorizing a union, available online here: www.dukegradunion.org/card. 

It can’t be overstated: across the country graduate students are coming together to improve their working conditions, and they are winning. By pressuring Duke on a $40,000 stipend floor and an end to parking fees, we already are fighting and winning. The time is now to organize for a seat at the table and a collectively-bargained contract.

Graduate students at Duke are committed to producing outstanding research, teaching innovative classes, and providing world-class mentorship to undergraduates. But cost-of-living and inflation continue to rise in Durham, and it is increasingly all too difficult for PhD student workers to focus on the goals that they came here to accomplish. Many of us are deeply concerned about exorbitant parking fees, limited dental coverage, hidden visa hurdles, and unclear provisions to so-called 12-month guaranteed funding packages. Workplace inequities – especially the lack of union grievance procedures for addressing gender-based harassment, workplace racism, and treatment of international student workers – continue to affect our work at Duke as well. We need real accountability now! What’s more, because we lack comprehensive healthcare that includes full dental and vision, many of us have gone years without a checkup. Without a seat at the decision-making table, we graduate student workers find ourselves without recourse to ensure that our needs are met when the university sets its budgets and makes its strategic plans.

We invited Duke leaders – including the President, Provost, and the Dean of the Graduate School – to today’s speak-out to hear our concerns. We received no direct response. The Graduate School did however email graduate students yesterday with a plan to raise our stipends and lower parking rates, two key areas where DGSU has agitated and applied serious pressure. The clear response to our demands ($40,000/year and an end to parking fees) is exciting. But the fact remains that we had to rely on outside pressure to win these victories.

Since 2016, graduate student workers at private universities have had the right to unionize and collectively bargain with their employer under the National Labor Relations Act. Graduate student workers at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and other private universities have since formed unions, joining colleagues in the labor movement at public universities such as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, UMass Amherst, and the entire UC system. In 2016, graduate students at Duke attempted to unionize but were fought by staunch union-busting tactics from Duke, including the intimidation of international students and repeated assertion that we graduate student workers are not employees. We withdrew our petition when election results were contested while under review by the Trump-appointed National Labor Relations Board.

Yet recent years have shown us that we need a union more than ever. We have worked through an ongoing pandemic, amid skyrocketing cost-of-living, and still too many of us feel like we are struggling to get by. Uprisings for racial justice in the summer of 2020 have demonstrated that task forces are not enough. Real anti-racist commitments remain to be seen. A union would allow us to enshrine worker protections with a contract. The benefits of a contract at peer institutions have included third-party grievance procedures at NYU, $42,000/year at Brown, paid visa fees at the University of Michigan, improved childcare subsidies at Harvard, and comprehensive healthcare benefits that include vision and dental at Georgetown.

More fundamentally, an employer-recognized union would give us a voice on campus, ensuring that we are able to come to the bargaining table with Duke every few years to negotiate, in good faith, the terms of our working conditions. Without a contract, we can always ask for urgent changes, but Duke can always say no. This is why Duke consistently attempts to pit DGSU against the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) – administrators want to retain the right to say no to hard asks. But the role of a student government organization and a labor union are distinct and complementary. And it is long past time that we had a real say in our working conditions!  

We hope that Duke, in recognizing the urgent need for improvements in graduate student working conditions, will work alongside us in our unionization effort instead of taking the adversarial path of corporations like Amazon and Starbucks.

It is squarely within Duke’s power to voluntarily recognize us as a union once a majority of PhD student workers sign union authorization cards. Voluntary recognition is the precedent set at peer institutions such as Brown, NYU, and Georgetown. Rather than hiring an expensive anti-union law firm such as Proskauer Rose to run an anti-union campaign, we call upon Duke to follow the lead of these institutions. And in doing so save precious time and resources better spent on the immediate needs of graduate students. If Duke administration refuses to recognize us voluntarily, then we will pursue an election administered by the National Labor Relations Board. More information on the process is available here: http://dukegradunion.org/unionizing-process. 

Bring your questions about the unionization process to the Duke Chapel at 11 AM! We will be launching our union drive at 11 AM outside the Duke Chapel on Abele Quad. Please join us, bring a friend, and learn more before signing a card! We will be tabling outside the chapel all afternoon. Signing a union authorization card indicates that you want to join with your co-workers in a union, and we have to meet a card threshold of 30% of our workplace for the NLRB to hold an election. We have approximately 2,400 PhD student workers on campus, and we want to sign up a majority of our colleagues before Duke hires its union-busting lawyers!

In short: We can win protections for ourselves and our coworkers. In the last two months alone, our pay and parking victories have shown that when we fight, we win. And we are a fighting union! 

• Sign your union authorization card online now: www.dukegradunion.org/card. These cards are private – your advisor will not see that you’ve signed on. 

• That said, we know that public pressure is critical, so please also sign our public petition demanding union recognition. 

• Finally, you can become a dues-paying member of DGSU here: www.dukegradunion.org/join.

Let’s stand together for a better Duke. There is power in a union.

The Duke Graduate Students Union Organizing Committee

15 September 2022