Pitt Grad Union reaches agreement with administration after rally at Cathedral of Learning

On Tuesday evening, the Pitt administration met the latest demands of the graduate student union when it submitted a list of eligible graduate employees to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, the final step in the unionization process before a formal election. 

This decision comes after members of Pitt’s graduate student unionization effort had gathered in the Cathedral of Learning Commons Room earlier in the day to demand the administration’s cooperation in their election process. 

“We need more from the administration here at Pitt,” rally speaker Lauren Wewer, a graduate student researcher in the mechanical engineering department, said. “We need raises to actually keep up with inflation. We need resources for international grad students. We need real protection against advisors who harass and bully their grad students. We need to be able to negotiate a contract that represents our priorities to hold the administration accountable to their promises.”

The union filed for an election in January 2024 with a supermajority and has since been waiting for the election approval by the PLRB. According to Alison Mahoney, a union organizer, in order for an approval to happen, Pitt had to submit an employee list to both the PLRB and the United Steelworkers, who have helped to facilitate the union’s organization. 

“We’ve been waiting for that entire seven months for Joan Gabel to submit our employee list to the State Labor Board,” Mahoney said. “We’re tired of waiting. That’s why we’re here today.”

The union began passing out election cards during the fall 2023 semester after the University announced a substantial decrease in health insurance benefits for graduate students, including an increase in copays and decrease in coverage for emergency care. 

Oscar Fawcett, a graduate student teaching fellow in the statistics department and grad union member, said he has been a part of the organization effort since he became a graduate student during the fall 2023 semester, shortly after Pitt reduced health care benefits for its graduate students. 

“My admission letter stated that I was going to have amazing health care, and that’s the reason I should come to Pitt,” Fawcett said. “Then I got here, and they changed it two weeks before classes started. Since then, I thought if we had a union, then they wouldn’t have been able to make that decision. So that’s why I’ve been helping with the organizing campaign.”

Fawcett said if the union wins the unionization election, the graduate student workers “would have a say in [the] workplace.”

“Once the Pitt administration finally gives us our list that we’ve been waiting for, we’ll be able to actually vote for our election and actually have some kind of representation in the way our workplace runs,” Fawcett said. 

Pat Healy, a doctoral student in information science and teaching fellow, became a union organizer in 2019, around the time of the union’s first election, because he sees “every workplace as being improved by a union.”

“In 2019, it was immediately clear to me that there were some pretty dramatic structural issues with the workplace,” Healy said. “We were clearly not getting paid enough even then, and since then, it’s gotten significantly worse.”

According to a university spokesperson, the administration provided the PLRB and USW with a list of eligible graduate students who can vote in a union election. 

“As the University shared in recent months, we respect graduate students’ agency and self-determination to undertake a unionization effort, and we are following the PLRB’s process. We will continue to work with the United Steelworkers and PLRB as we move toward an election,” the spokesperson said. 

After the PLRB receives the list of eligible graduate students, the union can move forward with a formal election. 

“We want to have an election as soon as possible, and we’re going to win that election,” Mahoney said.