This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available. This article has been updated as of 10:53 p.m.
The University of Michigan Graduate Employees’ Organization announced in a tweet March 27 that they will begin striking. The strike will officially start Wednesday, March 29 at 10:24 a.m., which will be initiated by a walk out at that time. This announcement comes after GEO members authorized leadership to call for a strike in their meeting a week earlier, with 95% of members voting in favor of a work stoppage. The last GEO strike took place three years ago in fall 2020.
The strike comes after five months of negotiations with the University without a compromise reached on a new three-year contract agreement. In a press release, GEO claimed that striking is the natural next step in their ongoing activism, including protesting Ono’s inauguration and filing unfair labor practice charges against the University in March. In the press release, GEO said they hope it will help encourage the University to meet their demands.
Throughout their negotiations, GEO has asked that graduate employee salaries increase to $38,537 per year, claiming that what they are currently being paid is not a liveable wage in Ann Arbor. They have also asked for improvements in their current health care plan and for the University to make alterations to campus security.
In response to GEO members authorizing a strike, University President Santa Ono and University Provost Laurie McCauley sent out a joint email statement to the campus community March 24. In the statement, Ono and McCauley alleged that a strike would not only be a breach of GEO’s current contract with the University, but would violate Michigan state law. Ono and McCauley expressed the University’s intent to take legal action against GEO if necessary.
“The University will take appropriate lawful actions to enable the continued delivery of our educational mission in the event of a work disruption,” the email said. “Those actions will include asking a court to find a breach of contract and order strikers back to work, stopping the deduction of union dues, filing unfair labor practice charges, and not paying striking GSIs and GSSAs for time they do not work.”
University Spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald wrote in an email to The Michigan Daily that the University hopes to come to an agreement with GEO as soon as possible, but that they believe the decision to strike is both illegal and unethical.
“Beyond any legal considerations is an ethical one: if collective bargaining is to retain its value, all parties must honor the terms of the contract they signed,” Fitzgerald wrote. “We urge GEO to reconsider breaching the agreement we reached through good faith collective bargaining.”
In a separate email sent out to the campus community on March 25, McCauley stated that the University will take measures to keep campus operations as normal as possible and ensure that undergraduate students will receive academic support for the duration of the strike. To do this, McCauley said the University intends to continue good faith bargaining with GEO and working to ensure that students receive accurate final grades for their Winter 2023 classes.
“Our school, college, and department leaders are planning for substitute instructors, alternative assignments, and other means for delivering instruction in the absence of graduate student instructors,” McCauley wrote. “Providing a high-quality educational experience for every student remains our top priority.”
Rackham student Sovoya Davis, a member of GEO, said the length of the strike will be dependent on the University’s response.
“The University of Michigan, they are responsible for this strike,” Davis said. “If they are willing to take bargaining seriously, and offer counter-proposals that actually show some movement, then I’m sure that the Union will do all that they can to be amenable to that. You know, nobody wants to strike, we care about our students a lot, so it really just depends on the University of Michigan.”
Daily News Editor Riley Hodder can be reached at rehodder@umich.edu.