November 15, 2018
Request for a Negotiated Election Agreement That Protects Our Rights from Trump
Dear President Aoun and Provost Bean,
It has been nearly 9 months since your representatives walked away from discussions with us over a fair union election agreement. Our union maintains majority support among graduate students and we reiterate our demand that the university come back to the table and negotiate for a fair election.
An agreement on a fair process towards union recognition will protect working graduate students’ legal right to decide democratically whether we want to join together as a union. We ask you to return to the table and agree to respect the result of an election without appealing our right to form a union to the NLRB. Without such an agreement, Northeastern is choosing to side with the Trump administration, whose appointees on the NLRB could take away our legal right to organize a union. We want real, good faith negotiations between representatives of our union and your administration toward a mutually agreeable election process that protects our rights.
As we have communicated previously, more than a majority of graduate student TAs and RAs have agreed we would like to have a democratic voice in our workplace.
Northeastern is increasingly becoming an outlier in refusing to allow graduate workers a fair unionization election. Just in the last year, successful unionization efforts at Georgetown, Brandeis, Tufts, Brown, and Harvard show that it is possible for private universities to work with their graduate workforces through fair, democratic elections and good faith negotiations. In its opposition to unionization, Northeastern has spent significant resources that we believe should instead be invested in our academic community.
We urge you to negotiate in good faith with all workers on campus. Allowing our unionization campaigns to move forward without threat of appeal to the Trump NLRB will lead to Northeastern becoming a more equitable and successful institution.
We look forward to your prompt response to nugradunion@gmail.comMembers of GENU-UAW