Graduate workers postpone strike after bargaining ‘progress’

The Stanford Graduate Workers Union’s (SGWU) postponed the planned Tuesday strike after concluding contract negotiations with the University Monday evening, the union announced.

The union plans to resume bargaining on Tuesday morning. The strike is now scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

“After 14 hours of bargaining today, we have made progress on getting towards a resolution,” the bargaining committee wrote in an email to union members. “We are not quite there, but we think it is worthwhile to continue bargaining.”

On behalf of the University, Provost Jenny Martinez and Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs Stacey Bent wrote in an email to all students and faculty maintaining that all University operations including classes will continue as usual in event of a strike and outlined their proposed contract.

The email also stated that graduate teaching assistants who continue to work will undergo an “attestation process” through which the University will use to ensure they are paid, in the event of a strike.

To express dissatisfaction, after a year of negotiations with the University, SGWU passed a strike authorization vote last week, allowing the bargaining committee to call a strike at their discretion. On Monday, the University and SGWU’s bargaining committee entered their last negotiation session before their originally announced Tuesday strike.

“We are working hard to try to negotiate a deal on our contract which can avert a strike,” Chris Gustin, a member of the SGWU bargaining committee, wrote to The Daily on Monday. “To get this, we still need Stanford to move further towards addressing the needs of graduate workers.”

Gustin wrote that “if [that] does not happen, we are ready to begin our strike.”

The University is actively ready for a strike, Dee Mostofi, assistant vice president of University Media Relations and Communication Operations, wrote to The Daily Monday.

“If a strike occurs as announced by the union, classes and other university operations will continue,” she wrote. “We have been working to help faculty and instructors plan for the possibility of a strike in order to support continuity.”

University president Jon Levin ’94 said in an interview with The Daily in late October that a strike “is obviously not the desired outcome.”

“Our great students are going to be the highest paid in the world at the end of this negotiation, because our current offer already puts them above every other university in the country, and, to my knowledge, outside the U.S. as well,” Levin said.

The University initially refused to continue bargaining with the union after Thursday’s session, according to an email from Martinez and Bent last Thursday, where they demanded SGWU accept the University’s proposed wage rate before bargaining again on other unresolved issues including healthcare, housing and transportation. In a social media post, SGWU has since referred to this email as “anti-Union scare tactics.” 

After the break in negotiations, SGWU sent an email to all faculty members asking them to plead with the University to resume bargaining, organized picket lines and posted about the strike on social media using the hashtag #strikeready. 

“As we write this, Stanford has cut off bargaining. If you, like us, wish to avoid a strike please contact Provost Martinez and Vice Provost Bent asking them to come to the bargaining table with an improved offer,” the Union wrote in the email.

The union attributes the University’s decision to reopen negotiations Monday to “a surge of solidarity — from grad workers, faculty, other workers, undergrads — and media attention.”

While the University’s website states that fellows and coterminal students enrolled in graduate programs are not part of the SGWU and therefore cannot strike, the union asserts they can legally participate in a strike under “protected concerted activity” as defined by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

SGWU recommends that graduate workers participating in the strike limit their academic work to avoid overlapping with employment duties, which could risk engaging in an illegal partial strike under the NLRA. Their guidelines warn the University’s recommendation for graduate workers to continue fulfilling academic requirements may lead to illegal strike activities if those requirements overlap with employment responsibilities.

Both the University and SGWU encourage faculty to limit questions to their TAs and not to interfere or restrain the union’s activities, in accordance with National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) laws. In their email to faculty, SGWU emphasized that the strike is aimed at the University administration, not at faculty members. 

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