Michigan Teaching Assistants Vote to Create Graduate Union

Graduate students holding teaching and research positions at the University of Michigan voted last week to unionize.

The vote made the Michigan graduate students the second university group in the country to take such a step. University of Wisconsin graduate students created the first union in 1970.

Efforts by graduate students at Harvard to get University recognition for a graduate student union have failed. Don Ospovat, an organizer for the 1973 Graduate Student and Teaching Fellows Union strike, said yesterday that the group gave up trying to unionize. Harvard graduate students last fall.

At Michigan, the Graduate Employees Organization is now the students' sole bargaining agent in dealing with the Michigan administration.

Sandy Silberstin, chairman of the organization, said yesterday, "We are not totally optimistic that the administration will bargain with us."

Legally Bound

"The university agreed to negotiate with a bargaining unit if we had a consent election," Silberstein said. "Now it is legally bound to do so."

James Thiry, manager of staff and union relations for the university, said yesterday, "We are at this point waiting for the GEO to request that bargaining begin."

"It is our intention to bargain with them," he added.

Silberstein said the administration's decisions to increase tuition, to cut some graduate student salaries and to deny cost-of-living increases to other students precipitated the movement toward unionization.

"We are also seeking job security, improved working conditions and input into research and teaching," she added.

Approximately 60 per cent of the university's 2200 teaching assistants, graduate teaching assistants and research assistants voted in the election.

The organization consists of student representatives from 30 departments and other "ad hoc" members.