FAQs

A graduate worker union is an organization of graduate students who teach, research, and perform other essential jobs at a university. Thanks to us, the university generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from tuition and research grants. Unionizing gives us the power to negotiate our working conditions, because the university cannot function without our collective labor.

When we ask for dental insurance or increased wages individually, the university ignores us. When we all demand better working conditions together, we disrupt the status quo, and the university cannot ignore us. Collective bargaining is the process in which working people, through their unions, negotiate contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment, including pay, benefits, hours, leave, job health, and safety policies.

We can only win a strong contract if we work together. United, we bargain; divided, we beg.

A union contract is a legally binding agreement, known as a “collective bargaining agreement,” formed between the labor union and the employer, that codifies commitments from the employer about wages, working conditions, and rights on the job. After we win our union, we will have the right to negotiate a union contract with BU, and bring the issues we care most about to the bargaining table.

You can find our 2024-2027 contract here.

Union dues are regular contributions we make to fund the important functions of our union, like representing graduate workers who have workplace issues and negotiating new contracts. None of us will pay any union dues until a formal contract is negotiated with BU and approved by a democratic vote of graduate workers. After successfully negotiating a contract and ratifying it with a vote, graduate workers who join the union will begin paying dues at a rate of 1.5% of our compensation. It is unlikely that our colleagues would choose to vote to approve a contract that included lower raises than the cost of our dues. This means that, while union members will contribute a small portion of our compensation to the union, the benefits of having a union will already far outweigh the cost of the dues!

More information on dues is available here.

It is illegal for the university to retaliate against its workers for unionizing. Workers’ right to unionize is federally protected by the National Labor Relations Act. You cannot be fired, disciplined, or discriminated against in any way for participating in the union. In fact, it can be illegal for the University to even ask you about your support for or participation in the union.

Our union contract will be negotiated between graduate workers and the BU administration, not faculty. In general, faculty do not set our pay, benefits, or working conditions. While we encourage every worker to be public about their support, your support for the union can be completely private; you can sign a membership card and support the union without your advisor knowing at all. As shown by the many faculty and staff that signed the community support letter, many faculty advisors are supportive of our right to unionize because it means that their advisees will be teaching and doing research under better conditions.

Yes, we are! International grad workers have the same right to unionize as domestic grad workers. In fact across the U.S. international students are leading unionization efforts.

Hundreds! International students from every department at BU have joined BUGWU. You will be joining a very large community of fellow international students.

When we unionize, we gain the right to negotiate with BU to improve our working conditions. This would include things like a higher stipend, summer funding, and better healthcare, all of which are important to international students. We could also fight for international-student specific demands like the ones other universities have won:

• Georgetown, Harvard grads made the universities rehire people who experienced an interruption in their work authorization or immigration status
• UMass Amherst, Oregon State University workers won reimbursements from their universities for work authorization-related fees
• Harvard workers won remote work guarantees for individuals temporarily unable to enter the U.S.
• Harvard, UMass Amherst are now obligated to provide workers additional legal support by maintaining a list of immigration attorneys and paid legal aid

You’re not alone in this fear. Many of us who come from countries without strong labor protections shared similar concerns at first. Within the US, however:

• Under the National Labor Relations Act, workers of all citizenship, visa, and immigration statuses have the right to organize and join a union
• No employer is allowed to retaliate against you for union activity, eg. BU cannot threaten your visa if you unionize.

It is true that BU might decide to risk taking an illegal action. Universities regularly take advantage of our legal vulnerability, and workers are often punished for speaking up even when such retaliation is illegal. This is why at the end of the day, our willingness to fight for one another is our strongest protection. When we come together as thousands of international students, it is harder for BU to single anyone out for retaliation, and we have more power to fight back if BU does try to target someone unjustly.