About BUGWU
About the Bargaining Team
About BUGWU
We are over 3,500 graduate workers at Boston University. Our labor is vital to BU’s existence. We are in every school and department. We research, teach undergrads and grads, serve on committees, grade exams, and perform other essential functions for BU.
Boston University’s graduate student workers have been organizing for better working conditions and in solidarity with other workers across campus since as early as 1979, when they participated in a general strike alongside faculty, staff, librarians, and undergraduates.
Our current campaign began when graduate workers organized for a COVID-safe workplace in late 2020. An organizing committee of graduate workers representing various BU schools and departments interviewed several national unions interested in organizing with grad workers. After a democratic decision-making process in the summer of 2021, we voted to affiliate with SEIU 509, who also represents the adjuncts, salaried lecturers and now the residential advisors here at BU.
In the past 2 years, we have been steadily building majority support by having thousands of conversations with our peers and organizing successful campaigns around pay increases, safe COVID policies, and MBTA discounts. In July 2022, hundreds of us came together and decided to publicly begin a card campaign in September 2022 that would encourage grad workers to support organizing a union.
By October 2022, a supermajority of grad workers signed their union authorization cards and we filed for an election with the labor board. In December 2022, we held our election – and achieved a record-breaking win.
The results were 1,414 “union yes” votes to 28 “no” votes.
With 98.1% of voters choosing to form a union, we won by the largest margin ever seen in a private-sector union election for a bargaining unit with more than 1,000 workers.
About the Bargaining Team
We have elected a bargaining team to coordinate the contract negotiation process. The bargaining team is committed to representing the interests of all graduate workers; we believe the team itself should also be as representative as possible. Bargaining team seats are distributed across districts and schools according to the number of graduate workers in each section. Every identity- and affinity-based caucuses within the union is represented on the bargaining team, both in dedicated caucus seats and throughout the team.
Current bargaining team seats and their corresponding members:
- GRS, Humanities & Social Sciences District: Meiya Sparks & Hannah Howard
- GRS, STEM District: Shalom Entner, Amulya Shastry, & Joseph Guidry
- ENG: Sydney Bailes & Joshua Dupaty
- CFA, COM, QST, SSW, STH, Wheelock: Stacey Yuen, Katie Meyer, Sophie Lewis, & Megan Nizza
- Law, Hospitality, Pardee, MET, Sargent: Jacob Bezner, Nana Boateng, & Paris Gappmayr
- BUMC (GMS, SPH, Medicine, Dental): Kayla Brown, Patrick Koval, & Laura Marshall
- At-large: Casey Grippo, Jaira Koh, Alex Lion, Neila Gross, & Ryan Marshall
- Parents and Caregivers Caucus: Sarah Hopkinson
- Black Students Caucus: Riana Howard
- Caucus for Disabled, Chronically Ill, and Neurodivergent Grad Workers: Rotating seat
- Queer Graduate Workers Caucus: Rotating seat
The bargaining team (and all interested grad workers who wish to attend) will meet with BU approximately biweekly at bargaining sessions. The bargaining team’s responsibilities will be to:
- Present and explain proposals.
- Discuss proposals amongst union members.
- Offer counter-proposals.
- Answer questions.
- Repeat until we reach a tentative agreement.
BUGWU is all of us
Our historic victory shows that grad workers at Boston University want a say in our lives. With our union federally certified, we have won the right to negotiate with BU over the terms of our employment. Bargaining for a contract will be a democratic process — all members of our union will have their voices heard.