Striking UM grad student instructors, university reach tentative agreement

DETROIT – Members of the University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees Organization and university leaders have a tentative contract agreement in place after a nearly five-month strike, according to union and university officials.

Graduate student instructors voted to authorize their bargaining team to start the ratification process with the university, the union announced Tuesday morning. Voting began late Monday, following hours of discussion on the university’s last and what it called “best” offer.

The official ratification vote will begin at noon on Tuesday and the results will be announced Friday. The GEO’s lead negotiator Evelyn Smith said the university’s most recent offer contains “historic wins.”

“The administration wants to take credit for these wins, but we know it wasn’t their generosity that got us here, but the power of an unprecedented member-driven long-haul strike,” said Smith.

The union, which represents roughly 2,300 graduate student instructors and staff assistants, has been on strike since March, the group’s longest labor stoppage since its founding in 1974. Negotiations have been going on since November and the organization’s previous contract expired in May.

Classes are scheduled to begin Monday and nearly 90% of undergraduate students are enrolled in courses taught or partially taught by a graduate student instructor or staff assistant, according to the university.

“We are extremely pleased that GEO members have voted to sign a tentative contract agreement with the university and move this matter forward for ratification,” university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said. “We look forward to learning the outcome of the contract ratification vote later this week and a smooth start to the academic year next week.”

The university’s most recent offer includes several concessions to GEO’s demands that the university had previously called unfeasible, Eno said. It contains proposals for paid childbirth leave, improved transgender health services and COVID-19 accommodation procedures.

The offer does not make any progress on achieving pay parity for graduate workers across all of UM’s campuses, union representatives said.

Salary has been the most contentious issue throughout negotiations and the university’s last proposal would give graduate workers in Ann Arbor a 20% raise and those in Dearborn a 10.5% raise over three years.

The university had previously said that a 20% raise for the 53 graduate student instructors on the Dearborn campus, as well as the Ann Arbor campus, was not feasible.