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At its Feb. 8 march to gain official recognition, Syracuse Graduate Employees United set Monday as the final day for Syracuse University to voluntarily recognize it as a union before it would file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. As of Tuesday at 12:15 a.m., SU has not publicly recognized the union.

SGEU has not released a statement, but members confirmed with The Daily Orange on Monday afternoon that the union would publicly address its status with the university this week.

SGEU previously stated its plans to file the election with the NLRB in Buffalo if the university did not recognize the union. SGEU, which launched its campaign for recognition on Jan. 17, hopes to improve low stipend pay, healthcare plans, workload demands and expanded protections for graduate workers, as it outlined in a press release from the launch.

At the march across campus, SGEU members delivered a letter stating their goals to Gretchen Ritter, SU’s vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer, outside of Crouse-Hinds Hall. Fourteen other campus and community organizations delivered letters alongside SGEU’s, which directed its call for recognition to Ritter, Chancellor Kent Syverud and SU’s Board of Trustees.

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Michelle Tynan, a graduate student worker in the Food Studies department, read the letter aloud during the march before handing it to Ritter.

“We research, teach, grade papers, projects, and exams, serve on committees, supervise field placements, and perform other essential functions to not only keep this university running, but also to maintain its R-1 research status,” Tynan said during the Feb. 8 march. “SU works because we do.”

Sam Call and Cassidy Thomas, members of SGEU’s organizing committee, said at an SGEU union orientation on Tuesday that the group had not heard from SU’s administration since Feb. 8.

At the time, SGEU confirmed that a majority of members had signed union authorization cards, which Thomas said identifies that the organization is approaching a “super-majority” status.

On Wednesday, SGEU asked graduate workers, faculty and other community members to call Syverud’s office throughout the day to urge SU’s voluntary recognition of the union.

SGEU highlighted union victories for graduate workers at other colleges and universities during the Tuesday union orientation event. In the letter addressed to Ritter, SGEU asked SU to follow the examples at other institutions like New York University, Brown University and Georgetown University.

In the event that a union election is filed, SGEU plans to work with all graduate students to select people, including students who do not sign union authorization cards, to represent the unionization effort in negotiations with the university.

Published on February 21, 2023 at 12:15 am

Contact Dominic: [email protected] | @DominicChiappo2