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Piril Nergis is a doctoral student at USC but joined picket lines at UCLA to support the recent strike of University of California academic workers.<\/a> Solidarity trumped crosstown rivalry in what Nergis said was an electrifying experience that helped fire up union organizing efforts among USC\u2019s own graduate students.<\/p>\n Sam Ponnada, a doctoral candidate helping organize a union at Caltech was surprised by an unexpected campus decision last month to increase graduate student stipends by 17% \u2014 a major raise the university said was an independent decision, but \u201cseveral of us can\u2019t help but notice … happened right after the big UC strike,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n And at the Rand Corp.’s graduate school in Santa Monica, David DeSmet said he and fellow doctoral students were inspired to organize with the United Auto Workers after reading about UC graduate student researchers forming their first union and winning \u201creally dang good\u201d wage gains. <\/p>\n The UC strike is over,<\/a> culminating last month in significant improvements in wages and working conditions after 48,000 teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and postdoctoral scholars walked off their jobs in the nation\u2019s largest labor action of academic workers. But the effects of the historic strike still reverberate across the nation, helping energize an unprecedented surge of union activism among academic workers that could reshape the teaching and research enterprise of American higher education.<\/p>\n In 2022 alone, graduate students representing 30,000 peers at nearly a dozen institutions filed documents with the National Labor Relations Board<\/a> for a union election. They include USC, Northwestern, Yale, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Caltech plans to officially kick off its organizing campaign this month, and other academic researchers are working to form unions at the University of Alaska<\/a>, Western Washington University<\/a>, the National Institutes of Health <\/a>and such influential think tanks as the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute<\/a>. <\/p>\n A confluence of several factors has propelled the burst of labor activism: disaffection with rising inflation, unaffordable housing<\/a>, limited healthcare, growing student debt, university treatment of academic workers during the pandemic, and a more union-friendly Biden administration. But students and labor experts also point to the influence of the UC strike, which drew national attention by marshaling four UAW bargaining units on all 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to pull off a massive walkout that shut down classes, suspended research, roiled finals and upended grading<\/a> \u2014 ultimately winning some of the largest wage gains ever secured by academic workers. <\/p>\n \u201cOnce you see a university system this large come together and demand livable wages, better benefits … then you\u2019re going to see it across the nation,\u201d said Melissa Atkins, a labor and employment partner at Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be just a ripple effect of university grad students wanting what California obtained.\u201d<\/p>\n UC academic workers ended their six-week strike Dec. 23 after scoring groundbreaking protections against bullying and harassment, financial support for child care, dependent healthcare for certain eligible workers and what the majority of union members regard as significant wage gains. <\/p>\n For academic student employees in UAW 2865,<\/a> the new contract will raise minimum pay from about $23,250 to about $34,000 for nine months of part-time work by Oct. 1, 2024. The rate at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UCLA would be $36,500, a distinction criticized as inequitable<\/a> by some union members, but justified by supporters to account for the high cost of living in these cities and higher pay needed to compete for top talent.<\/p>\n Graduate student researchers in SRU-UAW<\/a> would make a minimum of $34,564.50 for nine months of part-time work by Oct. 1, 2024, under a new six-point salary scale. Postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers in UAW 5810<\/a> boosted their minimum pay to $70,000 with adjustments, among the highest in the nation. <\/p>\n Those wage gains have upped the ante among universities that fiercely compete for the best research talent. At the University of Washington, campus negotiators in November made an opening offer to significantly raise the minimum pay for postdoctoral workers to about $65,000 from the current $53,760. A campus spokesman said the offer was not related to the UC strike, but a UW union leader said the California system\u2019s labor action has been important in other ways.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say for sure whether admin made that proposal because of the UC strike, but we certainly don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence,\u201d Sam Sumpter, president of the UW academic worker union, UAW 4121, said in an email. \u201cAnd I can definitely say that our members are paying attention to what UC academic workers have been able to achieve, and are taking a lot of inspiration from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Caltech announced last month that it would increase graduate student stipends from a minimum $38,500 to $41,000 for 2022-23 and to $45,000 for 2023-24. <\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that these adjustments will allow our students to manage their local expenses without undue financial stress, and … will position Caltech well to attract the most talented graduate students who will be recruited aggressively by our peers,\u201d Provost David A. Tirrell and Dean of Graduate Studies David C. Chan told faculty in the Dec. 15 email.<\/p>\n The raises reflect \u201cthe results of a thoughtful dialogue with graduate student leadership based on costs of attendance specific to Pasadena, independent of other events,\u201d said Shayna Chabner McKinney, a university spokesperson.<\/p>\n Last year, Princeton University announced a 25% increase in graduate student stipends, the largest one-year raise ever offered, to a range of $38,000 to $42,000 \u2014 just after academic workers ended a 10-week strike at Columbia and as union organizing took off at MIT.<\/p>\n The University of Pennsylvania also announced its largest one-year increase ever in minimum doctoral stipends \u2014 24% to $38,000 \u2014 beginning in 2023-24. Both Princeton and Penn also cited the need to remain competitive in the race to recruit top research talent.<\/p>\n \u201cThese big actions in higher ed don\u2019t just raise the bar for those institutions; they raise the bar everywhere for all grad students and postdocs,\u201d said Ponnada, the Caltech graduate student researcher in astrophysics. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of forcing a race to the top … to match the better pay, benefits and workplace conditions that academic unions are winning across the country.\u201d <\/p>\n Obstacles to university union campaigns <\/b><\/p>\n Academic workers have been trying to organize for decades but have been stymied by regulations and politics over the contentious issue of whether they are primarily students whose teaching and research work are part of their academic pursuits or employees with the right to form unions and bargain collectively. <\/p>\n Workers at public universities have had an easier time organizing, with UC\u2019s sheer size making it a leader in the effort. Teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison<\/a> were the first to win recognition as an independent employee bargaining unit in 1969. <\/p>\n After resisting academic worker unions for years, UC accepted the first one in 1999 after a systemwide strike <\/a>of teaching assistants, tutors and readers demanding recognition. A year later, UC negotiated the first contract with what became the nation\u2019s largest bargaining unit of academic workers \u2014 a \u201cwatershed moment\u201d involving more than 9,000 graduate students at the time, said Mike Miller, a former UCLA graduate student worker who now serves as UAW director for several western states.<\/p>\n UC academic workers formed the nation\u2019s first postdoctoral employee union in 2008, and student graduate researchers finally secured their own bargaining unit in 2021.<\/p>\n