SGWU Right to Strike

SGWU Guidance Regarding Graduate Workers’ Legal Right to Strike

Since last November, the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) has been negotiating their first contract with the university. Recently, the negotiations have come to a head as Stanford has offered a 4.5% raise for a majority of graduate workers, which barely matches their 4.5% rent increase and falls short of the 7% meal plan cost increase. As a result, SGWU launched a strike authorization vote last week that concluded on November 6th. With the possibility of a strike looming, Stanford has circulated guidance on their website. Unfortunately, much of that guidance could easily lead faculty to perform unlawful retaliation. Both graduate workers and faculty members have a vested interest in avoiding this misinformation and maintaining cordial relations, so we wanted to clarify our understanding of the law.

First, the guidance claims that students must continue 20 hours/week of academic work. However, according to Stanford’s own contingency plan regarding employment and academic work, “for many PhD students it is impossible to fully separate the two.” According to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a “partial strike” or ceasing to only perform certain duties as opposed to a full work stoppage, is not protected activity. As a result, if we were to perform duties that encompass both academics and employment (e.g., attending group meetings), we would risk performing an illegal strike. For their own legal protection, we recommend graduate workers limit their academic work during the strike to that which is clearly not employment related.

In summary, we believe that only attending courses, dissertation, and qualification preparation are purely academic work that can be performed during a strike without risk of violating the NLRA. Furthermore, it is our stance that docking workers’ research or teaching credits as a response to strike activity is unlawful retaliation, and SGWU will not stand for this behavior.

Second, there has been messaging from some departments that workers performing hourly work are not bargaining unit members and should not strike. Masters or PhDs performing hourly work or instructional appointments are in the bargaining unit. Unlike the inclusion of fellows, this is not up for debate. The most obvious example of this is that the University has already negotiated an hourly rate for those appointments, which they would not do if those employees were not in the bargaining unit. Additionally, other employees can strike in many situations as “protected concerted activity” even if they are not in the bargaining unit.

As another legal miscommunication, it is true that fellows are not currently included in the bargaining unit, but NLRB Case No. 01-RC-304042 (MIT) invites “filing a new petition seeking to represent particular subclassifications of graduate fellows who are statutory employees … under the common-law standard set forth in Columbia University”. Since fellows at Stanford perform instructional and/or research duties, it is clear that they meet the Columbia standard. Further, most fellows will be a part of the bargaining unit at some point in their graduate career and receive the same wages as non-fellows.The fellows striking would fall under “protected concerted activity” and be legally guaranteed freedom from retaliation by their employer.

Our position as the union is that postdocs, teaching, and research staff on campus have an interest in us receiving a raise, as they would likely receive a pay bump themselves to avoid making less or close to grad worker wages. Therefore, their striking is also covered under ‘protected concerted activity’. Additionally, refusing to cross an established picket line at one’s workplace is protected by the NLRB unless there is an existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) prohibiting such activities. Stanford postdocs and staff scientists do not currently have a CBA, so this protection applies to them. As the only other requirement to form a bargaining unit is that the employees do not perform supervisory or managerial duties, a faculty strike is the one exception that would not fall under protected concerted activity.

To any faculty reading this communication, we want to remind you that this dispute is between the graduate workers and university administration, and the exercising of our labor rights is not targeted at faculty in any way. With that in mind, we hope you can commit to an environment free from retaliation for the duration of the strike. We believe that the best way for faculty to navigate these pressures is to commit to a neutral stance. If you’d like to do so, you can sign the faculty pledge.

To any Stanford administrators, we recommend you revise your guidance to avoid potential unlawful retaliation and other union busting activity on campus.

To graduate workers, we encourage you to exercise your labor rights to their fullest extent in the face of this attempted intimidation by the university. If at any point you face retaliation, please report it using SGWU's confidential form. These legal protections apply to all workers in the US, including international graduate workers.

To others in the Stanford community, we would welcome solidarity actions such as joining us on the picket line if you are willing and able.

Check out our Strike FAQs (long and short) for more details. Of course, our goal remains to negotiate a fair contract without resorting to a strike, so we hope that Stanford sufficiently improves their offer to make this possible.

SGWU website: https://sgwu.us