Graduate Employees' Organization 3550 (GEO 3550) is a labor union representing the over 2,000 Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) and Graduate Student Staff Assistants (GSSAs) on the three campuses that make up the University of Michigan (U-M).
Organizing for a graduate student union at U-M began in the 1970s. They were first certified as the official union representing GSIs, GSSAs, and Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) at U-M on April 15, 1974, and they won their first contract the next year. GEO 3550 is one of the oldest graduate student unions in the United States. GEO 3550 is affiliated with the Michigan and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and, through AFT, with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
GEO 3550's "mission is to represent, advocate for, and organize graduate student workers and to build collective power in the pursuit of social & economic justice." In 2019, the union's Steward's Council adopted the following nine guiding principals: Represent, Advocate For, Organize, Collective Bargaining, Democracy, Social Justice, Solidarity, Community, Education & Research.
GEO 3550 has been actively negotiating contracts since their first contract in 1975.
Organization
Union structure According to the GEO 3550 constitution, all graduate students at U-M are eligible to become members of the union, and all union decisions besides those enumerated in the constitution are to be made by the membership. Although all graduate students are eligible to become members of the union, the union's bargaining unit is composed of only those graduate students who are actively employed as GSIs or GSSAs.
The union's constitutional officers include a President, a vice-president, a Secretary, and a Treasurer, all of whom are elected every year by a majority vote at a general membership meeting. The union also has a Steward's Council, composed of department-level representatives, which exists "to oversee the implementation of Organizational policy as directed by the membership."
The Steward's Council is also empowered to both create and dissolve standing committees by majority vote. The examples of standing committees are:
Financial Committee: The only committee chaired by a constitutional officer, the Treasurer, Financial Committee oversees union spending and financial policy. Grievance Committee: Grievance Committee works with members in navigating the grievance process outlined in the union contract to resolve workplace issues. Contract Committee: Contract Committee oversees the implementation of new contracts, education around members' contractual rights and benefits, the development of the union's bargaining platform, and the actual bargaining over new contracts. Solidarity and Political Action Committee: Solidarity and Political Action Committee manages the union's relationships with other labor unions and community organizations, organizes member support for solidarity campaigns, and presents recommendations for union endorsements in local electoral campaigns.
Union members also maintain several caucuses that organize around specific issues. Some examples of caucuses include the BIPOC Caucus, the International GSI Caucus, the Feminist Caucus, the Housing Caucus, the Climate Caucus, and the Abolition Caucus.
Contract cycles GEO 3550 operates on a three-year contract cycle. The first year after winning a new contract is considered an enforcement year, when the union focuses on enforcing contract wins through grievance procedures and member education. The second year is considered a platform development year, when the union focuses on surveying member needs and priorities, and drafts new contract language to try and incorporate into the next contract. The third year is considered a bargaining year, when the union focuses on bargaining with the university's human resources representatives for a new contract.
History
Early organizing efforts Graduate students at the University of Michigan first threatened to form a labor union in 1966. At the time, the university employed about 900 "teaching fellows" (now GSIs) who were paid $2,400 per academic year. On April 10, 1966, a group of teaching fellows met with Allan F. Smith, the university's vice president for academic affairs, to demand a $1,200 raise, better communication with university administration, smaller class sizes, tuition relief. If their demands were not met, the teaching fellows threatened to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers. However, it was not until 1970 that U-M teaching fellows first petitioned the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) for a union election. This first effort was struck down, however, when MERC issued a decision agreeing with university administrators that, if teaching fellows were to be considered employees, they would have to be part of a unit alongside GSSAs and GSRAs. Rather than taking the decision to court, the teaching fellows decided to stop pursuing their unionization efforts.
Unionization efforts for graduate students at U-M did not pick up again until 1973 in response to several administration decisions including a 24% tuition increase. The tuition hike sparked a period of intense student organizing at the university with at least 3,000 students signing a tuition strike pledge started by the Student Action Committee and supported by the Student Government Council. The response by graduate students was the formation of the Organization of Teaching Fellows (OTF), who casually affiliated themselves with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). After a pay increase averted a potential strike, teaching fellows continued to organize and joined the university's GSRAs and GSSAs to form GEO and officially request a MERC election for the second time in their history. This time, the university agreed to a union election, and GEO was certified as the university's union for "Graduate Student Assistants" on April 15, 1974, by a vote of 807–424.
Fight for a first contract (19741976) Negotiations between GEO and U-M for the union's first contract began in June 1974. An early point of contention in the bargaining process was an 8% raise given to faculty but not teaching fellows despite promises made by the university. After delivering the raise to faculty, the university specified that they would only give the raise to teaching fellows if they dropped all other economic demands. This would have meant abandoning demands for equal pay for GSRAs and GSSAs, tuition waivers, and the standardization of wages across the university. GEO threatened to file an unfair labor charge against the university with MERC, but Vice President for Academic Affairs Allan F. Smith claimed U-M was justified in going back on its promise because the promise had been made before the union was certified. By November, GEO and the university were still far from reaching an agreement. In response to GEO's demand of an immediate 25% raise, the university offered an 8% raise over two years. In response to GEO's demand for tuition waivers for all graduate employees, the university offered to allow those currently paying out-of-state tuition to pay the lower in-state tuition. When the two parties still had not reached an agreement by February 1975, members voted 689–193 to authorize a strike. The strike continued until March 14, with graduate students initially picketing classroom buildings before shifting focus to blocking deliveries at service buildings as the number of students and faculty crossing the picket lines gradually increased as the strike wore on. The agreement, finalized through mediation with the MERC-appointed fact finder Patrick McDonald, included compromises on several GEO demands:
An immediate 8% raise retroactive to September followed by a 5.6% raise for the fall semester A tuition freeze at $440/semester Establishment of a union shop, meaning all graduate employees represented by the university were required to pay dues regardless of membership status, starting a year after the contract went into effect Implementation of affirmative action in hiring A non-discrimination clause that included not only race, creed, color and sex, but also sexual orientation and disability, rare additions at the time The ability to file grievances for more pay when a graduate student works in excess of their contracted hours A guarantee from the university to not retaliate against GEO's members and supporters for participation in the strike
Effects of the 1975 strike reverberated out into the wider Ann Arbor community, even influencing local legislation proposals. In March of that year, the Human Rights Party included the repeal of the law that criminalized disobeying a police officer's orders as part of its broader police reforms after several GEO members were arrested under that charge during the strike.
Just months after the first contract went into effect, GEO members raised alarms about the university's handling of its obligation to implement affirmative action in hiring that would foreshadow the difficult negotiations it would undertake the next year for its second contract. GEO had found that the university was labeling all racial minority and international students as "minorities" in order to inflate the number of minority employees presented by the university. GEO claimed that this violated both the agreement in their contract that required a breakdown of racial demographics into "Black, Asian, Native American, Chicano and other Spanish Surnamed" as well as then-president Robben Wright Fleming's directive in the university's 1973 affirmative action report to the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. GEO also claimed that the university violated the spirit of their agreement by not incorporating recruitment into their affirmative action efforts.
In an effort to give stability to the union, whose members frequently changed as new students enrolled and senior students graduated, 58% of voting GEO members decided on February 19, 1976, to accept the union's executive committee's recommendation to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers.
The student-employee question (19761981) Disagreements over affirmative action and non-discrimination protections plagued the negotiations over GEO's second contract that began in 1976. Although GEO pushed for the university to initiate recruitment efforts of women and minority students to fulfill the commitment to affirmative action made by the university in its first contract with the union, U-M negotiators maintained that they were only bound by federal requirements to collect data. With the second contract, the university also tried to revise the non-discrimination clause it had agreed to by getting rid of the specifically cited protected categories and replacing it with a blanket statement stating that its "departments will not discriminate against employees based on factors not specifically mentioned unless the University decides a certain factor interferes with job performance."
As the union and the university entered a stalemate in their bargaining sessions, GEO was also unable to tip the scales in their favor through a work stoppage like they had in 1975. On October 27, the union initiated a strike vote amongst its membership, but at the same time that membership voted in favor of sending out the strike ballots they also voted in favor of requiring a two-thirds majority as well as a minimum of 660 "yes" votes in order to trigger a strike instead of the constitutionally-required simple majority of those who vote. Ultimately, the strike vote failed and the union returned to the bargaining table.