All Teaching Assistants (TAs), Teaching Fellows (TFs), Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs) and Graduate Student Assistants (GSAs) at Pitt are eligible to be in our union.

Unfunded grad students, grads on external fellowships, and grads on training grants are ineligible because they are not directly employed by the University.
 
If you have questions about your own eligibility or want to know more about how the state labor board made this decision, get in touch! If you’re not eligible this semester but believe you will be next semester or next year, sign your union card and stay in touch with us! We know a lot of grads move in and out of different funding sources. One of our priorities as a union will be to promote funding grad student security across the university.

Graduate workers typically choose to organize with a larger labor union, such as the United Steelworkers (USW). The grad workers who started this union chose the USW because it is an extremely democratic union with a strong presence among professionals and in higher education, both in Pittsburgh and on Pitt’s campus. USW’s expertise is in building strong local unions and empowering workers to advocate for themselves and each other, giving us resources that will help us to secure the best possible contract and grow the strongest possible union for grad workers.

As employees, we have the absolute right, protected by Pennsylvania state law, to organize and join a union to negotiate with our employer over the terms and conditions of our employment. This includes our right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons, solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss the union with coworkers.
 
Supervisors, managers, and administrators cannot spy on you, coercively question you, threaten you, or bribe you regarding your union activity. You can't be fired, disciplined, demoted, expelled, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities: that's against state law.

Labor law protects all graduate student workers, including international students. International students have the same rights as U.S. citizens to participate in union activity. It is illegal for an employer to threaten an international student’s visa status for joining or supporting a union. Many grad union contracts create specific benefits, support, protections, and opportunities for international students. As international students at Pitt, we’ll be stronger and safer when we sign union cards and vote to form our grad workers union together.

Once we collectively ratify our contract, dues are 1.5 percent of our pay.

When we pay union dues we build the collective financial power to:

• Defend our international colleagues

• Ensure due process for our coworkers

• Enforce our contract

When you sign up to be a union member, you have an active say in shaping our collective future. Only union members can vote to ratify our historic first contract once it is tentatively agreed upon by the university administration and our elected bargaining committee. Once we ratify a union contract, we will charter a local union with the United Steelworkers. Only union members can run for leadership positions, vote in union elections, and attend general membership meetings.

In an effort to weaken public sector unions like ours, billionaires and corporations lobbied heavily to bring Janus v. AFSCME before the Supreme Court in 2018. As a result, public sector workers like us must actively choose to be enrolled in their union, instead of being automatically enrolled, which is common in the private sector. The Janus decision represents a concerted effort to weaken worker power. But the way we overcome this is by educating our coworkers on the importance of becoming union members. To get a fair contract, one that gives graduate workers the means to conduct groundbreaking research and be the best instructors we can, we must stay united and build a strong base of union members.

We can ensure the fastest and best contract by showing unity and building our support base. Becoming a member, encouraging your coworkers and lab mates to sign up, and coming to union meetings is the best way to demonstrate that we are united.