The result of the graduate student vote on unionization representation by the Service Employees International Union on Oct. 25 and 26 has not yet been announced by the National Labor Relations Board due to the number of challenged ballots in the total count.

A reported 216 graduate students voted against Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representation while 174 students voted in favor of an SEIU union. In addition to those 390 ballots, 174 have been challenged.

Olivia Szymanski | Student Life

Graduate students flood Brookings Quadrangle in rally held in September for the right to unionize.

A challenged ballot is one cast by an individual whose eligibility to vote has been questioned. According to an Oct. 16 announcement from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), “If your eligibility to vote is challenged, you will be allowed to vote a challenged ballot.”

In this announcement, the NLRB, who oversaw the election, judged that all graduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences working towards a Ph.D. degree who are employed to “provide instructional services in undergraduate or graduate classrooms or labs” were eligible to vote.

In addition to this announcement, a contract between the University and SEIU from April 2016 stated that to be considered in the graduate student bargaining unit, the student’s teaching responsibilities could not be specifically outlined in their degree program.

At the time of the vote, the NLRB had not determined if students in master’s programs throughout the University and Ph.D. candidates in the Institute of Materials Science & Engineering were to be included in the bargaining unit.While they were eligible to vote, their ballots would automatically be challenged.

Jiyoon Kang | Student Life

A graduate student holds up a sign outside the Danforth University Center.

A statement from William Tate, dean of the Graduate School, reported that 173 ballots were challenged by SEIU, and one had been challenged by Washington University. As per its policy, the NLRB will judge the legitimacy of those challenged votes.

According to Tate, the University provided SEIU with a list of students eligible to vote prior to the election, which the union declined to review.

“There was no discretion on our part [when compiling who was eligible to vote] and, in fact, the union had an opportunity to review the list and raise any concerns prior to the election,” Tate said. “Instead of working through the NLRB to resolve potential issues before the window opened for ballot casting, the union opted to wait until after the election.”

This confusion concerning voter eligibility led to some students being unsure if their vote would count.

Olivia Szymanski | Student Life

Students walk from the DUC to the quad. Students filled 390 ballots for the right to unionize Oct. 25 and 26, and a reported 216 students voted against Service Employees International Union representation, while 174 ballots were cast in favor of unionization.

“One of my friends in my lab is an international student in his last year, and the union people told him that he can’t vote, but the University told him that he could,” third-year cognitive neuroscience graduate student Christopher Zerr said. “I think the union told him that, because he was in his last year or because he’s on a dissertation fellowship, he’s not allowed to vote, which we were confused as to why that would be the case.”

According to Zerr, there was also turmoil surrounding when the vote would take place.

“My friends who were pro-union and explicitly said that they were going to vote ‘yes’ for the union had heard from the union and other people that there was going to be a vote,” Zerr said. “I didn’t find out about the vote until Wednesday or Thursday when one of my pro-union friends told me and the University sent out an email.”

The effort to unionize, which has been debated within the graduate school over the past few weeks, has been openly opposed by the University. Due to the contentious nature of the election, the close vote itself did not come as a shock to Zerr.

“I knew it was going to be pretty close,” Zerr said. “I’m not surprised just because, through talking with people, it’s not that they’re vehemently voting against this, it’s that the question became not ‘Do I want a union?’ [but] ‘If we are going to have a union, do we want SEIU to represent us?’”

Zerr emphasized the importance of recognizing and understanding how any final decision either way would affect all graduate students.

“The biggest thing was to frame this vote as not just as ourselves voting but also how our decision will impact all the grad students, since they would be bound by this vote because the union is hard to overturn,” Zerr said.

The final outcome of the election will be decided when the NLRB determines the legitimacy of the 174 challenged votes.

Editor’s Note: This article and headline have been updated to reflect that the the 174 challenged ballots are in addition to the 390 (216-174) votes. The headline has also been updated to note that the vote is not finalized.