The Washington University Graduate Workers Union delivered approximately 500 Valentine’s Day-inspired cards to Provost Holden Thorp’s office to advocate for what they argue are their rights on campus as graduate students Feb. 14.

“The purpose of this demonstration was to express to the administration what graduate students believe are our needs and rights,” fifth-year Ph.D. candidate Sarah Siegel said. “Instead of being silenced, we decided to create valentines to explain to the administration what graduate student workers need.”

The issues addressed included revisions of healthcare policies, guaranteed funding for summer research and increased leave for parents, according to Siegel.

Courtesy of Fossil Free Wash U

The Graduate Workers Union delivered Valentine’s Day-themed letters to Provost Holden Thorp’s office, demanding what they see as their rights on campus, Wednesday.

“They have asked to meet with us a couple of times, and we’ve said no,” Thorp said. “The reason is that if they’re calling themselves a union, [and] they meet with us, that becomes a meeting that is governed by the laws around collective bargaining. Since they’re not a union that has been elected by a majority of whatever bargaining unit they may be representing, then we don’t feel that we should meet with them because we don’t want to create any confusion about whether there’s a union when there hasn’t been an election.”

Following the pulling of the union petition with the National Labor Relations Board, Washington University Graduate Workers Union (WUGWU) is now classified as a minority union because while they receive strategizing and material support by the Service Employees International Union Local 1 (SEIU), they were not elected by a majority bargaining unit. As a part of the union’s 15-person organizing committee, graduate student Sarah Crosley believes the minority union has been a successful alternative.

“We pulled the petition at the end of last semester so that we didn’t have to continue fighting Wash. U.’s limitless legal support and legal resources and opted instead to continue building on the momentum that we saw on campus in a more direct way,” Crosley said. “So we don’t do collective bargaining; we work through direct action and putting public pressure on the University to make changes that will better graduate student workers’ lives.”

By Siegel’s estimations, 40 graduate and undergraduate students gathered outside Brookings Hall with their valentines. From there, they went to Thorp’s office, where the valentines were left in front of his personal office door.

“[Washington University Graduate Workers Union] had written to me, asking if I would be here. I was over at the Day of Discovery and Dialogue, so I told them I was going to be out of the office all day,” Thorp said. “So, I knew they’d be bringing me something, and they said it would be valentines.”

In addition to members of WUGWU, allies from the undergraduate groups Asian Pacific Islanders Demanding Justice and Fossil Free WashU contributed in writing their own valentines both advocating for their own group’s mission and supporting WUGWU.

“Several of their members connected with ours to talk about a potential collaboration, since we have worked together in the past,” sophomore and Fossil Free WashU member Allie Lindstrom said. “[The demonstration] was very simple [because] we know that we believe in each other’s causes as groups.”

Courtesy of Sarah Seigel

A member of the Graduate Workers Union leads a rally in Brookings Quadrangle Feb. 14.

WUGWU collected valentines in the Danforth University Center a week before the rally, the same day it was announced that the healthcare policies of graduate students had been revised to decrease out-of-pocket maximums and add a subsidized dental insurance policy.

“The Graduate Council has been asking for improvements in dental and vision in the health insurance contract for some time. The SEIU-represented group was also arguing for that, so we were getting multiple people telling us that’s what they wanted,” Thorp said. “I think lots of graduate students have raised our attention about this but certainly the collective bargaining process—this was very much on our radar. So, I’m not surprised they’re giving themselves credit for it. If I were them, I would be too.”

According to Siegel, this “win” is a direct result of WUGWU’s direct-action campaigning.

“There have been graduate student groups working on insurance since before I got to campus, and I’ve been here for five years. I’m confident that the reason these changes are happening now is because of our graduate student worker direct action campaign,” Siegel said. “Without all this pressure and this spotlight on graduate student issues, there’s really no reason for the administration to move forward.”

The next priority, according to Siegel, is guaranteeing funding for students’ summer research.

“As of right now, most graduate students are left in limbo. [So] like even right now, it’s mid-February; I have no idea how much summer funding I’m going to get,” Siegel said. “It’s really in everyone’s best interest to fund us over the summer [because] our scholarship will be better, [and] we’ll make sure that we graduate on time, so we’re pushing for guaranteed funding for all graduate students.”

Thorp emphasized that graduate students should use existing channels of communication to effectively advocate for issues they feel are important to their studies.

“We look forward to engaging with any graduate student who wants to talk with us about that; the right thing now is to figure out the next thing we ought to work on,” Thorp said. “The formal way to do that would be with the Graduate Student Council.”

Although administrators have made clear that they are open to working with graduate students on an individual basis, Crosley doesn’t believe this is an effective way to enact change.

“I find it really frustrating that the University has taken this stance, and part of the rationale for forming a union is because the reality of individual students coming one-by-one to an administrator and saying, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if we had vision [insurance]?’ is not something that would be productive. It doesn’t really create any sort of accountability for the administration to actually make any changes,” Crosley said.

Because these channels are advisory in nature, they are ineffective in producing tangible results, according to Siegel.

“They give this sort of roundabout answer that we need to go through established communication channels, but the entire point of our union and having these meetings is that those established communication channels have not produced any changes,” Siegel said. “What produces changes is the direct action campaigning that we’ve been doing. We’ve all been doing that for years. Established channels haven’t been working, [but] we’ve been getting very clear results with these direct action campaigns.”

Additional reporting by Olivia Szymanski.