Graduate Student Workers Vote “Yes” To Unionize

By Zeke Shomler

After a two-week online voting window, the vote is in: graduate student workers at UA have overwhelmingly voted to form a union. UA Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Research Fellows, and hourly employees who are students at the graduate level will be represented by AGWA-UAW.

More than 72% of all UA graduate workers participated in the vote. The final tally was 314 to 11 in favor: over 96% “yes” votes. 

The next step will be to begin negotiating a contract between AGWA and UAF administration. Hopefully this will be quick, but contract negotiations are not known to be a speedy process.

Regardless of the future timeline, this is doubtlessly an incredibly important moment for the state of labor relations at UAF.