ITHACA, N.Y.—Cornell University graduate students voted in a landslide to unionize this week.
Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU) announced Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, that 96% of the 1,953 votes cast were in favor of unionizing at the Ivy League university.
“It feels amazing,” said Connor Davis, an organizer with CGSU and a third-year Ph.D. student in applied physics.
Davis said, “Across every department from the humanities to STEM to social sciences, we’ve all resoundingly concluded that a union is the best way to improve our lives.”
The successful union drive at Cornell comes after a failed effort in 2017, and the university violating labor law in 2018 in the lead up to the 2017 unionization election.
CGSU will be represented by the labor union United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The union has come to represent a wave of new graduate student unions that have formed at universities in the last two years, including the University of Chicago, New Mexico State University, and John Hopkins University.
Graduate student organizers announced their union campaign during a rally in front of Cornell’s Bailey Hall on Sept. 6. Hundreds of graduate student workers were in attendance. The election, held from Nov. 6 to Nov. 8, was open to graduate students across the university’s Ithaca, Geneva, and New York City Cornell Tech campuses.
In a Q&A page on the university’s Graduate School website, Cornell publicly committed to “bargain in good faith towards reaching a contract” if graduate students voted successfully to form a union.
Joel Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, told The Cornell Daily Sun, “We look forward to negotiating a collective bargaining agreement that reflects Cornell’s values and addresses the needs of our students.”
Davis said that the union is “looking forward to having a productive working relationship with Cornell and meeting them at the bargaining table.”
Union organizers have advocated that collectively bargaining with Cornell will be a path for graduate student to address issues ranging from improving the university’s services for foreign students studying on a visa, to assisting grad students with the cost of transportation, such as Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit’s bus services or parking on campus.
In addition to improved wages and compensation, CGSU has also promised to advocate that Cornell provide dental and vision insurance to graduate students “at no extra cost.”
The minimum standard 9-month stipend for graduate students at Cornell is between $32,494 and $40,294, according to Cornell’s Graduate School website. Additional summer stipends are also available for graduate students, but CGSU states on its website the compensation that workers receive “must keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living” in the Ithaca area.
A recent study by researchers with Cornell’s Industrial Labor Relations school determined a living wage in Tompkins County in 2023 to be $18.45, or $38,373 a year. — a startling 11% jump from 2022.
The living wage is calculated to determine what hourly wage someone working 40 hours a week needs to make in order to meet the costs of living in Tompkins County. Graduate students have stressed that they often work in excess of 40 hours a week.
“It really just brings me so much excitement and joy to bring this home and for a union that can really understand and improve the lives of grad workers,” Davis said.