University of Rochester Ph.D. students were striking on Thursday for the fourth day this week. They are continuing to push for University leaders to agree to a process for student workers to form a union.
Katie Gregory, an Ph.D. candidate in UR's Environmental Sciences program said that she’s been involved in unionizing efforts since 2022. In June that same year, gas prices in the U.S. spiked to $5.01 a gallon.
“We are low earners, so that was being felt very much here,” Gregory said on Wednesday afternoon at the picket line on Wilson Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue. “And it was in the post-COVID rent boom, where things were going back up again. So, it was a penny-pinching time, and I think it was like a moment to act.”
That action led to conversations and meetings with university administrators that reportedly stopped this past winter.
Halima Aweis, a fifth-year graduate student at UR’s School of Medicine, said a union is necessary because Ph.D. candidates need better health care benefits and higher pay that reflects the cost of living.
She said students, who often work as researchers and teaching assistants, are currently receiving $15,000 stipends annually for their work.
“To not have dental coverage for some students to not have all of the appropriate health care coverage ... It's just a slap in the face, I think,” Aweis said, leaning on a "Union Now!" sign she’d been carrying. “To better the hospital services, and to better the research and scientific community of this institution and this region and then to not receive coverage, it's really unfortunate.”
In a statement Thursday, a UR spokesperson said administrators are steadfast in the belief that entering into an election agreement is not in the university community’s best interests, nor is a strike.
“While the University respects students and employees’ right to participate in a strike consistent with federal labor laws, it nevertheless strongly believes that such action taken by Ph.D. students is neither in their best interest nor the most effective means of resolving the differences between the parties,” spokesperson Sara Miller wrote.
On the Friday leading up to the strike, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Nicole Sampson sent an email addressed to Ph.D. students announcing a policy requiring them to report their academic progress at the end of each week “in the event a strike occurs.”
Sampson noted that federal labor law permits employers to refrain from paying workers who withhold labor during a strike.
“The University has a responsibility to accurately compensate and to monitor the academic progress of graduate students who continue to perform their teaching or research appointment responsibilities during the strike,” Sampson wrote. “As well as to ensure compliance with federal grant effort reporting requirements.”
Gregory said that shook some Ph.D. students — international students, especially.
“The fear was aroused in international students disproportionately because their student status is directly related to the continuation of their academic progress,” Gregory said. “So implementing this measure on a Friday night at 6 p.m. knowing that our strike started on Monday, I don't think could really be called anything but union busting.”
Aweis said that’s part of her motivation for being on the picket line.
“A number of my colleagues wish they could be out here, namely international workers, and they're struggling with facing a harsh reality of threats to their visa, deportation," Aweis said. “Specifically today, I'm out here for all of the students who can't be out here.”
The Provost’s Office sent another email to Ph.D. students on Wednesday afternoon stating that because the strike has not “materially affected the university’s research or academic missions,” the weekly electronic reporting policy would not take effect.
Instead, at this time, our regular, department-level systems that are already in place to assess teaching and academic efforts and progress to ensure regulatory compliance will remain in place,” Sampson wrote. “To the extent this changes, we will let you know.”
Aweis calls the university’s ongoing response to graduate workers attempts to unionize “anti-democratic.”
"What's astounding is that we can't even get to the stages of doing the election, of seeing what our fellow graduate workers would have wanted to vote for when it comes to a union,” Aweis said. “The fact that we can't even take the steps towards that path, it makes no sense.”
