Arts and Sciences graduate students ratify first contract in unanimous vote

Graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences (A&S) unanimously voted to ratify their first contract with the administration Thursday, making Tufts the third private university in the United States to have a recognized graduate student union under contract.

Voting took place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Mayer Campus Center, after which the votes were counted and the results were announced. The union did not disclose how many ballots were cast, though 270 graduate students were eligible to vote, according to Ryan Napier, a Ph.D. candidate in English and member of the union bargaining committee.

Two representatives from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509, Matt Dauphin and Cory Bombredi, along with several graduate students, helped administer the vote. Anna Phillips and Alec Drobac, both Ph.D. candidates in physics, counted the ballots.

Phillips, a sixth-year graduate student, said that she has been working on the unionization effort at Tufts since 2016, shortly after a National Labor Relations Board decision granted graduate students at private universities the right to unionize.

Phillips noted the difficulty of generating long-term commitment to the cause since many graduate students do not expect to be at the university for more than a few years.

“It poses challenges for the unionization effort that we are a transitory unit,” she said following Thursday's vote. “But I’m glad to have seen it all the way through. It’s really exciting to see two years of effort pay off.”

Graduate students voted to form a union in May 2017. Negotiations of a contract with Tufts began in December 2017, according to Andrew Farnitano, a spokesperson for SEIU Local 509. The negotiations were conducted by a bargaining committee of 18 graduate students from various departments, according to Napier.

The contract, which expires in June 2023, includes an increase of 12 to 19 percent in the minimum stipend for graduate workers in each department over the next four years. Benefits to graduate students also include 12 weeks of paid parental leave and the option to request a sixth year of health insurance, according to a document summarizing the terms of the contract.

“It’s very fulfilling to see that the people who voted unanimously agreed with the work that we put in. They like what we did for them,” Ashlynn Keller, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology and a member of the graduate student union bargaining committee, said.

With this vote to ratify, A&S graduate students join their peers at New York University and Brandeis University in inking contracts with their respective administrations. Graduate students at other private universities, including Harvard University and American University, are also in the midst of formal contract negotiations.

Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of public relations, told the Daily in an email before the ratification vote that the university respects and appreciates graduate students.

“We’re pleased that the parties have been able to reach tentative agreement on most key articles, and we continue to work with the union towards completing and ratifying the agreement,” Collins said.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified one of the Service Employees International Union Local 509 representatives who administered the vote as Corey Durham, rather than Cory Bombredi. The article has been updated to reflect this change. The Daily regrets this error.

Editor’s note: Additional coverage of the graduate students union's vote to ratify its contract with the university will be published Monday.