University of Maine Graduate Workers Ratify First Union Contract With a 99.3% Yes Vote

After more than two years of negotiations and internal organizing, the University of Maine Graduate Workers Union - UAW (UMGWU-UAW) Bargaining Committee reached a tentative agreement on a first union contract with the UMaine System administration. On Wednesday, Graduate Workers voted 438-3 in favor of ratifying the agreement. Contract provisions will go into effect once the UMS Board of Trustees has also ratified the agreement.

“I’m excited to finally have a union contract,” said Sophie Craig, PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Biomedical Science & Engineering. “We've been fighting for years to get to this point. Now Graduate Workers can see the improvements to our working conditions that we’ve been striving for.”

Kaia De Vries, masters student in the Maine Center for Research In STEM Education (RISE), pointed to economic improvements. “We’ve seen nothing but stagnant wages and inadequate healthcare for years. Now, finally, we’ll have some progress. Our minimum pay is going up by thousands of dollars a year, with many of us seeing 17 percent raises or more in the next year. Pay increases every year of the contract and significant improvements to our health, dental, and vision benefits is a huge step towards addressing our economic stress.”  The University of Maine Graduate Workers Union - UAW represents the 900+ graduate student workers across the University of Maine System. Graduate Workers teach classes, do world class research, and support the administrative functions of the University of Maine System campuses.

Affordable and reliable healthcare has been a struggle for Graduate Workers. Aurora Green, a research fellow in the department of psychology, commented “I’m one of the many who have fallen through the gaps of our Graduate Worker healthcare. This contract makes healthcare more affordable for everyone and ensures that graduate workers have a say in shaping future health plans, which is a massive step forward.”

Expanding protections for workers on visas was also a priority in union negotiations. “As an international graduate worker, I worry a lot about how graduate workers like me are more vulnerable than our US colleagues,” said Charlotte Begouen Demeaux, PhD Candidate in the School of Marine Sciences. “I’m looking forward to being able to go to work knowing both that there are strong contract protections for all international Graduate Workers and that we have our union to support us.”

Some graduate workers emphasized the importance of family-friendly benefits. Derek DeMello, PhD student and instructor in the History Department, is a Graduate Worker and parent. He said “Being a Graduate Worker parent is hard and having employer contributions to dependent healthcare for the first time is a major win. My family will be better off because of this contract.”

Maine AFL-CIO President Cynthia Phinney said the UMaine Grad Workers are "an inspiration to workers everywhere."

“Since they first began organizing four years ago, University of Maine Grad workers have never given up their struggle, even as negotiations dragged on for years and original member leaders graduated," said Phinney. "They have held rallies, circulated petitions, held sit-ins, and delivered letters to the Chancellor’s office. They enlisted the support of our pro-labor elected leaders and fellow union members from all over the state joined them in supporting their struggle. When weeks dragged into months and then into years, there were those who doubted they could do it, but they proved that workers can wield tremendous power when they band together in a union and refuse to give up the fight for fair wages, quality health care and a collective voice in the workplace."