In the capitalist era, higher education does not exist solely for the pursuit of knowledge and scientific progress. Universities, whether private or public, are first and foremost businesses. The commodities they offer the market are education and research. Universities exist to produce specialized workers for the labor market, while simultaneously producing research and new technologies that serve the interests of state and private corporations. Graduate students, as workers in training, see their labor utilized by the university in the production of research or as agents in the educational process.

The industrial research complex is a rather lucrative business. Earlier this year, the University of Michigan reported that it had received nearly $2.04 billion for research in the last fiscal year, including $1.17 billion from the federal government. The university’s financial success also directly benefits the companies that collaborate with it and ensure its operation. Michigan companies received $97.7 million from the university for their goods and services; those in Washtenaw County—where the University of Michigan is located—received $66.7 million on their own.

The interests of the university administration and those of graduates frequently conflict. The university has an interest in maintaining and expanding its profit margin, which derives from grants and funding from both private and state sources. Graduate students, who work while receiving scholarships, are de facto university workers and represent economic actors fighting for the improvement of their immediate material conditions.

The Graduate Employees Organization

The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) is a union representing more than 3,300 graduate employees and graduate students at the University of Michigan who assist with teaching and research. It is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT-Michigan) and the AFL-CIO.

The process of forming GEO began in 1970, when the University Teaching Fellows’ Union collected enough signatures to file a petition for elections with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC). However, in 1971, the MERC rejected their petition, arguing that the Teaching Fellows “did not constitute an appropriate collective bargaining unit,” and that even if they could be considered university employees, they would have to be part of a unit that included Research and Staff Assistants. Organizing efforts were temporarily abandoned until 1973, when the Organization of Teaching Fellows (OTF) was formed to protest a disproportionate 24% increase in tuition fees. Although the university administration averted an OTF strike by granting salary increases to Teaching Fellows, the OTF joined forces with the university’s Research and Staff Assistants to form the Graduate Employees Organization, which was recognized on April 15, 1974.

Throughout its more than fifty-year history, the GEO has been involved in numerous struggles against the university administration, including the fight for its first contract in 1975, the battle to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers from 1976 to 1981, as well as various contractual improvements and protections for workers.

Specifically:

– From 1983 to 1993, it fought for graduate student contracts, including measures against discrimination, extended dental coverage, significant salary increases, and tuition waivers.

– From 1993 to 1996, GEO fought against the administration’s plans for “GradCare,” which would have eliminated a range of health benefits for teaching assistants and forced them into a significantly worse health plan that simultaneously violated the distinction between employee and student worker, thereby threatening GEO’s continued existence and legal recognition. Under the threat of a strike, the administration backed down, and the concessions made to GEO included a wage increase (3% per year for 3 years) and a ceiling of $80 on the registration fee.

– In the 1996 contract, the union successfully negotiated further salary increases, equitable treatment, and training for international Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), as well as equal employment opportunities for students regardless of gender or race.

– In 1999, following a two-day work-to-rule action and the threat of a prolonged strike with the solidarity of the Teamsters and construction unions, GEO secured a new contract that included a guaranteed 10.5% wage increase over three years and moved 500 lower-paid members to higher pay grades, thereby securing a 25% pay raise for them.

– From 2000 to 2012, GEO achieved further gains, including child care subsidies (2002), inclusive health care rights for transgender people (2006), a 13.2% wage increase over three years along with expanded health coverage (2008), and a dedicated office for disability issues (2011).

– In 2017, after threatening work stoppages and a possible strike, GEO secured a series of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), annual raises of 3.35%, a $700 ceiling on mental health copayments, two additional weeks of paid parental leave, and an hourly limit for international GSIs with visa restrictions.

– The “Safe Campus” strike in 2020 lasted two weeks and secured concessions on safety measures to combat COVID-19 infection, with GEO strikers violating the “no-strike clause” and the State of Michigan’s ban on public sector strikes.

– Following a five-month strike in 2023, the longest action in GEO’s history, during which the university attempted to force the union into submission through legal and extralegal means such as withholding pay and rigging votes, the current contract was ratified, resulting in record pay increases, a transitional funding program for graduate students, and concessions for parents, transgender workers, workers with disabilities, and international students.

GEO’s various functions are divided among a series of committees. These committees are responsible for carrying out the tasks delegated to them.

With the current contract set to expire in 2026, and with the federal government becoming increasingly aggressive regarding workers’ rights and the rights of immigrant students, GEO’s Contract Committee is already meeting, and goals for the next contract are being put forward by the various caucuses. In addition to ensuring job security for its members, GEO is paying close attention to its nascent Master’s Caucus and is working with its International Graduate Workers Caucus to safeguard the positions of international students threatened by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Most importantly, for the 2026 contract negotiations, GEO has resumed the fight to formally organize graduate research assistants and research fellows into the union as a separate bargaining unit. Although the assistants have been able to join the union as graduate students and have formed their own caucus within GEO to advocate for their interests, the state has repeatedly prevented them from being a separate bargaining unit within the union. This means that, although they benefit from certain contractual provisions of the union, they are not covered by certain aspects of the contract that apply to tenured faculty and teaching assistants, such as vacation policies, visa fee reimbursements, and access to emergency funds.

The student-worker distinction: are graduate students workers?

When referring to graduate student unions such as GEO, it is important to examine the ongoing debate over the legal status of graduate students as workers. According to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, graduate students make up approximately 44% of the research workforce at both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, which play a key role in both funding graduate students and employing them.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Board classifies graduate students as public-sector employees. This is because graduate students, if not compensated with wages or salaries, are often compensated for their work with fellowships which, unlike grants, require work performance, whereby students are required to work a set number of hours to receive funding or stipends from the university or the government. Therefore, graduate students not currently employed by the university as Graduate Student Instructors or Graduate Student Staff Assistants can join GEO because they are considered by federal law to be both public-sector employees and students.

Recurring Patterns

From universities’ attempts to deprive graduate students of their legal status as workers, we can see the same class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat that occurs everywhere. Universities, like any employer, are always looking for ways to deprive their employees of wages and benefits; this is done to reduce production costs, which in this case means reducing the costs of student education and research production. If graduate students were to lose their legal protections as workers, then the university would have free rein to cut salaries and benefits across the board, while continuing to exploit their labor to generate billions of dollars in profit.

Isolating graduate students would further benefit the university (and the bourgeoisie as a whole) by dividing and isolating a section of the proletariat from the rest of the class and destroying its ability to form its own economic organizations, thereby preventing it from fighting for its immediate material interests and its survival.

However, simply organizing graduate students into their own union is not enough. Unless they take on a political dimension, their struggles will be limited exclusively to their immediate economic demands, without addressing the root causes of their exploitation within the capitalist system, forever condemned to pursue improvements that will soon prove ephemeral because they are easily swept aside by the bourgeoisie.

Graduate students, like every section of the proletariat, must be made aware of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and their role within it. The only way to do this is to rebuild a strong class-based union as the body that links the class to its political organ, the International Communist Party. The economic struggles for immediate material demands waged by the unions must be guided and elevated by the theory, doctrine, and program provided by the Party, forged in the crucible of past proletarian struggles.