Virginia Tech Graduate Labor Union (VT GLU)
Public Statement
September 5, 2023
Download this statement and our press release at the bottom of this page.
We are extending Labor Day at Virginia Tech! For years, we have been working on building the Virginia Tech that all of us deserve. Today, we are announcing our unions together in solidarity. The graduate students are unionizing as the Virginia Tech Graduate Labor Union (VT GLU), the newest local of the Virginia Education Association. Undergraduate workers, faculty, and staff of all classifications–full-time, part-time, tenured and tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and adjunct–are unionizing as United Campus Workers-Virginia Tech (UCW-VT) chapter of the statewide UCW-VA, affiliate of Communication Workers of America (CWA).
Our two unions have united in this announcement out of a shared commitment that every person working on our campus deserves an advocate on the job, a living wage, a safe working environment, academic freedom, and respect for their individual contributions to the university. Virginia Tech is a leader in higher education because of the work of our staff and administrative faculty who manage the university’s daily operations, our custodial and maintenance personnel whose often-overlooked labor enables us to work on a truly beautiful campus, and our faculty and graduate students who teach our undergraduates and conduct groundbreaking research. As a public institution of higher education, we owe it to our students, our fellow researchers, and our colleagues to provide the best possible learning conditions for our students. Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.
In the past few years, the VT GLU successfully lobbied within shared governance for a $15/hour minimum wage for all full time staff among a dozen other policies to improve working conditions on campus. We have fought fiercely for comprehensive reproductive healthcare for students and a campus free of sexual violence. This fall, over 700 graduate workers received significant raises due to the GLU’s persistent organizing as well as our repeated picketing of the Board of Visitors meetings. All of these beneficial policies were the result of hard work from hundreds of graduate students who would often face indifference and even threats as a result.
We fought to keep those students safe, and we will keep fighting, because there is more work to do. Graduate workers need 12-month contracts, clarity in job roles, and equal opportunity hiring practices for graduate assistantships. Six months after publication of the living wage task force report, no timeline has been released for carrying out the task force recommendations. This is a continuation of a string of empty promises from the VT executive administration. While graduate students were promised a 5% cost of living raise each year over the past three years, a preliminary survey shows at least 1 in 10 graduate students did not receive the raise this year or last year due to payment system and contract errors. There is no plan to repay us for these lost wages. The Graduate Labor Union will continue this fight for fair pay and will hold these administrators accountable to their promises until everyone has a living wage.
We are building the Virginia Tech that we were promised in university brochures. Where we can eat, pay our rent, teach our students, and do world-changing work. Where students, staff, and faculty are protected from prejudice, institutional bias, sexual violence, and acts of hatred. Where the Cranwell International Center has the staff they need to file forms on time. Where those who didn’t grow up with professor parents have the same access to knowledge and resources to succeed throughout their careers. Where shared governance, Title IX, the Office of Equity and Accessibility, and our grievance processes, work. Without collective power, these policies, promises, governance structures, even the civil rights laws that are supposed to protect us – are meaningless. We want every single Virginia Tech student to know that taking action to advocate for yourself and others is one of the proudest traditions we have here at Virginia Tech. Indeed, it exemplifies Ut Prosim.
If we want progress, we need organized labor on campus. Feeling the pressure we’ve created, many executive administrators at Virginia Tech have come to the table and built working relationships with us. We have fought for change, sometimes against these executives and sometimes by their side. While individual relationships are not powerful enough for the changes that VT graduate students need, we hope to continue these productive collaborations. We would like to remind everyone in the university community that treating us differently because we belong to a union is illegal both in Virginia and federally. Regrettably, unlike every other type of worker in Virginia, state employees are barred from collective bargaining and being officially recognized. While we are fighting to change these unjust laws, the rights we do have will not be violated.
VT GLU proudly stands in solidarity with UCW-VT and all other worker organizations. We stand with UCW-VT’s admirable fight to ensure academic freedom is respected while higher education is increasingly under attack. We are thrilled that faculty and staff colleagues are building a democratic workers organization to powerfully advocate for their needs. We also stand in support of organizations like the carpenters union, who have been fighting to receive fair pay for their work on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg and Northern Virginia campuses. We stand with the Virginia Education Association who recently won the right to collectively bargain in Montgomery County. We stand with them, as they stand with us. To every worker at Virginia Tech: We are fighting with you.
WE are Virginia Tech. Onwards together!
Appendix 1: WAGE THEFT ON VT CONSTRUCTION SITES
In Blacksburg and at the Innovation Campus in Northern Virginia, our compatriots in the carpenters union have been fighting their own fair pay battle. The Carpenters Union, which represents mostly immigrant workers, has been trying to convince Virginia Tech to pay its construction workers fairly.
In 2021, the General Assembly enacted a law requiring public entities to pay “prevailing wages” on all projects over $250 million. Paying workers the average wages for their area reduces the exploitation, wage theft, and misclassification that is rampant in the construction industry.
Unlike other higher education institutions in Virginia, VT decided to abuse a loophole in the law and exempt itself from this requirement.
We join with the Carpenters and other unions representing immigrant construction workers to demand that Virginia Tech agree to pay prevailing wages at its Blacksburg campus and wherever it has properties around the state including the Innovation Campus in Alexandria.
Appendix 2: SILENCING STUDENTS WHO WANT SEXUAL VIOLENCE OFF OUR CAMPUS
The United Feminist Movement at VT has been fighting for an end to sexual violence on campus. After years of protests, Tim Sands chartered the first Sexual Violence Culture and Climate (SVCC) Work Group. However, this group’s work was cut short by the pandemic and a lack of administrative seriousness about addressing the issue. Despite being the driving force behind the SVCC, United Feminist Movement students were given token roles and had their contributions brushed aside when it came to suggesting concrete, actionable steps forward.
However, UFM bravely continued to fight for survivors and continued to hold protests demanding that the SVCC not only reconvene but specifically take the voices of students seriously this time. Eventually, Tim Sands relented but the previous problem remained as students only hold 4 out of the 35 seats on it, and both students and UFM specifically have been excluded from decision making. The university said they could not compensate students for working on the task force, while refusing to report what they’re paying outside HR consultants. The SVCC task force was given the right to change policy, however it has publicly committed to only running education campaigns despite the rapidly accelerating rate of violent incidents on campus (See the annual Title IX report for more). Collective action got the task force started, and only collective action and the student voice will make it work.
Appendix 3: FIGHTING FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTHCARE ACCESS
After a year of advocacy, the reproductive health resolution was passed by University Council, guaranteeing access to mifepristone and misoprostol in the student health center as well as expanding access to reproductive healthcare. However, Tim Sands has refused to sign the new policy – it is sitting on his desk. Additionally, the Vice-President for Inclusion and Diversity, Menah Pratt, voted against this resolution and many other equity initiatives over the last several years including the living wage for graduate students. This betrays a deep seated disinterest in improving the lives of campus workers among even the executive administrators who are tasked with building an inclusive environment.
Appendix 4: CLIMATE ACTIVISM AND THE TIMES HIGHER ED RANKINGS
In 2009 it was a coalition of students and faculty who first pushed then president Steger to adopt the first set of university climate policies. In 2013 it was once again the students and faculty who worked together to get the president to revise those policies to meet the growing need for climate action. Finally, in 2019, a year of student-led climate protests forced President Sands to update the Climate Action Commitment to meet the existential threat of climate change. While Sands has said that this is one of the greatest challenges of our time and has advanced a strong set of climate policies, he has excluded students from any public messaging or due credit.
As the university doggedly pursues the Times Higher Ed impact rating it is worth reminding the administration who is responsible for our impressive 5th in the United States standing. It is because of the Climate Action Commitment and by extension the decades long struggle by student and faculty activists to get the university to prioritize climate action that we did so well in the rankings. The categories we were scored on were universally climate categories.
VT Graduate Labor Union 