Archives: Timeline Stories

After JHU admin refused to provide meaningful protections against discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, denied international workers essential support, and claimed that our teaching and research does not qualify as work at the bargaining table, over 450 grad workers participated in actions in every division across both campuses to demand basic workplace rights in our contract.

Grad workers in the School of Public Health and School of Nursing, along with masters students, post-docs, and others in solidarity, spoke their truth at their Pennies and Post-its action in which they demonstrated their support for each part of our platform with pennies and wrote testimonials of their experiences via post-it notes in the lobby of the Bloomberg building. KSAS Humanties and Social Sciences, School of Ed, and SAIS grads held a hybrid teach-in, where speakers educated grads and undergrads alike on our working conditions and the importance of unionization at JHU. Whiting workers gathered in the breezeway between Krieger and Ames hall to write their experiences with everything from lab safety violation to egregiously high workloads on a banner proudly proclaiming “WHITING WORKS” to demonstrate why we need workplace protections. KSAS STEM grad workers launched an interactive flyering campaign to show JHU that grads deserve real protections. PhD workers at the School of Medicine walked out of our labs to rally for protections for international workers, enforcement of lab safety protocols, and a contract that recognizes that our work is work!

Following these actions, we saw huge movement on our proposals at the table, including a tentative agreement on Health and Safety.

Over 2,000 grads — a supermajority of all Ph.D.s enrolled at JHU — make their way to polls on Homewood, East Baltimore, and SAIS to vote YES for the union on January 30 and 31. Votes are counted on February 1 to reveal a historic margin of victory: 2,053 yes votes to 67 no votes, 97%. WE HAVE A UNION!!

Two weeks after our rally, mid-year raise announcements begin–a tribute to our organizing power! On November 9, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences announces an increase to the minimum stipend, from $33,000 to $34,500. More scattered raises follow. However, some programs still lack stipends; $34,500 remains well below the estimated cost of living in Baltimore at this time ($40,000).

At a 400-person rally on Keyser Quad, Hopkins grads start signing union cards calling for official representation by TRU-UE. 1,582 grads sign on day one, and a supermajority of grads have signed within a few weeks.

After electing a bargaining committee of 22 grads from across the university, collecting over 1,100 bargaining survey responses, and ratifying our contract proposals as a membership, we went to the bargaining table for the first time. Hundreds of grads rallied outside as our committee began negotiations in Shriver Hall. Chants could even be heard in the bargaining room. We made it clear to Johns Hopkins that we were ALL part part of this contract fight. United, we bargain! Divided, we beg!

TRU starts working with UE to build toward a union election process through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has now swung back in favor of grad labor after several years of hostility under the Trump administration.

TRU’s campaign for relief for grad workers impacted by COVID bears fruit on Friday April 2nd 2021, when it is announced by President Daniels and Provost Kumar that the university will be directing $5 million towards aid for PhD students! This comes in the form of 100 travel and research awards averaging about $5000, and 200-300 dissertation completion awards that include tuition, health insurance, and stipend for one semester. It’s not sufficient to mitigate the financial impact of COVID on graduate workers, but marks a victory worth celebrating.

After our calls for COVID-19 relief appear to have fallen on deaf ears, TRU members take to the streets in a vehicle caravan from the Medical Campus up to the Homewood campus, to raise the profile of our campaign. Even so, a few weeks later graduate students are excluded from university employee bonus pay, spurring a new TRU letter writing campaign. A few weeks later, the Homewood Faculty Assembly (HFA) passes a resolution in support of TRU’s demand for universal grad pay extensions. The resolution specifically calls on the admin to tap into the sizable reserves of the central university to fund graduate pay extensions.

TRU collects over 800 signatures on a petition articulating the relief necessary to protect grad workers, including universal extensions of grad pay, no retribution for delayed research progress, suspension of non-resident tuition fees, and extensions of health insurance coverage. TRU members author a series of op-eds to draw attention to the conditions grad workers are facing, including one in the Baltimore Sun, and share testimonials on social media about how COVID-19 has affected their working conditions.

TRU members organize around financial insecurity and the need for at least six years of guaranteed pay for PhD students, after their core concerns are left unaddressed by the Provost’s office. Later in the year, as the Trump administration moves to threaten grad collective bargaining rights, TRU collects hundreds of comments from supporters opposing the rule change and delivers them in DC alongside several other graduate worker unions.