When the vote to unionize Princeton graduate students failed, organizers immediately felt the weight of the decision. Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU) organizer Aditi Rao GS characterized the fallout of the election as demoralizing, telling the Daily Princetonian in an interview, “I think a lot of organizers feel not only the immense burnout, but [a] kind of distance from the University.”
Princeton’s graduate students were the last in the Ivy League to file for unionization, and the only Ivy League to remain without a union after the vote failed in May 2024. PGSU filed for unionization on April 12, and held its vote on May 13 and 14. The union lost, with 391 votes for and 652 against.
The push for a graduate student union began in 2016, when students began to express concerns over health insurance and student stipends. In February 2023, PGSU identified the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) as their representative.
Shortly after, Dean of the Graduate School Rodney Priestly sent a memo encouraging students to make an independent and informed choice about unionization. “We want to make sure that each graduate student can form their own decision without any pressure from the institution or its constituents, including students for or against unionization and faculty,” he wrote.
Priestley did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the ‘Prince.’
The failed vote was unexpected, as Princeton’s postdocs voted to unionize on May 8 and 9, 2024, just a few days before the graduate students. Over 80 percent of postdocs voted in favor of the union, raising questions about why PGSU failed.
A few months after the failed graduate student unionization vote, students and organizers reflected to the ‘Prince’ about why they believed the vote failed.
Several students expressed discomfort with PGSU organizers’ tactics, which included calls, emails, and home visits, as first reported in the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Himawan Winarto GS, a seventh-year Ph.D. student in the Program in Plasma Physics, told the ‘Prince’ that “organizers did show up to people's personal houses, including off-campus. That turned off a lot of people.”
Winarto is a member of Princeton University Graduate Students Against UE and wrote a 2023 op-ed in the ‘Prince’ encouraging students to be skeptical of PGSU.
In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Rao characterized these strategies as one-on-one “relationship building,” where house visits and phone calls are typical.
“I will tell you that nobody who thinks that this is an intensive campaign has ever lived through and been involved in an election cycle in the United States of America,” she said.
She added that graduate students’ home addresses are publicly available.
Those against PGSU’s tactics also felt as though they were deceived through a series of factual discrepancies communicated during the unionization effort.
Winarto recalled an email organizers sent claiming that graduate students could not get patent royalties from their discoveries without a union. However, according to a statement from the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, researchers who discover or invent something during their time at Princeton can receive compensation based on net revenue from the discovery.
PGSU’s proposal to increase the graduate student stipend and improve the student health insurance plan was another cause for concern for some graduate students. Research conducted by Princeton University Graduate Students Against UE found that graduate student salaries grow faster when unions are not involved.
Winarto added that at universities with unions, “health insurance is comparable or worse [than Princeton’s].”
Jacob Votava GS, who studies chemical and biological engineering, also referenced what he termed “aggression” from PGSU organizers in the graduate student Slack channel. He said that several students were concerned about UE’s alleged debt issues, but when they asked questions, organizers accused them of being unsympathetic to the cause.
PGSU’s alignment with UE gave rise to additional worries, particularly regarding UE’s stances on international affairs.
Tal Rubin GS, a fifth-year graduate student in the Program in Plasma Physics, noted his issues with UE’s stance on the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
“I am Israeli, and [UE advocates for] the most radical BDS stance you can find,” he said. “This works against me.”
Votava added that he believes “a union should be politically neutral to represent students.”
Rao emphasized that the choice to align with UE was decided by a public vote.
“UE was not something that was decided on by some closed body of organizers,” she said. “You just had to show up to the meeting as a graduate student, and you could vote on who you wanted to affiliate with. UE won that vote.”
Some PGSU opponents suggested that they would have preferred alignment with another union, like United Auto Workers (UAW). While UAW is an opt-in union, opponents to affiliating with UE noted that joining would require all graduate students to pay more than $700 in membership dues, even if they do not want to be a part of the union.
“If you want to unionize, you will take the union that is for you at the moment,” Rao told the ‘Prince.’
The vote, held in mid May, was a crushing defeat for PGSU. The votes against unionization nearly doubled the votes in favor of the effort, with 73 percent turnout among graduate students. In the end, Princeton University Graduate Students Against UE was able to mobilize their peers more effectively than PGSU, in an arena littered with a distracting saga of drama involving the Graduate Student Government.
Ultimately, PGSU organizers walked away with a list of reasons why their vote failed. The advocacy against the union attracted STEM students, Rao noted, that feared the union would compromise their relationships with their lab’s principal investigator — which she said would have been unlikely. She also claimed that the University targeted international students and told them striking could compromise their visas.
In response to the allegation, the University referred the ‘Prince’ to a public memo sent on March 30, 2023. International students, “independent of their visa status, would have the same rights and obligations as all other graduate students with regard to participation in union activities,” it reads.
Chief among the reasons Rao listed were final exams and the Gaza Solidarity Encampment — which shared leaders with PGSU. She noted that the events took attention away from PGSU’s campaign. Still, PGSU decided to hold the vote well before the presidential election because, according to Rao, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) does not consider graduate student workers under a Republican administration.
Those events, however, were not an issue for the postdocs’ vote, which occurred five days before that of the graduate students and passed.
The loss was challenging for PGSU leaders and left many unsure about continuing unionization efforts. At least one long-time organizer has since left the campaign.
However, some graduate students still see unionization as a future possibility. Winarto said he would certainly consider voting for a union in the future.
“I consider myself pro-union, but I strongly disagree with unions that are not truthful in their messaging,” he said.
Rubin added that “bettering workers’ situations … is good. But I want to make sure that the union does that and not other things."
Following a failed unionization vote, there is a one-year waiting period until another election can take place.
Meghana Veldhuis is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Bergen County, N.J. and typically covers faculty and graduate students.
Maya Mukherjee is a contributing News writer and assistant Podcast editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from New York City.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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