In an election held November 6-8, 2023, eligible graduate assistants voted to approve the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) as their exclusive representative for the purposes of collective bargaining. The members of the bargaining unit are teaching assistants, graduate research assistants, research assistants, and graduate assistants at the Ithaca, Geneva, and Cornell Tech campuses.
The university has begun the process of collective bargaining with the UE.
To answer questions faculty and staff may have about unionization, the bargaining process, “terms and conditions” of employment, and other related matters, the university has assembled resources on the Graduate Assistant Unionization Update website. Below are selected FAQs relevant to research continuity planning. You can find the full list of FAQs at the Graduate Assistant Unionization Update website.
OVPRI will hold office hours for those faculty seeking additional advice; you may reach out by email to your faculty colleagues in OVPRI to consult sooner than that.
Frequently Asked Questions
All graduate students in research degrees are considered to be full time students and are enrolled in 12 credits of coursework and/or research. By Cornell and New York state standards, 12 credits equates to 36 hours academic activity. This is a baseline expectation. Of course, many students invest much more time into their own studies. Students should have full-time engagement in academic duties that are developmental for their own training as a scholar and in furtherance of a degree.
When a full-time student holds an assistantship position, the time commitment is 15 hours per week on average, with no week to exceed 20 hours. That rule is in place, in part, to ensure that students are not performing excessive service work for the university that slows their own degree progress.
If the union calls a strike the university could stop pay unless an individual student elects to work. Faculty PIs would not pay for work unless the student was confirmed to be working.
Managers can reassign work during a strike, but there would likely be some obligation to shift work back to the striking employee once the strike is resolved.