The University of Maine System is ready to recognize a union that would represent 1,000 graduate student workers across the system’s eight campuses. It’s been four months since the union efforts first went public with a rally in March. Organizers and union members want to address what they believe are poor working conditions, including low wages and burdensome workloads. Photo courtesy of United Auto Workers

The University of Maine System is ready to voluntarily recognize a union for about 1,000 of its graduate student workers, sidestepping government intervention.

“This is a huge step forward for our union,” the University of Maine Graduate Workers Union said in an announcement Tuesday. “Grad workers have spoken, and the message is clear: we have an incredibly strong mandate to pursue collective bargaining, and fight for a better deal for every grad worker in the UMaine System.”

The union and UMS administrators reached an unspecified agreement, said the announcement, but both sides declined to release details on how the process will play out. If it is not voluntarily recognized, the union will have to conduct an election with the National Labor Relations Board. A formal election comes with additional and complex steps that often slow the path to begin contract bargaining.

UMS and the union will now bring in a neutral third party to conduct a union card count and confirm that more than 50% of student workers have signed on.

“If the card count demonstrates majority support of the applicable graduate student population, UMS will be happy to officially recognize the Graduate Student Union and begin the process of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement,” said system spokesperson Tory Ryden.

The union first went public with its campaign in late March to address working conditions for student workers earning master’s or Ph.D. degrees at the University of Maine. Organizers believe those conditions include low wages, insufficient benefits, late paychecks and burdensome workloads. These students, who are paid as research, teaching or graduate assistants across the eight-school public university system, are some of the lowest-paid at New England’s land-grant universities, according to research from the union.

When it first went public, organizers said the union had a majority of support of at least 500 student workers. In May, leaders claimed the union had what they described as a “supermajority” of the 1,000 students on board, though leaders wouldn’t specify what that number was.

Other local unions and 73 state legislators had been putting pressure on UMS to move forward with the process in a good-faith, timely manner. Still, the process took four months.

“We want to be focusing on what we’re at the university to do, which is to do our research and to teach our classes,” said Amanda Gavin, organizer and UMaine doctoral student worker, in May. “We want to be bargaining and not going through a next step to demonstrate that we have a majority … not going through what we consider to be a laborious and undue next step of going to an election.”

Ryden said there have been delays because the union came forward “during the end of the academic year.”

With confidence that the count will reflect a supermajority, union leaders are now preparing for contract negotiations.

“With our verification process agreed upon, we can now focus on the next important step of bargaining and winning our first union contract,” the union said in its release.