Dear students,
On Wednesday, Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) calling for a vote on whether graduate students should form a union and be represented in collective bargaining by the United Auto Workers.
We believe unionization conflicts with the core goal of the Vanderbilt educational experience: to provide a flexible, collaborative environment in which learning, discovery and innovation are nurtured. Further, we believe graduate students do not meet the definition of “employee” under the National Labor Relations Act. For these reasons, our position is that unionizing is not well-suited to meeting the varying individual needs of our graduate students.
Vanderbilt maintains and supports the Graduate Student Council (GSC) an elected body that represents your interests as students to the university administration. We meet regularly with GSC and take seriously the issues they identify and the proposals they make. Recently announced increases in stipends for Academic Year 2024–25 were determined after the GSC presented data to support the need for them.
As a Vanderbilt doctoral student, you receive a comprehensive financial aid package that includes tuition remission, stipends and other financial support that total more than $75,000 per student, per year. In recent years, the university has worked closely with the GSC to better understand, and help you meet, financial and housing challenges, while also enhancing your educational experience.
Recent outcomes of this productive relationship include:
- An increase in stipends announced in February 2024. Stipends for AY24–25 range from $34,000 to $38,000, depending on your school or college.
- The designation of housing emergencies as a qualifying event for receiving up to $2,000 per year from the Student Critical Support Fund, starting in August 2024.
- Our recent commitment to hire a dedicated housing resource officer.
- A Student Health Insurance Plan that, as of this academic year, includes dental insurance and coverage for an annual vision exam.
- An additional $140,000 to support doctoral research and travel through Vanderbilt Awards for Doctoral Discovery, made available in 2023.
- As of fall 2022, a $500 per student Candidacy Student Success Supplement for Ph.D. students who complete their qualifying exams.
- As of July 2022, a $2,000 per student Launching Student Success Stipend to support the transition to graduate school.
Unionization threatens the traditional relationship between you and the faculty members with whom you work. In our current model, graduate students are supported by our faculty in mentor-mentee and faculty-student relationships. Were our graduate students to unionize, these relationships would be legally defined as employer-employee relationships. Such a change could significantly alter our students’ academic experiences and the nature of their relationships with our faculty. With the imposition of collective bargaining, you could lose the right to speak for yourself directly, as an individual, with faculty advisers or members of the administration regarding certain aspects of your relationship with the university without the union being involved. These changes could profoundly reshape the collaborative, interdisciplinary culture that makes Vanderbilt unlike any other university.
We believe that Vanderbilt can best meet the varying individual needs of our graduate students by working directly together, without a third party like a union in the relationship.
You and your fellow graduate students are deeply valued members of our university community. We are committed to continuing to work directly with you, as individuals and students, and with the GSC to make your doctoral studies transformative and rewarding. We urge you to visit vu.edu/gradstudentunionfacts to learn more about the facts of unionization. And we look forward to continuing this conversation with you in the days to come.
Sincerely,
C. Cybele Raver
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
C. André Christie Mizell
Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School
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