HISTORY

Feel free to read further about our humble beginnings, unionization, and first negotiations.

THE EARLIEST DAYS

March 17th 2022: Our union began after a particularly soul-crushing Internal Forum hosted by the Graduate Student Senate, when we were all silently standing around contemplating our life choices and Mark Ivan Ugalino (Master's student in Physics, our co-founder!) said, "Does anybody have WhatsApp?"

March 31st 2022: Our very first meeting, organized by co-founder AJ Vincelli (PhD student in Biotechnology)! We named ourselves the Graduate Student Coalition, and our motto was "We Deserve Better!" That's actually how we got our email address. Our mission was to unionize the graduate student employees at UMass Dartmouth.

Early April 2022: We publicly announced that we were unionizing, so that we could find the graduate students and ask them if they wanted to unionize. Our community was so fragmented and isolated that we couldn't find them any other way. Luca McGinnis (Master's student at SMAST) was clutch for organizing the SMAST campus in New Bedford.

Late April 2022: We discovered that we had strong graduate student support to unionize! We took the summer to research and/or interview 7 different international unions. We chose AFT, which was the only union whose constitution didn't require a minimum term length for chapter executive board officers (Article IV.5). The majority of our graduate students are Master's students, who are only students for 2 years total! We wanted to avoid minority rule of our union.

September 2022: We printed Authorization Cards and started collecting signatures of graduate student employees. We even had a lockbox in a secret location on campus for people to submit their cards!

December 8th 2022: Nick Gula (president of AFT 6350A, the Maintainers at UMassD) drove co-organizer AJ Vincelli up to Boston and hand-delivered 173 signed Authorization Cards with our Union Representation petition. Our FOIA request response indicated that there may be ~300 graduate student employees that Fall semester (nobody knew exactly, not even the university!!).

April 27th 2023: The MA Department of Labor Relations conducted a unionization election for the UMassD graduate student employees. Through a subpoena, we learned that there were actually 389 grad workers that Spring semester. The university was somehow unaware of ~100 students (25% of us) last December!

On this day, WE WON OUR UNIONIZATION ELECTION!!! 119 eligible voters cast their ballot (even on the Study Day and the Law School's first day of Final Exams), and 98% of them were in favor of unionizing! We were so happy and relieved that we kept crying during the whole next week.

May 5th 2023: We received our official certification as a bargaining unit from the MA Department of Labor Relations. We were recognized as a union!!! And then we took the next few months off from union work.

June 14th 2023: Our parent union, AFT, issued our charter certification! We were officially established as AFT 6350 Unit B.

June 15th 2023: Of course we had a unionization party, held at the SE Mass Central Labor Council Center in New Bedford MA.

July 27th 2023: We had our first meeting with our AFT field rep, Shawn Flood, to start talking about negotiations with the university. For our bargaining history, see the First Negotiations section of this page.

July 30th 2023: The membership-wide poll to vote for our new name and slogan closed. The winning slogan was "The university works because we do!" There was a tie for our new name, so we needed a name run-off poll...

August 23rd 2023: The membership-wide name run-off poll closed, and the winning name was "Graduate Student Union." What a great name!! Now we could design a new logo.

March 31st 2024: The membership-wide logo poll closed, and there was a 3-way tie for the winning design. We needed a logo run-off poll...

June 16th 2024: The membership-wide logo run-off poll closed, and the winning logo was the one we use today!

Graduate Student Union at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth


The university works because we do!

July 30th 2024: AJ Vincelli and Luca McGinnis opened the official GSU bank account! We could now accept donations from all of our billionaire alumnae.  :)

August 6th 2024: With our new name, slogan, and logo we were able to design and order GSU affiliation cards, GSU stickers, and a GSU tabling banner!

banner image here

FIRST NEGOTIATIONS

Meanwhile, back at the Foster Administration Building...


August 14th 2023: We began drafting our first Collective Bargaining Agreement with the university. The Extreme Drudgery phase of unionizing had begun.

November 15th 2023: We had our very first negotiation session with the university. It begins. And they actually met with us, instead of just ignoring us like they always did!!! This was the first time we had actually met with university administrators in over 8 years.

December 14th 2023: Bargaining Session #2, our draft proposal is up to version 8.

February 20th 2024: Bargaining Session #3, our draft proposal is up to version 13.

May 22nd 2024: Bargaining Session #4, our draft proposal is up to version 29.

June 10th 2024: Bargaining Session #5, our draft proposal is up to version 33.

July 30th 2024: Bargaining Session #6, our draft proposal is up to version 43.

September 9th 2024: Bargaining Session #7, stay tuned!