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Graduate Assistants Vote for AAUP Representation
In April graduate assistants at the University of Rhode Island voted 190 to 20 in favor of local AAUP collective bargaining representation in a secret-ballot election conducted by the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board. The graduate students will be in a separate bargaining unit from the URI faculty, who are represented by a local AAUP chapter, and their contract will be negotiated separately. The main issues of concern to the graduate students are financial, according to Frank Annunziato, executive director of the URI AAUP chapter. “Graduate assistants here have very low stipends, no paid health insurance, and excessively high fees, with an average salary around $10,000,” he says. “There is a tuition waiver, but no fringe benefits, so graduate assistants must pay for their own health insurance, which is costly.”
Unlike graduate student organizing campaigns in some states, the Rhode Island campaign was fairly uncontroversial, with the URI administration and the Rhode Island Board of Governors, the state body that controls higher education, both saying that the question of unionization was a matter for graduate assistants to determine.
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