Welcome to UAW! When a majority of us have signed cards choosing UAW as our Union, we will seek official recognition through a fair process to verify our majority support so we can start bargaining. This could happen through a voluntary process or through a neutral party such as the National Labor Relations Board.

Collective bargaining means more rights and more power to shape our lives. Collectively we have more power to negotiate than we have as individuals. No one will pay any dues or fees until graduate employees have democratically approved a contract.

Without a union:

• The University unilaterally determines our working conditions and can change them at any time without our consent.

With a union:

• We elect a bargaining committee that gathers input from graduate employees across the University.
• That bargaining committee negotiates a contract on equal footing with the University.
• That contract can only be approved democratically, through a graduate employee vote.
• That contract determines our terms and conditions of employment and is binding and enforceable, usually through appeal to a neutral arbitrator.

"I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field." -Albert Einstein, on why he joined the faculty union at Princeton as a charter member