Johns Hopkins Grad Students Successfully Unionize

Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. students have overwhelmingly voted to unionize.

Monday and Tuesday’s vote was 2,053 to 67. The union is called the Teachers and Researchers United–United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers.

“Approximately 3,200 student workers across JHU’s 65 Ph.D. programs will be represented by TRU-UE in collective bargaining with the university,” university provost Sunil Kumar announced in a statement.

The union says it’s still awaiting National Labor Relations Board official certification.

“TRU has been around since 2015, and now we are heading into the next stage of our movement to support grad student workers to do the work we came to JHU to do,” Andrew Eneim, a graduate worker, said Wednesday in a union news release.

That release says the university’s Ph.D. students unionized to “address myriad issues” and are “demanding a living wage, guaranteed on-time payment, an effective grievance procedure, more support for international students, safe and reliable transportation and facilities and a commitment to the city of Baltimore.”

“We look forward to working together with TRU-UE to negotiate a first collective bargaining agreement over the coming weeks and months,” Kumar said in his statement. “As the birthplace of doctoral education in America, we recognize this as an opportunity to ensure JHU continues to build on its legacy of not only providing world-class doctoral education and training but developing innovative new approaches to supporting our Ph.D. students in achieving personal and professional success.”