We in the Graduate Student Worker Organizing Committee are committed to the following values:
- Dignity: We believe that graduate labor is dignified work.
We demand a university that treats its students and workers with collegiality and respect, provides them with the material means to support themselves and their families and to excel at their job without undue stress, that maintains a campus that is free from harassment and violence, and that creates mechanisms through which they can have a substantive role in the decision-making processes that shape the institutional and academic policies that govern them.
- Accountability. We believe that university decisions should be made in conversation with the community.
We demand an honest and open campus where executive decisions are transparent and accessible, based on the input of the collective community, and in the best interests of those most deeply impacted. In order to create a culture of reciprocity, consent, and transparency, the university must have a clear and rigorously enforced grievance system wherein all parties can ensure that their safety and well-being are protected. As a union, we hold ourselves to these same standards and practices.
- Equity. We believe in creating spaces for leadership for the most vulnerable populations within the university and within our union.
We demand that the people and groups who are targeted and harmed for the benefit of maintaining capitalism, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and white supremacy be uplifted in order to create a university with values based on trust, equity, learning, and teaching. We are committed to the tradition of social justice unionism and are opposed to anti-Black racism, racism against Indigenous peoples and all people of color, gender-based oppression, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and other forms of religious persecution, and the oppression of working-class, low-income, and unhoused people. We recognize that identities intersect and that the strength of a union derives from the diversity of both its members and its leadership.
- Collaboration. We believe in collaboration in all aspects of university life.
We demand a collegial and supportive environment in which students, staff, and faculty can work together to create their best and most innovative work. We reject the university’s claims of scarcity, policies of austerity, and attempts to pit students against each other for resources, and recognize that graduate workers can only be adequately protected and guaranteed resources when we come together to bargain collectively for them. Our work is not done until not just some, but all community member’s needs are unconditionally met. Engaging in conflict that emerges among GSWOC members or among GSWOC and non-GSWOC entities is a way to strengthen collaborations. We thus commit ourselves to approach internal and external conflicts as a source of growth, for ourselves as individuals and as a collective. To do this, we will work towards cultivating a space in which harm is addressed through structured facilitation. We are committed to creating meaningful relationships between students, staff, faculty, and residents of the surrounding community.
As our union grows, we hope that the voices of new members continue to shape our collective vision and values!