International student
A few Chinese international graduate student workers (GSWs) started to mobilize Chinese students to form a union since Spring of 2019. In the spring of 2022, they realized that international students are an important part of our campus, but usually get marginalized in decision making at all level.
In the last 10 years (2012-2022), 50~52% percent of enrolled PhD students are international, except 2020, only 49% are international due to covid. (the most recent data published on USC website)
They found that in other unions, many of international students’ demands were dropped during the bargaining. They believe that international students should organize themself to have their voice in our union and in campus activities. So, they started the GSWOC International Student Committee with students from other countries, with the goal of organizing and advocating for international students.
The committee is a place for international students to discuss any issues related to their lives and organize to make things better. They organized events for international students to ask questions about the union; and events for discussions about things people want to change via bargaining.
However, only 1 in the 15 bargaining team members was international, and it later became 2 in 15. And, there is no international student in the interim executive board.
During the bargaining, some of them realized a democratic & transparent union and social-justice unionism is important for advocating the rights of marginalized workers. Also, without a democratic & transparent union, it is impossible to win issues like wages that impact everyone. Especially after connecting with other groups and experiencing the intersection of identities, they began to build coalition and started this caucus. 12
Social-justice unionism in GSWOC
Statement of value
In 2020 and 2021, social-justice unionism was written into GSWOC Statement of value and Constitution.
BIPOC Subcommittee
It is a committee of Black, Indigenous, and people of color graduate student workers. In 2021, they had events for discussion of Race, Labour and Unionization; Coalition building; Mental health events, etc. BIPOC Committee Statement of Values
Reading group
In the summer of 2021, there was a reading group. People read essays in books like Strike for the Common Good: Fighting for the Future of Public Education, describing how teachers in LA fought and won demands not just for themself, but also for students and parents, e.g.: “a nurse in every school five days a week, a librarian in all secondary schools, and counselor-student ratios of 1:500; hard caps on class size and size reductions every year;”. Those wins were made possible by a strong coalition between teachers and the community that supports them.
GSWOC history
GSWOC was founded in 2016 by doctoral students at USC. Believing in recognizing the work we do as labor, and the need for collective bargaining power–which Graduate Student Government (GSG) does not have–graduate students began a campaign to form a union. Despite USC’s hostility to unionization, our campaign has put important pressure on university administrators. One of GSWOC’s earliest priorities was to address the dramatic discrepancies in doctoral stipends. In 2016, USC doctoral student employees typically earned an annual salary between $21K and $26.5K, at stipend rates which hadn’t been adjusted for inflation in nearly a decade. In early 2017, USC announced that all doctoral stipends would be raised to a universal baseline of $26K that Fall and then $30K in 2018.
Between 2016 and 2018 GSWOC worked with labor union SEIU 721 as part of their coalitional campaign between community members and university workers “USC Forward.” GSWOC responded to the revelation of George Tyndall’s systemic and university-sanctioned sexual assaults by creating coalitional spaces with GSG and I Am Student X to challenge sexual violence on campus. In the summer of 2020, amidst growing fears about the coronavirus pandemic, GSWOC co-authored a petition with the USC GSG requesting a universal one-year funding extension for doctoral students. GSWOC also played a part in the successful collective pressure put on the administration to pay graduate Assistant Lecturers in the Writing Program for their summer training. In the Fall of 2020 GSWOC voted to make UAW our parent union.