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What is UE? Why is CGSU affiliated with them?
What is UE? Why is CGSU affiliated with them?
UE is the abbreviated name for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a national labor union with a political agenda which they characterize as “aggressive struggle." CGSU represents the role of UE as a mere "umbrella organization that helps support our work with advice and, in a limited capacity, legal and financial resources" and insists that grad students run the union. In reality, even CGSU members have conceded that grad students alone are unable to navigate this complex legal process. The years of posturing about dental insurance, toxic advisors and our corporate university overlord are behind us. Contract bargaining and enforcement are where the rubber meets the road: now CGSU needs UE and UE needs our money. The demands for union shop are a result of the symbiosis between UE and CGSU, not any fundamental threat to the security or efficacy of our bargaining representative.
CGSU claims that a union shop will ensure a "strong, effective and long-standing union." However, graduate student unions at Columbia and Harvard have recently achieved great success in bargaining without a union shop, undermining the first two claims. Currently, there is no risk to the longevity of CGSU. It won an election by a majority of graduate students, and as long as it continues to maintain majority approval, it will be secure. The true motivation behind the forceful insistence on union shop is that UE national headquarters stands to substantially increase its revenue by winning union shop agreements for graduate students.
MIT's UE-affiliated grad student union offers an instructive example. In May 2023 MIT offered a 12.2% raise in salary over three years with other benefits (75% dental coverage, etc) and no union shop; they emailed the graduate students to articulate the MIT administration's arguments against a union shop. The union encouraged its members to reject the contract, alleging the contract was an effective pay cut. In September 2023 MIT offered nearly the same contract, a 12.6% raise over three years with essentially the same benefits (86% dental coverage), but with a union shop, and MIT-GSU emphatically urged its members to ratify.
For the MIT grad students who are not union members the ratified contract was worse than the pevious proposal. Beny Falkovich, an MIT grad student, compared the two contracts in a helpful poster.
This case study makes one thing clear: all UE cares about is compulsory dues!
GSUmoney.pdfAt MIT, the dues rate is 1.44% (the same as Harvard and Columbia), and of the $2.2 million of anticipated annual revenue, over $1.5 million will go straight to UE national headquarters, 6 times more than their local expenses (spreadsheet below; view their complete proposed budget here).
MIT grad students will send over 75% of their compulsory dues directly to UE national headquarters (pie charts) in the form of mandatory per capita tax. Assuming the same rate, CGSU will forfeit over 70% of all dues by affiliating with UE.
CGSU argues that the union shop is essential for a strong union, but the current CGSU member dues alone would generate more revenue for bargaining than a union shop would after UE takes its cut. Assuming the common 1.44% rate and our current stipends, dues from the 1,873 students who voted yes alone would yield a total revenue for CGSU of over $1 million. In a union shop with every one of the 3,175 grad students in the bargaining unit paying dues, the revenue would total around $1.8 million, of which $1.3 million would go directly to UE national headquarters, leaving only $500,000 for CGSU.
UE is not spending the $1.7 million per capita tax on legal defense of our contracts; only 7% of the UE per capita goes to legal support for locals.
The average salary of UE's approx. 45 salaried employees is ~$65,000 (UE national headquarters LM-2 2022). Based on MIT's figures, the "servicing fees" portion of their union's per capita revenue makes room for nearly 15 non-legal UE employees. Is this really necessary for contract enforcement if grad students run the union?
UE wants to force all of us to pay so that our local can keep less than half of the money! We believe that CGSU can win a great contract for grads without UE siphoning off most of dues.
We must also consider that Cornell and MIT grad students are affiliated with UE, but Columbia and Harvard have certified United Auto Workers (UAW) as their union. UAW has considerably more financial resources than UE. For example, we compare the most recent (2022) financial disclosures from both national unions (UE on left, UAW on right) and find that UAW had over $1 billion in assets compared to UE's meager $1 million.
For the last 20+ years, UE's annual revenue has averaged around $5 million, compared to UAW's 2023 annual revenue of over $300 million.
In 2022, UE paid more for political activity than to support strikes, while UAW paid out $45 million in strikee benefits.
UE_LM2_2022.pdfUAW_LM2_2022.pdfConsider the financial summary of existing UE locals representing electricians, factory workers, solid waste workers and manufacturing plant workers from the year 2000 to the present.
The revenue generated from each local is on the order of $10,000, while each grad student union would generate more than $1,000,000 per year
Clearly the dues revenue from Cornell grads would vastly exceed that of UE's current locals. UE is not financially supporting CGSU because they are generous, they are making an investment!
"All unions are doing variations of this. Steelworkers are organizing grocery clerks. The UAW is going where the ducks are. All unions today have an open hunting license...."
UE_locals_finance_summary.pdfIf you feel that a union shop is inappropriate for an academic setting, please sign our open letter to the Cornell Administration (you can remain anonymous). If you want to learn more about what's in it for CGSU, click here. We invite everyone with questions and comments to reach out to us.
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