Baltimore resident and community organizer Lenora Knowles is fed up with years of living paycheck-to-paycheck and having little control over her long hours. Knowles, a graduate student and Ph.D. candidate at The University of Maryland, College Park, is seeking to join the growing national wave of thousands of young workers voting, typically overwhelmingly, to join a union. Unions help workers secure higher wages, benefits, and better working conditions and are linked to reducing the gender wage gap and decreasing income inequality.
But even though workers in Maryland generally enjoy strong protections, faculty and graduate students at the state’s universities and colleges cannot form a union. A 2001 law allowed university staff to unionize but excluded instructors. In 2021, the legislature overrode then-Governor Larry Hogan’s veto to grant collective bargaining to instructors at community colleges, several of whom have formed unions in 2023.
That’s why Knowles joined over 50 other graduate students, professors, legislators, and union members in Annapolis on February 7, rallying to support Senate Bill 823 and House Bill 493, which would extend collective bargaining rights to the over 20,000 graduate assistants and faculty employed at the University of Maryland system, Morgan State University, and St. Mary’s College.
“I’m here today because I feel like it’s really important to support my fellow workers to push forward our need for collective bargaining rights as workers, as folks that really hold up the university, through our teaching, through our research, our care, for how we show up for students. We deserve good living conditions,” Knowles told Baltimore Beat.
In a response to an email from Baltimore Beat, a University System of Maryland spokesperson said: “Before taking a position, the USM and its government relations leaders are studying the legislation and working to clarify elements of the bill.”
In a response to an email from The Beat, a University System of Maryland (USM) spokesperson said, “Before taking a position, the USM and its government relations leaders are studying the legislation and working to clarify elements of the bill.”
However, USM has lobbied against efforts to pass similar legislation over the past decade. Officials testified that processes are already in place to address workplace grievances and noted that graduate students receive benefits such as free tuition and subsidized health care.
Speaking at the rally, the bill’s lead sponsor, State Senator Ben Kramer (D-19), questioned why university officials were denying workers their “basic rights.”
“The university system comes in and says, “Oh, no, it’s not necessary because you all are so very, very happy with the way management is handling your affairs. If they’re right, what do they have to fear by just simply giving you the opportunity if you so choose to bargain collectively?” Kramer said.
“What is it they are afraid of? They know the facts are that they are not treating the workers with the respect and the dignity that they should,” he said.
Also speaking out in favor of the legislation were representatives of the state’s American Federation of Teachers and United Auto Workers, who have helped thousands of grad students across the country organize against low pay, long hours, and unfair working conditions since the National Labor Relations Board ruled in 2016 that graduate students are employees with the right to unionize.
Bill sponsor House Delegate Linda Foley (D-15) noted that grad assistants at Johns Hopkins University (97 percent of which voted to unionize in 2023), Rutgers University in New Jersey, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois are already unionized. “Even at the University of Iowa, they have collective bargaining rights for grad students,” she said.
The 2023 strike by faculty at Rutgers secured a 44 percent raise. Citing data compiled by The American Association of University Professors, organizers noted that faculty at the University of Maryland receive significantly less pay (23 percent) than those at Rutgers and the University of Illinois (58 percent).
“We see only often overcrowded classrooms, the absence of assistance … being overworked, underpaid, and without benefits or job security,” said Jared Ball, professor at Morgan State University.
“We see only often overcrowded classrooms, the absence of assistance, … being overworked, underpaid, and without benefits or job security,” said Jared Ball, professor at Morgan State University.
“And this, by the way, is just within the predominantly white institutions. But the old aphorism remains true: if the white institutions have a slight cough or sneeze, we at HBCUs have, at minimum, a raging flu. No one concerned with the proper education of their youth should tolerate a condition in which those teaching and supporting that education are not fully protected as a class of labor,” Ball said.
Morgan offers master’s degree students working as graduate assistants $12,000 and doctoral students $18,000; the federal government defines poverty as a salary of $15,060 yearly.
In 2024, pay for graduate assistants at the Graduate School of the University of Maryland at College Park started at $34,052 for 12 months, or about $18/hour, or $26,958 for 9.5 months, which is about $14/hour, both significantly less than the $22.31/hour living wage for Prince George’s County, Maryland, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.
The current law hasn’t kept graduate students from starting to organize. In September, the graduate students at the University of Maryland College Park went public with their campaign to join the United Auto Workers.
“We’ve been seeing a lot of support and growing support across students,” said Ivy Lyons, a UMD Grad Student Union organizer who spoke out at the rally.
Luka Arsenjuk, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, argued unionizing could help reverse troubling trends in Maryland schools, such as increasing workloads and decreasing numbers of tenure track faculty.
Luka Arsenjuk, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, argued unionizing could help reverse troubling trends in Maryland schools, such as increasing workloads and decreasing numbers of tenure track faculty.
“Our faculty is composed 75 percent of adjunct, or non-tenure track, faculty, people who have no real power to determine conditions in their work,” said Arsenjuk.
Many, like Knowles, argued a union can offer protections against workplace abuses.
“I’ve had experiences with the power dynamics that happen with supervisors on campus. And I believe that if I would have had union representation, if I would have had a union to back me up to file official grievances, to get support from my fellow workers, my experience as a graduate worker would have been a lot different,” she said.
Arsenjuk argued unions provide additional benefits. “It’s been proven that collective bargaining wouldn’t just improve the working conditions of faculty and the functioning of the university system,” argued Arsenjuk, citing a 2015 study that found faculty unions increase efficiency and graduation rates.
Hearings for the bills are scheduled for February 13 at 1 p.m. in the House and March 7 at 1 p.m. in the Senate.
In response to a request for a comment, a spokesperson for Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore said in an email:
“Since taking office, the governor has proudly accelerated raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and announced over 39,000 new jobs throughout the state. Growing up as the son of a single mother working multiple jobs, the governor knows as well as anyone else the importance of protecting Maryland’s working families and the unions that fight on their behalf.
Governor Moore looks forward to reviewing the proposed initiatives from Maryland’s Labor Unions and is committed to continuing to work in partnership with our labor partners to deliver results for Maryland’s working families.”
In response, Arsenjuk said, “If [Democrats] are truly on the side of labor, then they will support labor. And the way to support labor is, first of all, to recognize and grant people the right to collectively bargain.”