By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists
Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.
HANOVER—After 59 days on strike, the union representing Dartmouth College graduate students has approved its first contract, winning a substantial pay increase, expanded benefits, and protections against unfair treatment.
The Graduate Organized Laborers at Dartmouth, GOLD, was conceived in the fall of 2021. A year later, they affiliated with the United Electrical Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) and became known as GOLD-UE. Negotiations began after GOLD-UE won an NLRB-supervised election in 2023. Frustrated by a lack of progress after months at the bargaining table, the union went on strike on May 1.
Negotiations continued during the strike, up until June 20, when the college presented what it called “a slightly-revised package proposal designed to reach an agreement with GOLD-UE, while also maintaining Dartmouth’s core positions,” including a clause barring the union from striking during the contract’s life. Union negotiators brought the proposal back to members, who agreed to submit it to a ratification vote with support from their bargaining committee.
In addition to a 17.5% pay increase in the first year of the three-year contract, bringing their annual stipend to $47,000, annual compensation will rise with the cost of living in years two and three. Genevieve Goebel, a member of the union’s bargaining committee, said Dartmouth will be the first grad student union to win raises tied to the CPI. “No other graduate contracts, including UE-negotiated ones, include a straight cost-of-living adjustment like ours,” a college statement agreed.
The college did not agree to retroactive pay for the period when the graduate student workers were on strike. Neither did the union win access to the college’s childcare center, but they did win a substantial childcare support fund and a promise to have access to the childcare center at some unspecified date.
During the past week, the union held “Town Halls” to inform members about contract details and conducted online voting open to everyone whose dues were paid. The voting concluded at 5 p.m. Friday, after which the union informed members by email that the contract was ratified. The union did not release the actual vote totals, only that it was “a lot to a little,” according to Royce Brown, a UE staff member.
Genevieve Goebel, a soil chemist in the fifth year of her Ph.D. program, led the final Town Hall Friday afternoon and went over the contract terms for more than an hour. Section by section, she detailed provisions dealing with compensation, time off, medical and dental benefits, grievance procedures, non-discrimination protections, health and safety, intellectual property, assignments of teaching responsibilities, the needs of international students, the union security clause, and more.
Some measures are relatively simple, like the right to post union notices on campus billboards. Other provisions may prove to be complex, like “pooled funds” which can be used for medical expenses. I don’t know if anyone actually prints a union contract any more, but this one would fill a lot of pages.
In some areas, the union fell short of its goals, for example accepting the “no strike” clause and a stipend less than the amount they determined was needed to meet the local cost of living. But in most areas, they won improvements.
When I first interviewed Goebel, she told me talks on discrimination and unfair treatment were stalled. “Right now, we’re running into a wall with the college,” she said at a rally held prior to a negotiating session. Eight months later, the ratified contract includes a grievance procedure with binding arbitration, protections against overwork and unreasonable schedules, and an ability to appeal rulings made by the college’s Title IX office, which handles complaints about discrimination. “I’m really proud we won this,” she said, calling the appeal process “a dramatic improvement from the way things have been.”
Ankita Sarkar, a fourth year Ph.D. student in computer science from India said the contract includes “better support for the expenses of being international,” like payment of visa fees and mandated leave time to deal with immigration matters. She also said the college is now obligated to “provide paperwork on the correct timeline” in order for students to satisfy government requirements. She’s disappointed about the “no strike” clause, but happy to have paid dental care.
Dylan Barbagallo, a Ph.D. student in materials science, said for him, the contract fight was about “housing, housing, housing, housing,” which is no surprise in the county with the highest rents in the state. Although the union failed to get raises tied specifically to the cost of housing, he said, “I think we tackled it through more circuitous routes of increasing pay and lowering other burdens on students.” Barbagallo voted “yes” to ratify the agreement and said the two-month strike fostered “a sense of solidarity” among students who might work in relatively isolated conditions.
Goebel said, “I think more than any one thing in the contract itself, I’m proud that we put our foot down and went out on strike.” By striking, she said the union showed Dartmouth “we won’t be bullied out of demanding things that we need to get by here.”
Along the way, Goebel said the union benefited from the experience of other campuses, where union organizing among graduate student workers has taken off in recent years. “I think we’re in a really unique time for organizing in higher ed,” she said, noting that the Dartmouth contract “follows a pretty quick sequence of other contracts that were recently resolved.” The benefits provisions of the recent agreement at Johns Hopkins, she said, provided a model that inspired the Dartmouth union to hold out for more than what the college was initially willing to offer.
In the end, “the strike showed that we were all willing to take on pretty substantial sacrifices. What striking means to a lot of grad students is basically suspending progress on work that they really care about,” she said. “A lot of us came to grad school because we’re genuinely passionate about our fields and have a curiosity. That’s almost like an itch that begs to be followed through to a conclusion. But in this contract fight, by going on strike, we showed each other that we were willing to put passions like that on hold for a greater passion, which is the benefit of all, not leaving people behind.”
Now, Goebel can return to her research plots at Hubbard Brook Experiment Station in the White Mountains and in Corinth, Vermont, where she’s studying how changes in northern New England’s winter weather are affecting the soil. But she’ll remain active in the union, which now has to adopt a constitution, elect officers and stewards, and orient new grad students to life and work on an organized campus.
She’ll be gone when the contract expires at the end of June in 2027, but she’s confident that the union will have new leadership by then. “We have a lot of people in their first years of their five-year programs, so they will certainly be here for the next contract fight. And they’ve been able to essentially shadow the bargaining committee that was just dissolved. So they’ll be really well prepared.”